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[Xinus23]

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[Petie]

People seem to think we're willingly avoiding adding new staff for some unknown reason but that simply isn't the case. See this recent thread for a more detailed answer: https://www.vg-resource.com/thread-36497.html

[JewyB]

I have actually seen the staff of tSR ask for help from the community many times, in fact, tMR wouldnt exist if it wasnt for that happening in the first place. And when it comes to models i think Petie has been pretty clear that asking for help from the community is pretty different to other site areas as it requires a certain extent of expertise. Sure they could get in 100 members willing to help within a couple of hours but just because people want to help doesnt mean they can.

There are cases in impoverished countries where volunteers have gone over to help and made things worse because they dont understand HOW to build houses or irrigation systems. It may not seem relevant but the point is that people with the best intentions can do more harm than good even by trying to help.

I'm sure that the actual staff are doing their best to grow the site in ways they see as appropriate, unfortunately not every problem can be solved by just posting "we need help" on the forums/discord.

[Petie]

JewyB really hit the nail on the head here. I'm not ignorant of anything you're saying. I've seen it a thousand times before and I'll see it a thousand more I'm sure. The issue is that you are not actually taking the time to understand my response. If it was as simple as saying "Hey community, we need help - who's up for reviewing models?", we'd have a 50 person model staff and the queue would struggle to get above 1. But, as I'm sure has been sufficiently implied at this point, it's not that simple.

When we look for new staff members, we have certain criteria potential candidates need to meet to be what we feel is qualified enough to take on the role. This applies to all sites but it is especially critical for models as the levels of technical ability and attention to detail required are far greater than any other site. So yes, we're sure there are a ton of people who would be willing to help out and many who would in fact enjoy the opportunity but there's a reason our staff team isn't growing and it's not some sort of crazy elitist pride.

I'm honestly not sure where that assumption stems from nor do I understand how you can be so sure we're not trying to find suitable additional staff when you can't possibly see everything that goes on behind the scenes. The staff discusses a lot that simply isn't made public and potential new staff members are definitely included in that category. I'd also like to point out that we have never ignored a single thread made in this vein because it's important that people, especially those like you who have misguided assumptions, understand what is really going on and to prevent the further spread of exclusivity that people seem to think we revolve our staff choices on.

So, just to make this super crystal clear, let me fill you in on a bit of our thought process. Who do you think would make the best candidates for model staff? If you answered model submitters, you'd be right but that's not all there is to it. I, personally, regularly consult with our model staff to determine if any regular submitters have been consistently submitting outstanding rips and the answer is almost always, unfortunately, no. Submitting a ton of models doesn't make you qualified to review them and we really only consider those who show a track record of model submissions with next to zero mistakes because that attention to detail in submissions is exactly what is required for approving them.

I'm pretty sure all of this was covered in the other thread I linked but hopefully this helps shed some light on why things are the way they are.

[JewyB]

I would think what you're seeing is evidence of the issue, and that relates back to the early days of tMR before a standard was in place. This is what tSR was like before, there are still even remnants of that there, many things could still probably do with re-ripping, but when you start something content > quality until you hit a point where quality control takes over and you have an audience who deserves better.

I would imagine the plan is to get a suitable level of staff at a high enough skill level to keep submissions rolling at a frequent enough pace and high enough quality that an effort can then be made to go back and fix earlier submissions. Like Petie said, this is much harder with 3D models. You have to consider this is all voluntary also, so people arent sitting in a tSR office 8 hours a day with access to full training etc.

Letting people on who will accept and upload models like the ones you're referring to will eventually cause more work down the line when an overhaul is done to go back and bring everything upto a consistent quality.

[Garamonde]

Pretty much all I'm getting out of this is "you guys' standards are too high, just hire people who do not pass our (reasonably) strict guidelines and will make mistakes and upload/approve models that will further increase the amount of poor rips on the site that I've specifically pointed out".

JewyB is really showing a level of understanding here that we don't see too often among our userbase regarding staff decisions.

You seriously have no idea how much flack we get for not even doing anything. Please understand we're doing the best we can, we're only humans and I'm sorry that we're being unreasonable for wanting only the best.

