A new solution to the sudden Litesniper influx

[Da_Dumples]

Most people have heard that there is an epidemic of Litesnipers. This being that Litesniper is now easier to get than ever and there are now (as it sometimes seem) more Litesnipers than members.This is a real problem that we have to solve because not only has it basically nullified and made obsolete all of the honor that getting Litesniper once had, but it threatens Sniper rank too. This sudden inflation in the "Lightie" population means that a lot of Sniper applications are being filed. Now of course this doesn't mean they will get it, but there is a serious worry that It may make the Sniper rank as drab and unfulfilling as Litesniper. Basically, what I've tried to do here is illustrate the problem as follows:
1. Litesniper is now meaningless and honorless instead of proud and respected.
2. The Litesniper pandemic might adversely affect the entire ranking system by invalidating its principles and underlying structure.

So how did these Litesnipers come to be? Well, for the most part, Curated areas are just churning them out. They do it because they need to use sniper, or they believe that they deserve it for getting into the zone or because they're great builders. Either way, there is nothing to be done if the system stays the same. One solution you may hear is that the entire system be remade so that it is more challenging to get Litesniper. This being done by redirecting the permissions of curators and admins and such. This plan is daunting and there is no guarantee of success, and I would require countless arguments and debates that would only result in bad things. Another solution is to totally recall all Liteniper promotions. This plan is just mean spirited and cowardly, it makes the word of the Voxelbox worthless as we can take it back when we please, because many of them deserved Litesniper. A third plan that has been passed around is to reinstate Builder rank. However this isn't fair for those who were already Litesniper as they would have to be demoted and we already discussed those issues.

Now we have a finger on the problem and a handful of solutions, and it is time to present my solution. I believe I have found a middle ground that would offend no one. My plan is this, and it is simple. reinstate Builder as a rank ABOVE Litesniper. This new builder rank would be a prerequisite for full sniper and be a beacon of accomplishment for anyone who has it. This rank would have minimal new permission, maybe access to a slightly bigger brush or something, just as the old builder did. This rank would be almost useless, except for respect and a sign of skill. This rank would be totally free of and problems that face Litesniper such as it being given because sniping needs to be done, rather than because them being actually talented. This solution allows all Litesnipers to keep their status, and the skilled ones weeded out. It requires almost no change to the system, it requires no rank modification to existing Litesnipers and it would create a rank that would replace Litesniper as the rank that represents an individual of sizable skill and respect.

This rank would be given for things such as community participation, outstanding skill, and overall coolness. These are all things you see in many snipers+ today, and makes it fantastic as a prerequisite for full sniper.
So as with most plans this one is not perfect, but that's what the forum is for. You guys can work out the fine points or reject my idea entirely, but I hope that I have helped highlight the problem. So, in conclusion.
1.Builder be reinstated as a rank above Litesniper.
2.The new Builder will have minimal privileges to avoid any promotions that are centered around anything other than curated zones or mass terraforming or any other bias.
3.There will be no demotions, only promotions to those deserving enough.
4.NO total system overhaul, you wont have to change the way promotions happen entirely.
5.It would make it so that there is no longer a sudden influx of sniper applications and really filter out the good stuff.
6.Re-institute a rank that gives members a seemingly possible goal to attain and make a rank that is full of people that are guaranteed to know their stuff and be quality contributors.

Please contribute and share <3

[DreamRx]

ok, I get this, but what would stop from there being a Builder influx if this is reinstated. And what would be the criteria of a Builder persay?

[Matthewar]

In my opinion, it is only natural that the number of snipers will increase, however the number of litesnipers should stay about the same. It is only fair that the number increases, as everyone - provided they deserve it - should eventually have the opportunity to become a sniper. Some things often take a long time to build by hand, simple tasks such as filling in an area with one block, or - for redstoners, replicating small yet complex components. While it is possible to do these without sniper, it can often be a bore and takes, in my opinion, time which is unnecessary. And when something is needed to be sniped you often need to wait quite a while to catch ones attention before being able to continue. I understand that they do have other things to do - and I accepts that I am probably being quite biased towards my side.

