New Proposal: Introduce a "Community Manager" Role Below Moderator

[lucas4647]

Over the years, Skial’s moderation dynamics have shifted. In the past, moderators were highly active across servers, often present in games to maintain order to make the difficult face-to-face chats required to keep the community together. Today, with many mods understandably less available, player interactions with staff have become rarer. While we don’t need (or want) an excessive number of full moderators, there’s a gap that could be filled by a new, intermediate role: the Community Manager. This is something from a Minecraft community I used to play in called Kreatious that worked very well for the community.

Why a Community Manager?​

• Balanced Authority: A role with limited powers could help maintain server quality without the risks of over-moderation or abuse.
• More Active Presence: Unlike moderators (who are often scarce), Community Managers could provide consistent, approachable oversight.
• Lower Barrier to Entry: Easier to assign than full mod, reducing pressure while still improving moderation coverage.

Proposed Rules for Community Managers:​

• Communication First: Must attempt to engage with a player before issuing a mute (outside of extreme circumstances).
• Limited Mute Power:
  • Max 24-hour mute, with mutes over 1 hour requiring a forum post with justification.
• Kicks as Last Resort: Only if absolutely necessary (open to debate).
• Term Limits:
  • Role expires after 6–12 months unless actively renewed.
  • Must reapply/extend at the end of each term.
• Requirements:
  • Same activity/hour requirement as admin applicants.
  • Minimum age: 21 (maturity matters).
• Lower Trust Threshold: Easier to obtain than full mod, allowing more trusted community members to assist.

Why This Works for Skial​

• No Mod Overload: Avoids handing out full mod privileges too freely.
• More Accountability: Time limits and justification logs prevent power abuse.
• Bridges the Gap: Recreates the active, engaged moderation Skial once had, without requiring 24/7 TF2 no-lifers.

 

[lucas4647]

I just type fast bro thats my issue + u get my point and this suggestion is alredy at -10 votes soo its a no go end of talk :/

I understand where you're coming from, but Skial operates differently from communities like LotusClan, Nighteam, TF2Newbs, RUGC, Ponyville, The Ville, No Heroes, or Crit Sandvich. All of those servers ultimately shut down because they struggled to make tough, unpopular decisions, often prioritizing consensus over long-term sustainability.

Skial has lasted over a decade precisely because the fat penguin will take a more decisive approach. While it may not be a democracy, his structure allows us to make the necessary choices to keep the servers running strong. That’s why we’re still here when so many others have faded away. It’s not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship.

If you want proof look at the post criticizing the 40 person server change or the numerous denied mod apps that had community support. Hard decisions that are extremely unpopular but if they weren’t made Skial would die.

 

[Winnie]

I don’t fully understand the statement in question, but I’ll do my best to elaborate.

Current System Proposal (Simplified)
- Regular User: Can initiate vote kicks/mutes and report players.
- CMod (Community Moderator): Same as Regular User, but can also kick, 24h mute, or 24h ban without a vote (with limitations). Certain actions must be logged on the forum.
- Mod: Full moderator permissions.

Preferred Future System:
This isn’t the final version I’d like to see, but here’s my ideal structure for ranks that is more of a pipe dream.

- Regular User: No special permissions.
- Resident (Automatic at 20 hours): Can participate in votes.
- Citizen (Automatic at 100 hours): Can initiate votes.
- Veteran (2k+ hours, 3 added per quarter via community vote):
- Some donor perks.
- Immune to CMod mutes/kicks.
- Status can be revoked for misconduct.

With this (unlikely) system we would also drastically lower the vote mute and vote kicks to 50-55% vote required with minimum vote numbers ie 10 minimum votes.

And thank you for the kind words! Maritime academy and law school really do change a person. If you want a laugh, check out my first post. I keep it up as a reminder of how far I’ve come.

‎
I apologize for the lack of clarity. I had a long day at work yesterday lol.
The system proposed would be more beneficial for those who have been around Skial for a while. There are still some conflicts regarding hours that may need to be disabled for certain servers: Idle and Trade, where hours can easily accumulate if a user goes AFK. Statistics of lowering vote mutes and kicks could be a good or bad thing. It could indicate that the player base is trusting the CMods, or it could be little to no interaction in the server. It is not reasonable to say how it would or wouldn't, but I'm considering whether there were pros and cons involved. Communication or interaction is not something that could be measured by rules that are in black and white. Sometimes I notice interactions from users when an Admin is present to discipline negative behavior, and I have also witnessed that discipline can easily backfire and turn into turnover, leading to less participation. Perhaps being graceful can bring benefits... It's on a user-by-user basis. I will think my head off over this crazy balance.
‎
However, the restrictions on CMod would be fair and just if they were limited to those from a moderator. I am not certain in this day and age where they should be balanced fairly or not. Forgive my limited experience with servers. I come from older versions of these types of forums where they have this exact layout, but fell apart completely because of the change! Lol! Nintendo Wii days to put it. I would link my activity to those old forums that are dead as dead, but I don't wish to be looped into a report for advertising either. I was 10 or 11 years old at the time, so it's pure embarrassment and cringe. And I didn't believe in spacing after periods from sentences, so you were still doing better than me lol
‎
Again, I appreciate the respectful exchange in here. It's nice to share this conversation instead of being shunned for not talking like a TikToker in forums.
‎

