Your area staff are: Issa, R'xim, Th'bek and T'rin
Current Term: October 1, 2023 to March 30, 2024
Next Staff Call: March 4, 2024
Next Staff Call End Date: March 11, 2024
Voting/Discussion Ends: March 18, 2024

Igen Staffing Expectations

Igen Area Staff bear responsibility for facilitating roleplay in the Igen area. Staffers are expected to be active, engaged players who have sufficient time and interest to help maintain the area. Unlike the large and rambling staffs of old, area staffs on post-reboot HT are meant to be small, efficient units, serving six months at a stretch.

If you are an Igen Area staffer, you are expected to:

  • Be out and roleplaying! Regardless of if you have an IC ranking character, as a player you are still expected to meet the minimum standard of an average of 1 Igen scene a month, 11 months a year.
  • Be active as a staffer! While you are not required to be 'on duty' at all times, you should make sure you're taking the time every week to see to your necessary duties to the area. In addition to the general duties of area maintenance and player facilitation, work on your plate may include: proposing and finalizing the details of TPs, providing NPC-focused gossip material, updating the MOTD, and providing area weekly updates (done on Sundays).
  • Be open and willing to listen! Staffers should strive to be approachable to new and old players alike, and should give all player ideas, concerns and complaints a fair hearing.
  • Be a facilitator! While area players should be out and stirring up activity on their own, it's Area Staff's responsibility to maintain the necessary coding, building, and administration to make Igen an active and pleasant place to play.
  • Be positive! Staffers should always strive to be pleasant, positive and enthusiastic in their staffly interactions with players, providing positive construction feedback. If a player's idea couldn't work as requested in the area, don't just say 'no'. Rather, provide positive feedback in the form of alternative measures: be it a change in the TP request, a different solution when it comes to rank, or just encouraging someone to have an IC history that better serves the area. Give input, ideas, and alternative solutions rather than just saying 'no'!
  • Be visible! In particular, area staffers are expected to maintain a presence on the area channel [Desert Discourse]. This does not mean you can never turn it off (you might need to concentrate, or you might be at work or school, etc.) but please make sure you turn it back on!
  • Be proactive! Barring issues that require majority or unanimous agreement, as a member of Igen Area Staff you are empowered to make plenty of area decisions yourself. So - do so!

Staff Rules

  • Always strive to adhere to the HT conduct Guidelines.
  • Always strive to conform to HT Policy.
  • The staff channel is to be used exclusively for staff business. Area staff is not a clique: taking a staff position is not an admittance into a 'popular kids' crowd, it's a job. Treat it that way.
  • Speak to players the way you want to be spoken to. A staff position is not a platform for being a bully: if a player is making you miserable enough that you're struggling to stay civil or tempted to abuse your authority, PLEASE call for reinforcements from another staffer, or ask to take a break!
  • At the same time, don't lie to players to avoid having to tell them 'no'! We expect our players to be mature adults here: if someone wants something or is doing something you know won't be acceptable, talking to them plainly will end better than dissembling or beating around the bush.
  • Keep your fellow staffers abreast of your staff activities. This is especially important in the case of disciplinary situations, where player warnings should be noted to *Igen Staff. (If possible, log it!)
  • Unless otherwise stated, you have 72 hours to get back to your fellow staffers re: 'majority rules' decisions. If you do not, your fellow staffers have the right to mark your vote an abstention and carry on with business. If this happens over and over, your fellow staffers have the right to request the wizards reopen your slot for a new staff volunteer.
  • Inform area staff if you know you're going to have an absence of a week or more. If you're absent for more than a month, your fellow staffers have the right to request to reopen your slot for a new staff volunteer.

Above all, treat our players as you would treat a colleague at work, a fellow student at school, or your neighbor. Just because we connect with alternate names on a platform that allows anonymity does not mean that we should treat the people we engage with as lesser than the people we engage with in our real life.

