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More ranks with world edit

"Why's this guy here?"
Too bad i'm commenting anyway.

One major problem I recall from my time as "Staff" was that it always felt like there was a "limited" number of slots for staff. Meaning we had lots of artists capable of fulfilling a staff position, but people didn't seem to want to "overfill" Staff. Point being, we always felt that there were many senior artists who would be perfectly capable of leading projects and handling world edit tools, however apparently people wanted to keep staff numbers low so it would be more exclusive. This resulted in more than a couple of great builders leaving because they felt frustrated being stuck with the limited capabilities of artists.

Now i'm not going to go into why I think Staff ranks in general are unnecessary... ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

But I will say that if permissions were to be handed out, even on a case by case basis, to artists then I sincerely think you would see an uptick in artists starting, following through, and completing projects. Not to mention giving artists the ability to better hone their skills and produce better quality work faster. Artists definitely are the "main workforce" of the server, so why wouldn't you want to supply your workforce with tools that could help them do their job better and more effectively?
Obviously there's a risk to giving users access to world edit, but you kind of run that same risk when you give those permissions to sociopaths like Fire.
 
Glov said:
Obviously there's a risk to giving users access to world edit, but you kind of run that same risk when you give those permissions to sociopaths like Fire.
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Aw I agreed with you until the end there bud. Does our mutual love/hate of Fangorn, our child, mean nothing to you?

I dont know if there has ever really been a "cap" on the number of staff that can serve at one time. A lot of the times that number is dictated by the number of projects as well as the number of active players at any given time. Too many staff/projects and not enough artists/players spreads everything too thin and progress seems to slow. Too few staff/projects and too many artists/players and everything seems to grind to a halt (one could say we are currently in said state due to low activity, myself included). I would much rather elevate exceptional artists to foreman or staff, accompanied with respective mentorship/training, than hand out WE on a player by player basis.
 
The path that (most) designers have gone through is: artist to foreman to designer. So why did I want to become artist, well to build in main world of course. Why did I want to become foreman, well to lead jobs and towns. Why did I want to become designer, to lead projects and get WE and at this point I am contributing enough to the server that I get to have a say of how it is run (staff).

I believe if you want WE you have to be a good builder (one thing a designer must be), you are dedicated to the server and there is an amount of responsibility which you need to have and that we need to give to you (another spec of designer) and if you are commenting on here obviously you want to change or give a say of how the server is run (another designer role). So in the end, you want to have more of the designer percs. Why make it more complicated. Just apply for designer. If you really feel that you are restricted you have probably been on the server a while, are an experienced builder and fit to fill in the role.
 
BWOT said:
if you are commenting on here obviously you want to change or give a say of how the server is run (another designer role)
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Nahh anyone can suggest to change things, even OB's for my part. If ur saying that only staff can 'give a say', then I think we're going down a very elitist path. Tbh the large division of power between staff and non-staff has frustrated me quite a bit and by saying that 'giving a say' is a designer role only confirms it. The major workforce (foremen, artists and some commoners) is more active usually, and -as Glov said- there are quite some actively contributing foremen and artists that are frustrated by the designers with the powerful tools which they can't get their hands on. So 'my say' is that I could agree that the rank of artist can't be trusted with full WorldEdit, but foremen surely can. So I vote foremen full WE and artists limited.
-flies away-
 
I agree with Eldar. Artist is an artist and designer is a designer. When an artist becomes really good he can always apply for a designer to get those extra commands and tasks. But I do understand about making the work a bit easier but at the same time it would blend artist and designer rank too much probably.
 
What's more important? That we maintain the structuring and distinction of our traditional ranks or that we utilize as meny tools as we can to aid the main goal of the server? The question is rather wether or not Artists as a whole can be trusted with WE.
 
First of all it's obvious I don't want to be designer at this moment, otherwise I would have applied for it, mainly because I feel like there are enough designers and I don't want to be staff and have tose extra responsibilities. I'd rather have a more active and dedicated builder force, which would be the artists. As foremen and even artists have run bigger projects than ever before, I have led a town together with an artist, you yourself have devided your town in parts which you all gave to artists for them to work on, whilst you stayed
Eldar_Telcontar said:
Designers keep the overall project under control and keep the vision of that in mind which is important.
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Same for new town and the sewers which you gave to a few artists aswel, probably seeing the results turned out decent in middle town, or whatever reason you had, it must have been that you wanted the artists to work on something bigger.


Applying for designer is like Fire said, not a thing you just do, it requires more than just building skills.
Whilst artists is mainly about the building skills, of course you have to be a bit mature and involved into the community, but as the rank is called, they're the main building force of the server.