No all the real regulars that played on EU 24/7 or just since the morining to make the first numbers count left on ester hollidays thats what killed EU and other players that just join in the middle of the day like me or you saw 0 players said shit and went to US instead coz if u see 0-8 ppl playing u dont wanna join a empty ass server like that it also aint good that EU players merged to US considering PING is a huge issue meny players with 150 to 300 ping thats EU players alright.

‎
This is where I just get more confused... Because the top death run player in EU gets banned, or because it was a holiday? After second thought, I do think there were better reasons why the top player in Deathrun EU was disciplined. Check out these metrics! Wowza!!
‎
Speaking of the low player count, the Deathrun EU server was briefly resurrected last night in case you missed it. But it was a raid, not players who came from all directions. It was not organic to simplify. If you know what a raid is, it means when an outside party agrees to play all together on a server. Most spoke in Spanish, so I was unable to communicate with them due to my lack of knowledge in the language. They were playing on the Trump Tower map.
The map later changed to Dustgrowl. Their party was decreasing in size (26 to 19 in the room). So I pull a Hail Mary and Force RTV the map. Another outsider suggested we go to dr_playstation, so I nominated and voted for that. Rest is history...
‎
With the ping barrier, I think it is fair to understand that with a higher player count in a room, the more likely there will be ping issues. Valve didn't build the rooms with an expectation of handling these heavy loads, but that is only my presumption. I can't play in 2Fort at 64 players because holy moly the ping spikes are insane! I can barely get by in Dustbowl alone at a 40-player cap.
‎

Could there also be another killer at work here, if you catch my drift?

‎
"Killer". There is no smoking gun if the player count remains unaffected. Perhaps a justification for why the Deathrun EU server was left for dead would be best. Maybe all followed suit to be into Deathrun US instead? I am not sure, but with Sachi and Cex not anticipating, it is quite a conundrum. It is as if Ellis and Caitlyn would disappear out of thin air.
‎

Skial has lasted over a decade precisely because the fat penguin will take a more decisive approach. While it may not be a democracy, his structure allows us to make the necessary choices to keep the servers running strong. That’s why we’re still here when so many others have faded away. It’s not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship.

‎
It's hard to think of it as a dictatorship when there is an ability to leave the server and play on others as well. Popular suggestions aren’t always implemented, while less popular ones can sometimes lead to action. It's not a principle for Leadership to abide by democracy most of the time if a business structure has standards of being available. It's all approached by circumstances and the nature of not just the room, but the general playerbase who are not in the forums. Some decisions Bottiger will make that are reasonable, and may not be. My only wish is that RTD be fixed right now. 😢 But he probably has his priorities that we may not be able to comprehend. We can’t expect him to always be available—managing so many features and users is quite demanding in itself. Who wouldn’t need a break? 😂

 

[lucas4647]

. My only wish is that RTD be fixed right now. 😢 But he probably has his priorities that we may not be able to comprehend. We can’t expect him to always be available—managing so many features and users is quite demanding in itself. Who wouldn’t need a break? 😂

A lot of Skial's code is completely custom or cobbled together from community made plugins then merged with skial spaghetti code. It would not surprise me if he is trying to Frankenstein something together at this moment.

 

[lucas4647]

I believe we've covered the essence of the CMod role well. It's a valuable position, even with its inherent controversies. What stands out to me is how it recognizes a unique skillset: some community members who'd struggle as full mods excel as CMods precisely because they understand player dynamics differently.

The temporary nature of the role is its strongest feature, in my view. Regular turnover prevents complacency and keeps the role accessible to fresh perspectives. And a unpopular CMod will still have to renew their term after 6months-1year which encourages them to keep the community happy.

Personally? I wouldn't be suited for it. After 14 years here, I've taken enough unpopular stances that many players strongly dislike me, and that’s okay! Ironically, many who vehemently disagree with me would actually make exceptional CMods. Their passion and engagement are exactly what the role needs.