Adding builder seems unnecessary, from what I have seen, sniper may not be a "limited", "special" group of a select few, but a group of people who have worked hard on the server and obtained it, and fully deserve it. Litesniper is simply giving people a chance to reach that group, and as I have said earlier, over time the number will increase, since as the number of people on the server increases there is sure to be more who deserve a chance at that high, well considered rank. Putting in builder will just mean that more become "Builders", and slowly that group will increase, and be a stage towards sniper, simply making it harder to "rise through the ranks".

[Da_Dumples]

Let me state that I strongly agree that the number of snipers should always increase, the rank should never be closed to any new entries. However too many at once will definitively dilute the respect and authority of snipers as a whole. All that I am proposing is that there a little more quality control to that those who deserve sniper get it and those that dont wont dilute the rank. In your case, if you put forth the effort and show the necessary dedication, you will get sniper.

As to you, Dream. The criteria would be something along the lines of:
1. They show great talent as a builder.
2. They are an active and constructive member of the community.

Again, the whole concept is open for debate and nothing is concrete. Keep contributing guys!

[xRILLIANx]

Adding builder seems unnecessary, from what I have seen, sniper may not be a "limited", "special" group of a select few, but a group of people who have worked hard on the server and obtained it, and fully deserve it. Litesniper is simply giving people a chance to reach that group, and as I have said earlier, over time the number will increase, since as the number of people on the server increases there is sure to be more who deserve a chance at that high, well considered rank. Putting in builder will just mean that more become "Builders", and slowly that group will increase, and be a stage towards sniper, simply making it harder to "rise through the ranks".

Builder actually might be a good idea, simply for the reason that, as Dumples said, it filters the amount of people going for Sniper; just as the rank isn't solely about how much terraforming the individual has done, and not solely about how amazing their terraforming is, it is also partially about what you build, and the quality of it; the Builder rank would be a testament to the quality of your handiwork, as opposed to Litesniper, which doesn't show how good someone is with VoxelSniper (as members can't use the tool). Thus it's much less subjective (even as subjective as build quality can be), and much harder to just "award" to people because they happen to be working in a certain curated zone or such.

Besides, it shouldn't necessarily be easy to "rise through the ranks", as you put. They are ranks that are earned for certain amounts of work and dedication (to varying requirements and degrees, of course); so to say that another rank shouldn't be added simply because it will make it harder to rank up is silly in itself.

I personally like this idea (and wish that if it were implemented, I would have had a chance to go through this rank). All it would need is some planning on what to give them. I don't think they'd need any more access to VoxelSniper than a Litesniper because Builder isn't really about terraforming; but obviously a few new commands or such might be in order.

[pahking66]

What drives someone to be a LS? Is it the prestige or is it access to tools/functionality that comes with that rank?

Matthewar said,

Some things often take a long time to build by hand, simple tasks such as filling in an area with one block, or - for redstoners, replicating small yet complex components. While it is possible to do these without sniper, it can often be a bore and takes, in my opinion, time which is unnecessary. And when something is needed to be sniped you often need to wait quite a while to catch ones attention before being able to continue.

Is it possible to provide members with that specific "clone/copy and paste" tool/functionality? Would that address most of the reasons for wanting to be a LS?

Maybe it's access to tools, not the ranks, that need to be addressed?

[xRILLIANx]

What drives someone to be a LS? Is it the prestige or is it access to tools/functionality that comes with that rank?

Matthewar said,

Some things often take a long time to build by hand, simple tasks such as filling in an area with one block, or - for redstoners, replicating small yet complex components. While it is possible to do these without sniper, it can often be a bore and takes, in my opinion, time which is unnecessary. And when something is needed to be sniped you often need to wait quite a while to catch ones attention before being able to continue.

Is it possible to provide members with that specific "clone/copy and paste" tool/functionality? Would that address most of the reasons for wanting to be a LS?

Maybe it's access to tools, not the ranks, that need to be addressed?

