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07-26-2015, 03:24 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-01-2022, 01:04 AM by Fearless Community.
Edit Reason: Checked Encoding
)
Unless it's on a very specific issue in which we have someone knowledgeable filling that role, every admin is entitled their say on a topic. More admins means more opinions, which is good to a certain extent, but it also often takes longer for us to discuss them and reach a decision; 10 admins can reach a decision within a day, but 20 might take up to a week. Sometimes, one opposing view means that we have to reset the entire vote and it leads to further delays. While this isn't necessarily bad, as more conflicting opinions means that we can see each individual issue from more angles and reach a better end decision, it can drastically slow things down.
An alternative to this is granting a few individual staff members more power (for example, the SAs) but that creates a huge array of problems. It's likely to cause a small divide between the regular team and SAs, lead to less transparency, lessen the value of admin opinions, and so on. It's not an option; we tried that before with the old SA teams and in the end it turned out to be catastrophic. So we can't manage a significantly larger team that way. So while a larger team might mean a little more coverage, it also slows down discussion and there aren't many good ways to compensate for that while still retaining the value of each individual admin, which is vital - if an admin feels as though his opinion is worthless, we have a major problem.
I've spoken about why we try and keep some limit on team size, but not about how we select candidates. Applications would possibly give certain players more exposure and might present to us a few new candidates we were unaware of, but there are very valid arguments against this system, too. Applications remove a large part of the human element from the process, and it may lead to admins giving their judgement solely based on the applicant's credentials and on how skilled a word-smith the applicant is. It's also likely that applicants will act differently once they've posted an application, whereas when we hand-pick candidates we can investigate both their good and bad sides without the candidate even being aware.
In short, while more exposure for potential candidates is a good thing and there are clear benefits to it, there are also many downsides, some in part due to the application process. As such, I do not think that an application process is a good idea. If someone has other suggestions, I'd be interested in hearing them.
An alternative to this is granting a few individual staff members more power (for example, the SAs) but that creates a huge array of problems. It's likely to cause a small divide between the regular team and SAs, lead to less transparency, lessen the value of admin opinions, and so on. It's not an option; we tried that before with the old SA teams and in the end it turned out to be catastrophic. So we can't manage a significantly larger team that way. So while a larger team might mean a little more coverage, it also slows down discussion and there aren't many good ways to compensate for that while still retaining the value of each individual admin, which is vital - if an admin feels as though his opinion is worthless, we have a major problem.
I've spoken about why we try and keep some limit on team size, but not about how we select candidates. Applications would possibly give certain players more exposure and might present to us a few new candidates we were unaware of, but there are very valid arguments against this system, too. Applications remove a large part of the human element from the process, and it may lead to admins giving their judgement solely based on the applicant's credentials and on how skilled a word-smith the applicant is. It's also likely that applicants will act differently once they've posted an application, whereas when we hand-pick candidates we can investigate both their good and bad sides without the candidate even being aware.
In short, while more exposure for potential candidates is a good thing and there are clear benefits to it, there are also many downsides, some in part due to the application process. As such, I do not think that an application process is a good idea. If someone has other suggestions, I'd be interested in hearing them.