Finally if the position was opened we likely would have less diasporas. Three seperate schisms have happened in the past 6 years due to denied mod applications. In my opinion all three of those applicants would have made good Cmods. This is a good financial decision for the server to implement as well as good for the community.

 

[Kaleido]

yeah, no.

 

[PoomBa]

I believe we've covered the essence of the CMod role well. It's a valuable position, even with its inherent controversies. What stands out to me is how it recognizes a unique skillset: some community members who'd struggle as full mods excel as CMods precisely because they understand player dynamics differently.

The temporary nature of the role is its strongest feature, in my view. Regular turnover prevents complacency and keeps the role accessible to fresh perspectives. And a unpopular CMod will still have to renew their term after 6months-1year which encourages them to keep the community happy.

Personally? I wouldn't be suited for it. After 14 years here, I've taken enough unpopular stances that many players strongly dislike me, and that’s okay! Ironically, many who vehemently disagree with me would actually make exceptional CMods. Their passion and engagement are exactly what the role needs.

Finally if the position was opened we likely would have less diasporas. Three seperate schisms have happened in the past 6 years due to denied mod applications. In my opinion all three of those applicants would have made good Cmods. This is a good financial decision for the server to implement as well as good for the community.

I like you way Lukas!

 

[Bottiger]

A lot of Skial's code is completely custom or cobbled together from community made plugins then merged with skial spaghetti code. It would not surprise me if he is trying to Frankenstein something together at this moment.

Why are you talking like you know anything about the code that we use?

There is no need to merge 99% of the plugins, they are self contained.

The plugins I rewrite from scratch have far fewer issues. Public plugins that we use are often riddled with bugs because they were written by teenagers in their first attempt to learn programming.

 

[lucas4647]

Why are you talking like you know anything about the code that we use?

I never said I knew the exact code—just the general idea of how it worked. My coding experience is pretty much just MATLAB, Python, SQL, and C++. I don’t know anything about actual server or source development.

Back in the day, one of the big reasons people got into Skial was because the admin actually built custom stuff for the server. It wasn’t just donor perks—things like Skial Stats showed they were putting in real work to make the server better. Those people talked me into coming here.

The mod team used to be way more connected to the players too, and a lot of them would talk about how much the admin cared about improving things. Nobody hid the fact that a lot of the plugins were either custom, rebuilt from community stuff, or just mashed together from existing ones.

As far as I remember, MetaList or at least SM plugins actually worked back then too but I could be misremembering because I played on a few servers.

And honestly, it’s not exactly a secret that Skial uses a mix of custom and community plugins. Even if I’d just started playing TF2 and never coded, I feel like it’d be obvious. Like, you don’t need to be a genius to figure that out.

 

[Bottiger]

And honestly, it’s not exactly a secret that Skial uses a mix of custom and community plugins. Even if I’d just started playing TF2 and never coded, I feel like it’d be obvious. Like, you don’t need to be a genius to figure that out.

Nobody ever claimed that Skial doesn't use public plugins.

The issue here is you are assuming that the problems arise from quote:

community made plugins then merged with skial spaghetti code

This is both offensive and untrue. "Skial" code is not "spaghetti" code. Any of the plugins I write from scratch are of much higher quality. They have 0 bugs, and they have a much higher chance of not breaking between updates. This is why every time there's a major update that breaks every sourcemod server, ours is always the first to be up.

99% of sourcemod plugins are self-contained, there is no interaction with other plugins, so there is no need for public plugins to interface with private skial code.

I use public plugins because it would take a lifetime to rewrite every single plugin there is. The majority of the time, if there is an issue, it comes from a public plugin. Which in this case, the problem with the rtd plugin comes entirely from public code, not anything I wrote.

If you really were an experienced coder you would know that you don't know anything about the code unless you've actually seen it.

 

[lucas4647]

"Skial" code is not "spaghetti" code.

All code is Spaghetti.

There is a semi-popular Matlab function written by Berkeley and MIT engineering students that is used to test I beam strength at the maritime academy for ME students. It’s very impressive stuff. But will not work on some computers. Nobody knows why this is. When I was at Cal Maritime when we tested I beams for structural engineering only half the computers (all same make and model) could run it. If someone tried to run it on different computers matlab compiler would work and the GUI would load but running the program would cause a blue screen.

Later on I worked in fraud prevention for a porn payment processor. Sometimes when we trimmed the entire fraud program would break. Everything to be trimmed was build to be contained, no dependency, no master or slave on anything we tried to remove. All of it written by brilliant people with amazing documentation. By the time I left the technical debt from the legacy code was roughly half the overall burn.

