perhaps AI isnt ready to replace humanity yet afterall
The problem
As of this thread detailing how Senior Admin positions are to be applied, applicants are expected to follow the application calendar, specifying the application, public and private voting periods that takes place in an application. This additional thread specifies the actual calendar itself, which is reposted as below:
As one can see, the calendar ends at March (which was 4 months ago), and therefore there are no dates to follow as to currently existing Admins if they wanted to apply for the position. Therefore, admins are, in a sense, soft-locked in their position, where they may never be promoted to be a Senior Admin. (This fact is courtesy of isaac.)
In addition to the previously described problem, these application periods only occur every three months, meaning that even if an admin has had more than sufficient experience (like after spending 2 years on the server), they will still be required to wait out the periods if they were to "miss the train". This, in addition to the other requirements, is not really necessary for the position and does not further prove the applicant's ability to be a suitable candidate as a Senior. Personally, I also do not really see a reason as to why these applications as to be "batch performed" and there are no real improvements to efficiency even if they were in cohorts because of the small amount of applications (and applicants, for that matter).
The Suggestion
The suggestion is split into two parts:
- Re-open the Senior applications in general, and make a new calendar that continues the traditions set before.
- This will re-enable the influx of Seniors to our servers, and re-enable promotion of our admins. They will undergo the same processes that many other Seniors has gone through as a previous applicant themselves.
- Completely open up senior applications such that they can be submitted at any time, following the voting processes already in place.
- This removes the other barrier-of-entry previously mentioned that applicants must align their applications with the 3-month application window.
- It is to be noted that this suggestion is not to remove the voting period processes (2 weeks public voting + 1 week Senior voting), and only serves to eliminate the 3-month window.
Potential Problems
As with the previous suggestion thread, some has raised the concern of there being too many Seniors existing amongst the staff ranks:
We don't need more Senior Admins right now. We already have an imbalance of Senior Admins to regular Admins, and opening the floodgates honestly would make things worse.
To provide detail to this, as of current, there exist 6 regular admins (3 having the required total service time to apply) and 11 seniors admins (6 of which are Executives, with Video being the current game-mode Owner). (Source: The maintained staff+MB list at AdminWorld).
If there are any other potential problems with re-opening the senior applications, as well as potential issues with changing the application format to a more continous form, please discuss them in this thread.
Personal Opinion
I do not really see how having more Senior Admins necessarily make things "worse", as they are simply admins with more verified experience and has gone through strict voting processes. There would have to be an argument where having more seniors would obstruct the other, regular admins taking care of their own administrative duties, or some other form of damage to the staff structure as it exist right now. If such argument exist, I am open to discussion.
Another fact remains that the Senior Admin application process itself is already convoluted enough that the 3-month application window does not really make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. From what I can see, it is an unecessary system that does not give significant additional benefits other than us appearing more professional. Having it remain will not make much of a difference, but having it removed would not change much as well, and thusly I recommend reducing complexity. If there are other potential benefits that I have missed with the window that I did not realize with writing this thread, please remind me so in a reply to the thread.
In any case, I hope that the suggestion can induce some interesting conversations about what it means to be a "Senior Admin" and how the two staff ranks relate to one another. Even if the suggestion does not go through, I am sure that there will be useful discussions that can be referenced in the future. I look forward to your votes!