Also as JewyB said, people go on and on about how we have poor rips, but keep in mind the sites have been around for over a decade, and back then we weren't aware of such issues when we brought on old staff and they approved those old submissions. This is why our standards increased and I apologize that we have not had the chance to go through every old model submission and bring it up to snuff. This is why people like you can help by re-ripping it and submitting it as a revision (which we will get to in time, we have personal lives too, so patience is a virtue).

Sorry if this post comes off snarky in any way, but we're really tired of people complaining to us about every single tiny thing imaginable without actually understanding what we put up with and go through. If you would like to help, you're free to post some model rips so we can see if there are any errors. But please, don't call us ignorant because you don't understand our process and why we do what we do. We know what we're doing and what is best for the site (which yes, we know having over 2,000 pending model submissions is not best for the site, gotta cut us some slack there), some of us have been doing this for more than 6 years.

One last thing. It's not that we're not listening to you. Trust us, we know we need more model staff. Again, it's really not that simple as most submitters submit things with issues and we just can't trust that they will not accept broken junk, to put it bluntly.

[JewyB]

i've said this a million times now and i'm gonna say it again.
3D modelling is not quantum physics
it is not that hard to understand. I've done 3D art for years now so i'm not pulling these statements out of my butt.

This is probably where your key problem lies. You KNOW how to do this, so to you is isn't difficult. When you have done something for years you forget how much time you actually have to put into something to be able to do it to a certain standard. You get confused why people aren't doing things that, to you, are second-nature. When you know something it is a lot easier to look at other people and wonder why they dont know something so simple, but you forget that you yourself had to learn it, and not just that, people have different natural talents leaning either way.

The staff have been running the site for years, not just tMR but the other sections too, and i've seen what happens when sites hire staff who aren't upto the job. Because the standards USED to be lower doesn't mean they can't have a higher standard now in order to strive for a better quality of product.

There are a lot of reasons but i understand the staff completely when they say that they want staff members who are upto a certain standard, and not only that, when they find those people, they have to want to become staff, which is a huge time commitment.

It's easy to comment from the outside but when you're running a site, that site is your baby and you only want the best for it. At the beginning its not so bad, but with the size of the site now, one wrong choice could easily cripple it. There are so many other factors you have to consider outside of the difficulty of 3D modelling.

[Petie]

Most of what I would have said has already been covered in previous replies so I'm just going to take these two points for now.

the only problem i see here is how needlessly high yours bars for being an approval staff is.

You're really not in a position to say whether our not our expectations are needlessly high or not and you proved it with your examples. Poor quality rips existing on the site is no excuse for allowing people with a history of making consistent mistakes in their own submissions to be responsible for reviewing and approving submissions for others. If anything, it means that our bar is not high enough.

I think you're missing the point of what i'm trying to say
first of all. i am  n o t  trying to completely devalue all of what you have done to this site.
what i was trying to say with those mentions of bad rips is that, nobody is perfect. people who submit stuff can sometimes make a mistake in their model submission. but i'm gonna bet that so do you. everyone makes mistakes.

We are not missing the point of anything you're trying to say. You're not the first to say it nor are you the first to completely ignore the facts we've presented in response. Nobody is accusing you of devaluing anything - we are simply stating that your view of how things work is incorrect. This isn't a matter of trust and we already have a test in place for determining who might make a good candidate for staff - it's called the submission process. I can't speak for the quality of your submissions as I don't review models but you've already taken the first step to passing this test you seem so eager for us to implement by submitting them. There is no better way to determine someone's level of expertise than to see their work and that's already what we're doing which means our decisions are not based on a lack of trust or some crazy notion that we can handle this ourselves - they're based on the fact that we already know whether someone will be able to review submissions based on what they themselves submit.

Edit:
I was writing this as JewyB responded so I just want to quickly reiterate what Mighty Jetters said in thanking them for having a level head and unusual understanding of the situation. I broke the thank button to make sure that point came across visually as well.

[JewyB]

You seem to be taking it personally, but nobody was out to attack you during this, it was just to illustrate WHY choices have been made. Everyone agrees that tMR NEEDS more approval staff but this has been the case of explaining why they need more approval staff as opposed to saying you are wrong. Its like explaining why an item is out of stock, the space is there but you cant just put any product in there to bulk up the numbers.

So what people have been trying to do is explain that whilst it would be nice to have more staff, the current staff want you to have a better experience, as a consumer, and make your life much easier in future access to the site.