Conquer Club Members,
Today I am coming to announce some fairly big changes to how TeamCC is organized and how they do things moving forward. Over the past six to nine months we've been observing how the team works, how things are regarding consistency, and how the general forum membership views the individuals who are volunteering their time. After doing so the admins decided it was time to make some adjustments that we feel will hopefully improve community/TeamCC interaction, improve moderation consistency, and also help provide the community with a more vibrant, active team.
The biggest change is to how the forums are moderated. Before everyone on the team had the ability to moderate the forums (some in their department only, some across the entire forum) and they all had the ability to use the site's disciplinary tools to hand out warnings or bans as necessary. One problem this caused was a lack of consistency as there were simply so many people involved with moderation and it meant that sometimes wires got crossed or various team members were not entirely up to speed on the situation regarding a member.
To change this we've trimmed down the number of people responsible for active moderation by quite a bit. Now, only the designated leader of each department has access to hand down bans or warnings and is responsible for all moderation needs within their department. This takes our moderation pool from nearly 35 all the way down to about 10. Global moderators remain in their previous roles watching over the entire forum index.
At first glance it may seem that this means there will be less coverage for the forum, however, quite the opposite will happen. Each department such as Tournaments or the Foundry for example is made up of a group of multiple volunteers. From these volunteers one individual is designated as the current department leader. This leader can be a long-term position, or the department can decide that they would like to rotate the leader on a set basis if they wish, it is entirely up to that department. While the department leaders are responsible for the reviewing of individual cases and the implementation of necessary bans and warnings, the entire team of volunteers is responsible to keep a watchful eye on the forums and help make sure troublesome spots or users are identified.
We simply wanted to shrink the number of people making the ultimate decisions because we hope that is going to lead to less confusion and a more consistent moderation style.
Now, because of this change to permissions and so forth we have also reorganized the forums that the team uses to coordinate all of its efforts and because of that we now can add and remove volunteers in a much more streamlined process, which means that we can utilize the eager community much more than before. Now, each department is responsible for determining how big their team needs to be and adding to it or taking away from it as necessary. No longer does there need to be a long and involved application process for every single thing with tons of background research and so forth. Departments can operate independently to get their projects done in a way that best fits their style.
This may mean that some departments stay small, but it may also mean that some departments place callouts for temporary volunteers to help with projects or events from time to time, or that they post callouts to find interested people to join their team permanently.
Also with the team forum reorganization we are able to greatly reduce the troubles with team members and account sitting. Now the only volunteers that need to be careful about account sitting are the current department leaders and admins but the other department volunteers can have whomever they wish watch their accounts. Hopefully soon a site improvement will be installed that will allow department leaders and admins the freedom to have whomever they wish watch their accounts as well.
And finally, the ultimate hope is that with this reorganization we will see the relationship between the community members and the team improve over time. Before it was apparent that the community often saw the team as a group of enforcers trying to ruin their fun, but now because the "enforcement" aspect has been removed from a majority of the team they can enjoy their positions, interact with the community, and become "helpful guides" rather than "enforcers."
We are also hoping that with the new independently operating departments we will see an increase in community activities, events, competitions, and all sorts of other things.
Regards,
Conquer Club Admins