Aswel as like fire mentioned, designers are maily to lead projects, bigger projects. We can't have 10 of those projects goign on at once, since the progress would be far too slow on them all. Ofcourse giving our 'main building force' the tools to speed the progress up and be able to work on bigger things, whilst foremen run jobs on the smaller houses, like has been done in Dol Amroth (of course not every project has houses, looking at Eriol's smoothing for example, which also has been done for 50% by non artists(mainly commoners I guess)).

About blending ranks, I think at for example the only difference between commoner and artists is that commoners have to wait for jobs, I've seen a great many things being done by commoners, they're more like 'the main building force' than artists at this moment.
 
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I do understand. But with WE the requirements to become an artist would proble become higher too.
 
Lindolas said:
I do understand. But with WE the requirements to become an artist would proble become higher too.
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That's why I suggested implementing some form of Senior Artist rank, although perhaps we should call it something more fitting like Builder?
 
I think the only way that Artist can get WE is if WE gets limited to a maximum quantity of blocks that won't be able to massive grief or massive lag.
On my point of view is not like "I don't want artist to have WE because only staff can have it" or some bullshit like that, is just I don't want to go around fixing massive area because someone built wrong builds or stuff or cucked the terrain.
 
Yes yes, that'd be one of the requirements, aswel as protecting the allready built parts of the map, so artists can only world edit in the areas that are being worked on right now.
 
The reason I phrased my original comment the way I did was that I think having too many Designers running a single project may lead to a gridlock if they each have different ideas about what the end result should be, and can't agree on that. I have never been staff so I don't know what the staff dynamic is like. But there is a saying "too many cooks spoil the broth"...

I know there are some artists who would make very good foremen, in which case I think you should apply for the rank first, and see what it is like.
 
I think the issue is in Moria because tbh I scarcely use WE except for quick terraforming and Moria. I think the solution should be that Designers and foreman should have access to WE throughout the Moria world. The WE for foreman would be restricted in the range of area they can select though.

I think for artist WE should be given like building access within a plot to commoners. Artist can use WE inside their halls by a Designer and can do whatever they like in their hall with it. It would be like the plot plugin.

Is this solution fitting or I am missing out any extra things?
 
I meant like the final decision in staff meetings.
 

To be fair BWOT since you're designer I haven't seen you build something like a house or structure, except some stuff in moria, so I find it a bit logical that you don't use world edit in the normal world.

Of course this is how most designers are, since they lead projects and such.
 
Do artists at least have access to world edit permissions on Freebuild? If the main issue is risk that they will destroy the map then why not at least grant some of them freedom on a flatworld, at the very least they could do larger scale builds on freebuild and have them pasted in the map later.

I sort of understand a lot of the issues people seem to have with granting artists perms, but it's just so rudely inefficient. The majority of build servers and plot servers these days grant world edit or voxel permissions to any builders who can prove their proficiency. Obviously mcme isn't a plot server, but it just seems illogical to so heavily restrict the largest population of active builders in order to make those permissions staff exclusive. It seems to me that the answer isn't "more ranks", its simply either grant permissions to artists (or at the very least case by case) or expand staff and promote more users more often.
 
So after having hung around this thread a bit I've started to change my mind a bit. From what I've come to understand it's not that hard to limit the powers (affected size, available commands etc) and that there's an additional plugin that easily restores any mishaps or griefing attempts.
If I'm correct in this may I suggest that we give it a trial time? I feel like this is something that should be brought up in the next staff meeting perhaps.
 
I havent read evertthing, so excuse me in advance for saying something that has been said already.

I wanna touch a point that that glov mentioned about there being limited staff positions. There may be some truth in this altough I cant remmember a time when I thought to myself there are to many designers/architects before i promoted someone. If i thought someone was worth it and if that opinion was shared i would go ahead with promoting said individual.

Now about worldedit. There are two reasons why I rather keep worldedit available to a limit group. One being I used to vet people who where going to have access to worldedit a whole lot more then I did artist. Worldedit is a powerfull tool that can be dangerous in untrained hands. If someone where to abuse it they can do serious harm to the server. Harm that outweights the benefits.
Now ofcourse we can apply the same vetting we do with staff albeit would take allot of extra work. But that still leaves out the training part.

Right now a new designer gets a buddy assigned that teaches him both world edit and voxel. So far this seems to work well. This could potentially work for artist to. But then we are again looking at extra work on top of the vetting proces.

Artist rank is designed to give talented people the ability to build. And as simple as that sounds is exactly as simple I would like to leave it. The only thing I personally would consider is allowing artist voxel light. Small maximum brush size and limited brush choice. Easy to teach and simple to manage just how I like it.

So that is my 2 cents.

tldr: I am against giving artist we because it involves to much extra work. But I would consider giving them voxel light.

PS: typed on phone forgive my grammar and spelling etc.
 
Um... what does vetting mean? (Gosh I feel like such a droog right now)
 
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