Nope. The whole point of Litesniper as a rank is to reward those who the server feels are dedicated and can be trusted with VoxelSniper; giving (any) brushes to members defeats that purpose.

[pahking66]

Fair point. Could another tool be created for small-scale copy/cloning? There's a handful of tools available to all - dooplicator, etc. so is this a possibility?

[Killjaden]

Adding builder seems unnecessary, from what I have seen, sniper may not be a "limited", "special" group of a select few, but a group of people who have worked hard on the server and obtained it, and fully deserve it.

This ^

Also it's kind of ironic to me that Dumples and RILLIAN are two of the newest snipers.

[xRILLIANx]

Adding builder seems unnecessary, from what I have seen, sniper may not be a "limited", "special" group of a select few, but a group of people who have worked hard on the server and obtained it, and fully deserve it.

This ^

Also it's kind of ironic to me that Dumples and RILLIAN are two of the newest snipers.

No, I'm mostly commenting on the Builder/Litesniper thing, not really Snipery things. I dunno, guess it is kind of silly for me to be participating in this.

[Da_Dumples]

Adding builder seems unnecessary, from what I have seen, sniper may not be a "limited", "special" group of a select few, but a group of people who have worked hard on the server and obtained it, and fully deserve it.

This ^

Also it's kind of ironic to me that Dumples and RILLIAN are two of the newest snipers.

I actually came up with this while I was applying for sniper. I expected that they wouldn't accept my application just because there were so many others applying.

[johnsmom]

Just posting my thoughts on the issue after an interesting discussion with Da_Dumples.

While, I do like the idea, I feel it's being done in the incorrect manner. By bring back Builder above LS, it solves one of the problems, that being the influx of sniper applications. That doesn't bring back the "honor" to LS. While using Builder as a buffer would work in an effort to reduce promotions/applications to sniper, it also doesn't decrease the amount of LSs. People will still get promoted to LS, regardless, as is the natural progression of ranks. If you want to bring back the honor to LS, then it's going to get a bit messy.

I proposed a plan that would raise the bar for LS and make it a harder rank to attain. I've heard from some people that the "freshest batch" of LSs don't deserve it, as they haven't done much, and are just speculating with plans. My plan to solve this issue is to stop promotions to LS for about a week to a week and a half to gauge what the current LS have actually done. Once this information is gathered, an average is set, and that becomes the new, loose standard for promotion to LS. Those LSs that don't even come close to these loose standards should be given a time frame to get their stuff done. If they can show enough dedication to complete those tasks on schedule, they can keep the tool. If they don't, they get demoted to member.

While demotions are messy, bringing about change of this scale can't be done without a few bad apples. I don't want to sugar coat the solution either. With my above solution, the builder rank would also be implemented in the way Da_Dumples suggested.

[MuttonChops24]

This topic was discussed to some length earlier this month in Shakey_aj's talk page on the wiki. This is what i proposed there, and i still think it will vastly reduce the number of people trying to get LiteSniper.

I have a suggestion. What do you guys think about giving all members LS within the bounds of their cubicle only? I think this will give members the chance to efficiently learn the ins and outs of LS before they actually get promoted to LS as well as decrease the amount of people requesting sniper assistance; freeing up LS and Snipers to focus on their own builds. This will also allow Staff to preview someones snipe-ability before promoting them to LS. I can also see some other advantages such as being able to better present your cubicle work to curators for their zones. Members still would not be allowed to snipe out side of their own Cube, or a cube they are an "owner" in, so they couldn't just go crazy and ruin things out side of their cube. I think an added benefit would be a drastic decrease of members wanting to become LS rank because they want to terraform their cube landscape. The only down side i can see to this is the lag it may cause on the server due to the increased amount if sniping at any given time.

[croozee]

No need to bring back builder. The only issue is people being promoted to LiteSniper very quickly, which isn't really that much of an issue, plus there's not much we can do about it because the admins have a policy of not having a policy for promoting to LiteSniper (or at least that's what I hear). People are getting LiteSniper really fast. It took me 4 months and I never got it until the new worlds even though I had one of the most popular towns near the end of the Pangea era.

