What is the main role of a helper?
Helpers are there to help both members and staff. Helpers are not granted any additional permissions than the ones they already have. They are here to answer questions anyone has on the server. If you stop helping people, or you do not wish to continue helping people, or you take on an enforcer role, your helper title will be replaced with [Former Helper].
A Helper must treat others seeking Help like they would a friend’s first time on the server and/or the game. Act as though the person you are helping is your friend, and that you are are wanting to show them what the server offers.
Please note:
You are required to serve as a Helper before you can apply for Staff Assistant. However, if you are seen to be constantly creating “effective” reports, then you may be approached about taking on the Staff Assistant role directly.
Requirements
For your application to be considered at all, you must:
- Have been on the server for at least 1 week - please note that if you just started helping yesterday, 1 week is not likely enough
- No application made which has been denied within the last week
- Have good spelling and grammar - it doesn’t need to be perfect. Your writing should not get in the way of someone understanding you.
- Be mature
- Be willing to give up what you are currently doing to help other people
- Already help people on a daily basis and answer questions
- Have Crew status
To produce an application, an applicant must post a topic in the Helper Applications Section that answers the questions and follows the requirements below. The template in that section of the forum should have the questions already.
Questions
Q1. What is your in-game name?
Q2. How often are you on the server? (Include timezones and exact times only; no generalisations)
Q3. Why do you want to be a Helper?
Q4. Will you prioritize helping others and answering questions over other things?
Q5. Do you think you have sufficient knowledge to answer many questions that are put to you?
Q6. Tell us about yourself?
Format Requirements
In order to set a standard for Helper Applications to make sure they look presentable, the format requirements are here to do just that - they are required.
You must:
- Provide one line of space between each question
-
bold each question put in the application using
**bold** - Put the answer to each question on a new line under the question with no blank lines in-between
Look at other applications that have been reviewed for examples.
Tips
- Make sure your answers include everything you can put in; there is no word limit, however you should include quality over quantity in your application.
- Make sure people know you. This includes staff. The more people know you exist, the more likely they are to +1 your application.
Asking people to specifically support or +1 your application is a bad gesture and you should only tell people that you have made one, not that they should support it. If you tell someone to specifically support your application, that person’s support may or may not be considered as valid.
Application Process
Your application will be given 2 weeks to accumulate support from the community. If none of the people who support your application are trusted or known by the Staff member reviewing your application, it may not go forward until either people matching this description support your application or another staff member can vouch for those that already support your application. If your application cannot go forward, it will either be denied, or it will left in a stalled state until a decision can be made or something else happens.
Sometime after the initial fortnight, the application will be formally reviewed. A tag of “pending” will denote that the application is in the queue for in-game evaluation. Once an available week has arisen for an evaluation, the tag will change to “evaluating” and testing will commence at random times thereafter within the availability mentioned in your application
Evaluation Stage
Passing the application review by itself isn’t enough for your application to be accepted. Once your application has been reviewed, your in-game behaviour will need to be evaluated.
During this stage we may look at multiple sources of information. This includes but is potentially not limited to:
- Chat logs
- Phase chat
- Mystery users (staff members who are under another identity for purposes of evaluation)
- Real users
The evaluations are from “sessions” and not individual users. That is, we will consider specific periods of time individually. After enough evaluating is done, the evaluation results are published as an overall prevalent outcome, a pass or fail. If the outcome is a pass, then the applicant has passed and their application will be accepted, however, in the event that the overall prevalent outcome is a fail, the applicant will be notified of such an event and will be given one more chance to pass two more evaluations. They must pass the two next evaluations or the application will be denied. A reason for failure will be given.
Application Rating notes
These are a list of things that a staff member will use to assess your application
- support by at least 3 or more members of the community who have registered over 3 months ago
- support by at least 2 people who the reviewer knows to be trusted or simply people who the staff member knows well enough that results in a positive judgement on their opinion
- Good spelling and grammar
- Appropriate wording
- Information which gives a general idea of the person