About the admin thing; the least I can say is I have been very surprised at some of the selections of the past two applicant rounds.
This happens every time new admins are inducted, this surprise. In my roughly 7-month experience as a server admin, I have seen some people that I voted against become server admins, but who then have shaped up and/or ended up being excellent ones.
In regards to what Crunch said, I have never personally witnessed any of the abuses he mentioned, excepting one or two (that is,
extremely rare) instances of extraneous usage of admin chat. I am quick to crack down on unprofessionalism when I see it from any other admin in the server, and we have discussions (whensoever it is needed, which is not often) in internal admin chat.
One grievance that Crunch brings up is the fact that people will report TKs/trolls to the admins, and we do nothing. Now, I'll speak for myself here when I say this: If I do nothing when I have heard complaints of a TKer or some other kind of troll, it is for one reason. I don't know the player reporting and cannot be certain that s/he isn't trying to get someone else slayed (this happens almost every time I come to the server), and thereby trolling. I always do my best to listen to the reports of players that I know and trust. And then we come to the trouble of sorting through a list of 70 people trying to find the one teamwounder before he kills someone in spawn, which is extremely difficult.
Some other grievance that I imagine causes some anguish among the community is that I personally have, a few times, slayed a player who wasn't trolling after hearing multiple false reports of trolling, or not slayed a player who IS trolling because I can't get to it fast enough or I don't trust the reporter and am unwilling to switch to spectator to check out something that I suspect to be a false report. I admit that I sometimes jump the gun when it comes to slaying, but this comes naturally when quick reflexes can save one or two players' lives, so that they can actually play the game that round.
Finally, one problem with being an administrator, in respect to the things I've been talking about, is that we become so used to dealing with trolls who TK just to have fun and/or annoy others that we begin to take this attitude to the general public, the majority of which are not trolls. Many who are not trolls, but commit slayable infractions, are just noobs, and when I start to see multiple rule infractions coming from the same person, I get suspicious. When I slay someone for TKing once, I will be watching that chat like a hawk to see if they do it again. Oftentimes, I will see another TK from that person, but only in chat (I want to play the game, too. Do you know how boring it is to sit in spec when everyone is well-behaved on a server and there are no trolls to punish? It's even boring when the trolls have been punished, and everyone else is just playing the game), not as a witness, and be unable to tell if it was intentional or not, because it was either near a melee or a gunshot. This is why I rely on reports, but in these specific instances, depending on the player, I usually give them the benefit of the doubt.
Anyways, that was a long and convoluted response to particular parts of what Crunch wrote. Just to recap quickly on the most important point: I have never been witness to most of what grievances he has aired about admins, with the exception of only a few rare instances of lower-than-I-would-like professionalism. I do my best to ensure that other admins in the server are representing the admin team well, and will continue to do so.