 

[Metroidz]

All code is Spaghetti.

There is a semi-popular Matlab function written by Berkeley and MIT engineering students that is used to test I beam strength at the maritime academy for ME students. It’s very impressive stuff. But will not work on some computers. Nobody knows why this is. When I was at Cal Maritime when we tested I beams for structural engineering only half the computers (all same make and model) could run it. If someone tried to run it on different computers matlab compiler would work and the GUI would load but running the program would cause a blue screen.

Later on I worked in fraud prevention for a porn payment processor. Sometimes when we trimmed the entire fraud program would break. Everything to be trimmed was build to be contained, no dependency, no master or slave on anything we tried to remove. All of it written by brilliant people with amazing documentation. By the time I left the technical debt from the legacy code was roughly half the overall burn.

You're full of shit man. You've been telling grandiose stories of your life for a bit now on the forums, discord and your steam profile.

It's time to pack it in and snap back to reality.

 

[lucas4647]

You're full of shit man. You've been telling grandiose stories of your life for a bit now on the forums, discord and your steam profile.

It's time to pack it in and snap back to reality.

Man if my life is grand to you I genuinely feel bad for you. I’m very sincere when I say this. Nothing in my life is special to someone who gets off the keyboard every once in a while.

Edit:
Oh my god. You’re the guy who admitted to having a small pp in discord. I swear to god this guy was on discord talking about how often women are too loose and I had to post scientific articles showing that’s almost never true and it’s really just guys with really small pp. it’s in “meme” on the discord.

LOl

2nd edit: I’m just going to add this article about my wife and I for some extra disrespect. Read the article and lookup the firm it verifies my wife and I work(ed) at. It’s one of the most prestigious mass tort firms in the world.

https://www.wsulaw.edu/students/lov...journey-through-western-state-college-of-law/

 

[Metroidz]

Man if my life is grand to you I genuinely feel bad for you. I’m very sincere when I say this. Nothing in my life is special to someone who gets off the keyboard every once in a while.

Edit:
Oh my god. You’re the guy who admitted to having a small pp in discord. I swear to god this guy was on discord talking about how often women are too loose and I had to post scientific articles showing that’s almost never true and it’s really just guys with really small pp. it’s in “meme” on the discord.

LOl

2nd edit: I’m just going to add this article about my wife and I for some extra disrespect. Read the article and lookup the firm it verifies my wife and I work(ed) at. It’s one of the most prestigious mass tort firms in the world.

https://www.wsulaw.edu/students/lov...journey-through-western-state-college-of-law/

You implied I have a small penis. There's no practical way to prove I do or do not online.....it's also not a very high effort jab as saying "you have a small dick" is the easiest low hanging fruit there is....

I also never stated anything of "how often women are loose".....

 

[lucas4647]

You implied I have a small penis. There's no practical way to prove I do or do not online.....it's also not a very high effort jab as saying "you have a small dick" is the easiest low hanging fruit there is....

Bro if you’re with one girl and she’s too loose then I’d chock that up to an outlier. I’m a proudly below average guy who has been with an average amount of women and it’s never happened to me. If you say this is a regular occurrence then I don’t know what to say bro. Maybe stop trying for women that gave birth last week.


In this 15 page discussion I will briefly summarize why I will never win the popularity contest required to become mod and why Metz very likely has a micropenis at the same time.


“Some are! It’s not unfathomable
Not even blaming, just stating my personal experience”
-Metz for president 2025

 

[Metroidz]

Maybe stop trying for women that gave birth last week.

My god what are you saying.......what on God's green earth are you fucking on about you goon?

 

[OG Steve]

This thread has clearly gone off the rails.

 

[MrLupin]

yeah, I'm gonna give this a -1 because this will not work at all. This sounds like a very bad idea in execution.

 

[gala]

@lucas4647 Appreciate the write up, you clearly had a good intention and effort went to this

 

[Winnie]

Δ+1

With the player base still in decline, I've done some soul-searching with this suggestion.

Community Managers should be able to grasp the cultures of the server(s).
If this can be an important attribute in becoming one, then this suggestion has my support.
They should be able to comprehend how servers differ from one another.
Administration is uniform-based, and should only be contacted if there is a barrier from a CMod.

I think the vote menu should be strictly reserved for CMod. These vote abuse reports are damaging the DR server.
This will definitely be important for the CMod to be on the server at the time to evaluate the situation that is at hand.
Comprehension of the decision should be a factor that weighs heavily on the CMod's mind, knowing it serves for the betterment of the community and the diversity of the server. Without this intellect, the position would not be suitable for them.