Staff Procedures

Igen divides staffing situations up into three basic categories:

  • Staffing decisions that can be made individually
  • Staffing decisions that require a simple majority
  • Staffing decisions that require all staffers either agree or abstain
Solo Decisions
  • Admitting a new non-ranking, non-insta character to the area.
  • Giving players first and second warnings for policy or conduct violations.
  • Fixing broken code, descriptions, etc.
  • Vetting minor TPs for area appropriateness
  • Wing transfers
Simple Majority Decisions
  • Admitting instas to the area.
  • Promoting or stripping characters of lower-tier ranks.
    • Confirming 'field promotions/demotions' made in scenes. (If not confirmed, working out 'test' periods, or IC reasons the promotion would be denied.) Please see Igen Policy for more information on how these work!
  • Adding new rooms to the area (after initial development is complete).
  • Giving players final warnings for policy or conduct violations.
  • Vetting major TPs for area appropriateness.

Note in case of abstentions: if a vote is a tie, it defaults to 'no'.

Universal Agreement Decisions
  • Area policy changes. (However, any player - including non-staff - is welcome to propose policies at any time.) We attempt to make policy changes an area vote decision, however!
  • Decisions in regards to players who are a constant constraint on Staff's time. If there's a problem player who consistently has issues, all of Igen Area Staff needs to come to an agreement in terms of how to deal with them, up to and including handing them off to the wizards for stronger disciplinary actions.
  • Promoting or stripping characters of the upper tier slots of rank: Weyrwoman, Weyrleader, Weyrlingmaster, Weyrsecond.
    • In the case of promotion to Weyrwoman, area goldriders not on staff should be brought into the decision-making process. Igen Area Staff reserves the right to make the final decision, but goldrider player input is crucial.
    • In the case of promotion to Weyrleader, Igen Staff will typically put this up to an area vote, although we reserve the right of veto.
    • In the case of promotion to Weyrsecond, Igen Staff will typically leave this to the Weyrleader to decide based on IC plausibility, although we reserve the right of veto.
    • In the case of promotion to Weyrlingmaster, area AWLM not on staff should be brought into the decision-making process. Igen tries to promote within the ranks as much as possible; while staff reserve the right to make the final decision, AWLM input is crucial.

Igen has a general staffing guide, always under development, available here: Igen Staff Guide

Staff Turnover

Call for Turnover
  • On the first Sunday of September and March a call will go out on *igenweyr for all interested parties to @send *igenstaff with their interest in staff if they meet the activity requirements. The call will last 7 days.
    • All applicants must have at least 3 scenes over the last three months on Igen's grid.
  • On the last day of the open call perform activity checks on all applicants.
    • If there are 5 or fewer applicants, all five will be accepted as staff for the next cycle provided they have passed the Activity check. (proceed to Staff Turnover)
Area Wide Vote Procedure

In the event that an area vote is needed (the are more than 5 applicants):

  • The list of applicants will be put on a Google drive form.
  • After the vote is set up, a member of the current staff will @send *igenweyr with notification of the vote and a short instruction of how to vote.
  • The vote will run for 7 days.
  • The top 5 applicants will be identified at the end of the poll and the results will be shown to all members of old staff.
  • The old staff will @send *igenweyr and the new staff members with the results and congratulations.
The day of Staff Turnover

On the first day of October and April:

  • Delete the mail on *igenstaff (@rmm 1-$ from *iws)
  • Change passwords on builder
  • Remove all retiring staffers (from MOO and Gdrive)
  • Add all incoming staffers (to MOO and Gdrive)
  • Mail *igenweyr with the announcement of their new staff
  • Update staff wiki pages with the new staff
  • Update ‘help igen’ with new staff
Staff Falls Under 3 Members
  • If, over the course of a staff cycle, the number of staffers falls below the game minimum of 3:
  • If there are more than 2 months left in the staff cycle, a call for volunteers will be made. If more volunteers step forward than positions available, a vote will be held by staff to determine the new staff.
    • If there are less than 2 months, staff will continue short handed until the next turnover. This may result in some decisions not being able to be made until the new staff is elected.