Guidelines for Relations¶
The TT Relations position is the most important community engagement role in our organization. Members who engage in relations are responsible for everything from errant questions in #contact-headquarters to ban removal requests in #jail-and-courthouse. We hope Relations members become masters in the art of conflict resolution. They should proactively find solutions for problems that arise from problem players, mistakes made by the administration, and internal disputes among admin actions.
Since the Relations role lends itself to public scrutiny – with quite a bit of autonomous power to make decisions – members with the role are meant to be respected for their decision making ability, level headedness, and fairness. Additionally, Relations covers a wide array of actions and responsibilities making staunch guidelines hard to create. Instead, we offer you a set of principles to follow so that you can apply each to the numerous differing cases you’ll encounter.
The Three Principles of Relations: Professionalism, Fairness, and Communication
TT Relations personnel are expected to meet all three of these descriptors in any circumstance. To put it another way, if you apply these three principles to each case you run into we don’t expect your decisions to become controversial. While not every complainant deserves kindness, they all deserve the simple respect and courtesy of being treated as we would treat anyone else in the same circumstance.
Professionalism¶
Relations personnel should maintain a face of professionalism. Conflict resolution on the server, or failure thereof, can be easily forgotten as the game progresses past it. The map changes, the players leave, and whatever occurred is easily forgotten. By comparison, and by design, what we write on Discord is meant to be there forever for all users to see.This transparency is a boon to our admin team’s credibility as long as professionalism is maintained. By keeping complaints, suggestions, and appeals public we demonstrate our organization has nothing to hide. We operate in the most public way possible.
User420yolo: wat the fuck y do u nerds care wtf I say? I didn't hurt anyone no one complained lmao
❌ BadRelations: You’re a fucking retard. Read the rules.
✅ GoodRelations: You can see in our #server-rules that racist statements are not allowed on the server. If you aren’t prepared to abide by them the ban will remain as is.
We lose the benefits of transparency only if our Relations representatives are unnecessarily rude or disrespectful. We would much rather hide our interactions with complainants if this was the norm. While not every complainant deserves kindness they all deserve the simple respect and courtesy of being treated as we would treat anyone else. Professional language offers a safe baseline to engage with all people so as not be accused of bias or executing Internet vendettas.
Fairness¶
Fairness and the appearance of fairness might be the most important guiding principle for Relations members. We once again can look at our policy of transparency. It only nets the community a higher opinion of the admin team if the community can reasonably discern that our decisions are fair, reasoned, and based on existing policy or precedent.
Fairness is the most ambiguous of these principles. What is fair for a 500 hour tag wearing member who is well versed in our rule set and primer may not be fair for a first time visitor on the server. One may deserve the benefit of the doubt while the other may deserve his punishment. We encourage Relations members to discuss ambiguous cases with other members, relations personnel, and other admins. A second or even a third opinion, contributing their opinions in a public dialogue, helps maintain an aura of peer review and credibility of the team.
Each individual case will require an independent judgment based on the player’s level of commitment to the community. Pure impartiality is not practical, but onlookers should be able to read our public dialogues, clearly see the thought process of a Relations member is based on reason, and recognize an inherent fairness in the decision.
Communication¶
Like everything else we do, from map voting to ban appeals, communication is absolutely key. Stated in the preamble is an aptitude for conflict resolution. The key stone of conflict resolution in our context requires gathering information from players, admins, and decision makers so a reasonable resolution is achieved. Relations members should be familiar with the admin team so that there is no awkwardness in asking frank questions regarding admin decisions or player misbehavior directly.
Small tips and reminders:¶
- Avoid setting precedent or unilaterally changing policy
- TT Relations members are so often the face of the community that their behavior has to be the gold standard when acting within the role.