Sniper is the stopping point for most members. Some will go on to curator; few to admin, but for most, Sniper is the end of the line. The number of snipers will forever increase and there's not much we can do about it.

About Mutton's idea: I like it, but it seems like it would be quite a bit of work for the programmers (coming from someone with little programming experience). I support it though.

[Jinzha]

This topic was discussed to some length earlier this month in Shakey_aj's talk page on the wiki. This is what i proposed there, and i still think it will vastly reduce the number of people trying to get LiteSniper.

I have a suggestion. What do you guys think about giving all members LS within the bounds of their cubicle only? I think this will give members the chance to efficiently learn the ins and outs of LS before they actually get promoted to LS as well as decrease the amount of people requesting sniper assistance; freeing up LS and Snipers to focus on their own builds. This will also allow Staff to preview someones snipe-ability before promoting them to LS. I can also see some other advantages such as being able to better present your cubicle work to curators for their zones. Members still would not be allowed to snipe out side of their own Cube, or a cube they are an "owner" in, so they couldn't just go crazy and ruin things out side of their cube. I think an added benefit would be a drastic decrease of members wanting to become LS rank because they want to terraform their cube landscape. The only down side i can see to this is the lag it may cause on the server due to the increased amount if sniping at any given time.

If all people could snipe in their cube, they'd all need sniper training so that they don't crash the server. People would take advantage of this idea massively.

[Da_Dumples]

Just to pop in, John has a really good point. Adding builder as a rank above litesniper would not help litesniper regain its virtue, it would however replace it as such. So my plan wont help the litesniper rank, but it will still solve all the aforementioned problems. The compromise is that we fix there not being an honorable middle rank by replacing it completely.

[Shakey_aj]

Why don't you just reinstate builder below LS. It doesn't solve current promotions but will help the real problem of too many litesnipers too quickly in the future. Some people have been LS for a long time and would be thinking about full sniper, it seems unfair to just sandwhich in another rank above them.

[Gavjenks]

OR... you could stop being elitist and ridiculous in the first place...

The purpose of the litesniper rank is so that people who are trustworthy enough have access to the litesniper tool. That is why it is called the litesniper rank.

The purpose of the litesniper rank is NOT so that people can walk around feeling self-satisfied and looking down on members.

Therefore, the whole premise of this post is silly and made-up. As Ridge has said many times, and I strongly agree with, "In an ideal world, every single person on the server would be trustworthy and dedicated enough and play nicely together enough to all be admins."

As far as I am concerned, the more top-heavy the server ranks are, the better (assuming they all actually earned it). No exceptions.

[AzulCaballero]

I completely agree with Gav and was actually going to post something similar once I got to a computer. With a few of you all being apart of the recent Sniper wave, it makes this issue sound almost arrogant coming out of your mouths, and to be honest you all deserved your promotions so I don't see the issue. The quality if players have gone up over time, and With more LiteSnipers and Snipers this allows more users access to amazing tools that can support their ideas and creativity.

If there's one thing I don't like about LiteSniper promotions it's that some people seem to hand it out purely to lure members into building in their area. It should be a tool, not an item free to trade for labour. Personally I've given only one LS permit, Mmorphius, since he shown great dedication to Space and need LS to continue with his growing ideas.

[Gavjenks]

Well yeah, I mean I give out LS for people in my area, but thats because I know them, and I get to know their work, and I know that they need it. ANybody else who I don't know very well who asks me, I just tell them they can have LS, as long as they find a sniper+ who they DO know who is willing to take the time to train them.

So if they are plugged into the community at all, and have any degree of known competency/maturity by some person or people in higher ranks, they should be fine.

[Jinzha]

Gav and Azul have quite renewned my opinion on this matter and the only problem I see is the fact that some lites don't get/haven't gotten training.

[Billyyjoee]

Bananas.

[Matthewar]

OR... you could stop being elitist and ridiculous in the first place...

