Removal of Mod/Introduction to S1 & S2

**Divey**

Today I am announcing the removal of one of ranks, this being the Moderator rank. For sometime the team has been dissatisfied with how the Mod rank was functioning and after several staff members who made it to Admin after going through the Mod rank also shared these sentiments, it was clear something had to change. This of course also rubbed off on our community, who made it clear through the community meeting that the Moderator rank seemed to be sub-par in terms of ranks on our servers.

With these, we have decided to change the Trial Admin rank so it can adapt to what the Administrators wish to see in our potential candidates, with these - we are introducing S1 and S2. These names are mainly used for internal documentation and the ranks displayed to the community will still be kept the same, being labelled simply as 'Trial Admin'. Now you may be asking what S1 and S2 means. Well, we're splitting the Trial Admin system into two stages. Upon promotion, a member will be promoted to S1, which will give them access to all the current Trial Admin abilities and commands, when they get to the half way point (Which is 45 days as the ranks evaluation is being changed from 2 months to 3) they will receive a mid-term evaluation. In this mid-term evaluation they will be given constructive feedback from the entirety of the staff team, highlighting where they can improve in certain areas. After they have been given this, they will move onto S2. S2 gives them access to longer ban and blacklists times (7 day bans and 12 hour blacklists), takepoint access, certain levels of forum moderation access and permission to handle UBRs/UBLRs (while being helped by an admin). They will also have limited access to admin only discussions so that we can see how mature and civil they are in the terms of the 'politics' of Fearless (An example of this is Teacher applications).

Of course, with all these new found abilities they are going to need guidance. We're happy to announce alongside this change in ranks, there is now a minor sub-role in the Admin team, known as 'Mentor'. Upon a member being promoted to Trial Admin, they will receive a Mentor who is their go-to person in terms of questions and general help. Mentors will be primarily watching over their Trial Admin and will be reporting on their progress, creating their mid-term evaluation thread and reporting back to their TA. This is to give our members the best possible chance to get a positive outcome at the end of their evaluation. These Mentors rotate throughout the team roster and when possible, we will be avoiding making Mentors connected to people they are directly friends with.

In terms of our current Moderators, they will all be pushed into the S1 Trial Admin rank and their evaluation will begin immediately - those that are still in the rank, will also be adapting to the change however the amount of time they have spent in the role will be accounted for.

We hope this makes a positive change in terms of the Fearless team and we hope that alongside the introduction of the Mentor system, we will be able to give more people a chance as they will have a much more thorough process when learning the ropes!