Hello all!

There have been a few changes to the staff team this month, and we’d like to update everyone on some of those changes:

All four trial artists, Hush, Mouse, Rhyme, and Ruori, have been invited to be full artists!  They have produced some amazing art work, and have been learning the ropes under the wings of their staff mentors.  They have created some beauties, and there will be more to come! As a bonus, Hush has been added as another “green” artist which you can select individually for your custom!

Here are an example of the works they have produced in their trial period:

Great job, you four!

Tamako is retiring from staff.  She joined the team after impressing us with her detailed and beautiful items, and has since created much-loved items and coat colors for the site! My personal favorites were her creations from our Stellar Spelunking event:

All of our staff help to make Mycena Cave into something great, and we are thankful that Tama has left her imprint as well.  Thank you for your contributions and we wish you luck in your future endeavors!

Busy, busy Juney is on hiatus, doing many exciting things for her real life work in game development.  We will still be seeing her around and she is still helping and giving us advice, but in a lowered capacity as she focuses on her job!

As the traffic on Mycena Cave increases, we’re on the lookout for more moderators!

We’re looking for people who have a genuine interest and acceptance of the differences in our players, including their behaviors, opinions, emotions, lifestyles.  Do you think you have the skill to make timely, tough decisions?  Are you good at listening and observing objectively and openly, setting aside personal feelings and opinions?  Do you have good written communication skills, including the ability to clearly express points in neutral tones?  Are you steadfast?  If you think you possess these qualities, you should consider applying to be a Mycena Cave moderator!

The application is here.  We don’t yet have a set end date in mind yet, but we will announce when we are closing applications a week in advance. Applications will close October 26, more details here.

Hope to see more from the rest of the new artist hires in the future! Best of luck, everyone!

You put in so much hard work for this <3 I can’t wait to see what beautiful things you contribute in the future. Enjoy this!!

And congratulations to all the new artists!! I’m sure with all these additions the queue will start getting a lot shorter.

I’m sad to hear Tama is leaving the staff. I never got a Tamako custom for my collection. :c But hopefully you’ll still be in the chat! We still love you!

I was just thinking the other day that we could use more mods. How timely!

Grats to our lovely artists, and thanks so much Tamako!

Myla: Can we recommend other users as mods w/o applying ourselves?

Good luck Juney and congrats New Artists! Also, i will miss you being an Artist Tama, good person you where at that

Hm….i have thinking about becoming a Mod, but im not 100% good with that stuff. But, i MIGHT apply :D

Congrats all new artists, especially my dear Rhyme! <3
Sad to see you go Tamako. ;a;

MOD APP? WHAT IS THIS I SAID THAT I WOULD LOVE TO BECOME A MOD YESTERDAY I AM SO SCARED HOW DID YOU KNOW AHH?? *Takes out holy water*

OUO

We seeeeeee yooooooou.

Amaterasu
I am so scared right now. :I

Congratulations to all the new artists! I hope you have a lot of fun in your new role :D

As for those who are retiring and stepping back, your contribution to Mycena Cave is wonderful. Hope you’re moving on to exciting new times in your life. May luck be with you!

Echoing most folks’ sentiments here. :) Thank you for all your hard work, Tama! And Juney too, though I know that your ~real job~ is very exciting and demands a lot of your time right now!

Also very excited about the prospect of new mods. <3

Congrats new artists!! I have definitely loved the customs coming out lately!!! The future will be bright :)

I might apply to be a mod… I will have to think about if I have the time to do so…

Thank you Tamako for all of your hard, fantastic work. <33 Your touch on the site’s art was and still is so wonderful!

Congrats new artists! It’s great to see you on board! :) LOVE the examples up on the first post - those are gorgeous and you all are so creative and talented!

Juney I hope all is going well with your job and such! ^u^

And oooh a mod application? Good luck to those applying! *throws around confetti and streamers* :3

[@Toothless]; Well.. “Well” is relative in an industry as chaotic as the game development industry :D;; Loving it either way, though!

Thanks all :) Will still be lurking around & am always available for questions and the like — just a little less in quantity!

baekhesten:

Moderators monitor, review, and mediate player-submitted content to help make sure that it follows the site rules and cultivates a strong community.  In the event of a dispute, moderators should intervene as quickly and objectively as possible, in order to restore peace. Specific tasks include responding to reports, enforcing content standards, answering questions about the rules (or other things), ensuring that the rules are being followed, and mediating conflicts.

One task that we emphasize more here than many other sites do is gently nudging players towards an accord — oftentimes things start to escalate on the forums due to word choices and interpretations that nobody intended, and if we catch it in time we like to diffuse them before they can light any fuses by privately making people aware of alternative ways that a post could be interpreted. So being comfortable sending out unsolicited echos like that is also important (as well as weathering the occasional angry/defensive response from someone unhappy to be hearing from a mod).

From a mechanical standpoint, gameplay is largely unaffected: it is quite rare that we have a no-staff restriction like we do on our current set of auctions (unles of course you are e.g. running an event, in which case participating in it may not work for logistical reasons), and compensation is (unfortunately I guess) small enough not to make a significant difference. From a more holistic perspective though, you will probably find things change quite a bit: you may experience a certain ostracism even among your friend groups here, because at the end of the day you are choosing to separate yourself in both position and perspective — many of your views on decisions and site direction will also likely be affected in ways that can be hard to explain or even justify to your friends without talking about things you can’t talk about publicly.

Congrats, artists! You all worked really hard and I love stalking seeing your work on the custom pages. I can’t wait until someone draws for me :D

Also good luck to all applying for the modship. I look forward to being crushed under your powerful fists.

glitch

thank you! <3

Hi everyone — quick announcement that we will be closing the first round of moderator applications one week from today. If you intend to apply, please have your application in by 23:59 Server Time on October 26! After that, we’ll start responding to applications. If you sent in an application then you’ll receive an echo from us regardless of the outcome, and so by the same token, if you sent in an application and don’t hear from us by the end of the 28th, please let us know!

We had a lot of people apply so we won’t be sending personalized responses to most of the applications, but if your application stood out to us as particularly strong then we’ll invite you for a live interview (via chat or skype or similar) with some staff / mods to get to know you a little better. We hope to be done with the process and announce any new staff changes by the 1st of November :)

Remember everyone, today is the last day you can submit the application!

We had a lot more responses than we expected (and a lot of them towards the end of the application window) so we won’t be able to have responded by end-of-day on the 28th as I had expected after all: we need more time to read applications, discuss them, and follow up with (and then await responses from) the references that you provided.  So I’ll be setting up an “application status” page for everyone who applied, the link to it will be at the top of the page (next to inventory, profile, etc). If you sent in an application and don’t see that by end-of-day on the 28th please contact me :) And sorry again for the delay, there’s just a lot to read and a lot to discuss!

Hi again everyone!

We’ve finally finished going through all of the applications (if you applied, please check your “Mod-app Status” page), and have selected four of the applicants move on to the second round. We’ll be reaching out to those people by echo over the next few days, to get the next steps sorted out and scheduled. These steps will consist of us trying to get to know you a little better, and to get an understanding of how you’d mesh with our current staff team, and to run a few “mock” situations past you to gauge how you think they ought to be handled, things like that.

I would like to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who applied. Not only did we learn a lot from all of the applications (in particular, they helped us understand areas in which we can improve, as well as what you as a community feel that the moderation team should be responsible for), but the fact that so many people showed willingness to help out and devote their time to Mycena Cave is really heartwarming :)