The purpose of the litesniper rank is so that people who are trustworthy enough have access to the litesniper tool. That is why it is called the litesniper rank.

The purpose of the litesniper rank is NOT so that people can walk around feeling self-satisfied and looking down on members.

Therefore, the whole premise of this post is silly and made-up. As Ridge has said many times, and I strongly agree with, "In an ideal world, every single person on the server would be trustworthy and dedicated enough and play nicely together enough to all be admins."

As far as I am concerned, the more top-heavy the server ranks are, the better (assuming they all actually earned it). No exceptions.

Where's the like button?

[Da_Dumples]

OR... you could stop being elitist and ridiculous in the first place...

The purpose of the litesniper rank is so that people who are trustworthy enough have access to the litesniper tool. That is why it is called the litesniper rank.

The purpose of the litesniper rank is NOT so that people can walk around feeling self-satisfied and looking down on members.

Therefore, the whole premise of this post is silly and made-up. As Ridge has said many times, and I strongly agree with, "In an ideal world, every single person on the server would be trustworthy and dedicated enough and play nicely together enough to all be admins."

As far as I am concerned, the more top-heavy the server ranks are, the better (assuming they all actually earned it). No exceptions.

I don't mean for litesniper or my proposed builder rank to be a platform for ego-maniacal and condescending behavior. I simply want my proposed rank to replace litesniper as a rank that is an accomplishment. By this I mean for my proposed rank to be a goal and achievement, something to compare yourself to as a guest and admire but at the same time believe that you to can accomplish and be considered among a more elite class of member -again not trying to sound elitist. Considering that litesniper is being handed out as it is, it can never be the beacon of accomplishment to anyone who isn't uninformed. And again, if you feel this way about litesniper, my plan has no affect on it. It will remain as unflattering and unimaginably useful as it always has been.

[Bellamy_Brothers]

Litesniper has been a basically all about the tool for quite a few months now, too many good builders/users with it that are trustworthy enough, no reason to not give it to them. Btw, builder was removed for the reason of simplifying the ranks, so instituting new ones with the only purpose of giving another step in between member-sniper seems counter-intuitive.

[doublenum]

I don't really think this is an elitist thing to ask for. Everyone wants to be rewarded! Promotions drive dedication and when people feel they hit a dead end, they tend to drop with their work ethic. In my opinion, a builder rank is actually not a bad idea. Access to bigger brushes, ./warps perhaps and such things that everyone on the server deserves as well as more motivation for members who feel that sniper is an un-achievable rank. It also suddenly easens the huge leap from litesniper to sniper, which can also help members distinguish who has been a seasoned litesniper and not just haphazardly taught by a curator. It could also be the solution for people who could be snipers but are just not quite ready.

Once again, this isn't an elitist thing to ask for, I don't understand why you guys started saying it was. He has a good point

[MuttonChops24]

May i also point out that it really hinders work ethic when someone who joined after you gets promoted before you. Bleh.

[BlockCat]

May i also point out that it really hinders work ethic when someone who joined after you gets promoted before you. Bleh.

Meh, I don't see that problem, I understand but they deserver it!

[thedeadlybutter]

The one problem with this entire idea everyone seems to forget is the tech side.

slightly bigger brush or something, just as the old builder did.

The old builders were LS, the system was the same. At snipers current state we do not do permissions (The version currently WIP does, but don't expect that to be done for a while). Once we add this new rank, then cisco needs to go make a brand new permission group, VoxelGuest needs to be updated, and a lot of stuff people don't think about. None of this is really hard, but it takes time for to get all of these working perfectly, and for what? To prevent people from gaining a rank?

If people continue to join the server, people will rise the ranks. Its how it goes, not much more too it. I understand what your saying about LS, the policy of it's promotion is still a fuzzle to me, but keep in mind, how did you feel as a member? How did you feel when everyone was sniping and terraforming, and you just had to keep working? What were going to make it harder now?

If we (hypothetically speaking) did this, would you yourself be willing to start from member and progress 3 ranks before getting full sniper?