katfish Lv 1
Players have asked in global what the criteria was for new ops selection. There is no one answer, as there are 9 currently active "old" ops - we are all individuals with our own perspectives. I would like to share some of mine.
There are a few qualities which the "old" ops have in common. Probably the main one is a broad community perspective. Although some of us are soloists and some on competing teams, we all share a view of the game and the community as being primary. What we do as ops is to try to make global chat a welcoming place for players of every experience level, to help the game thrive. This to me is probably the most important quality that I was looking for.
One thing that no ops was looking for was team affiliation. While we are weighted in the top 3 teams, it is fact that those three teams have many players who have been playing for many years - it's just the nature of also looking for players who have been here a long time, and more likely have taken the community view beyond their team affiliation. We are also weighted to the smaller teams of those - we now have 4 VC, 3 Contenders, 3 AD (rav3n is rarely around much anymore), 1 AHAP and 3 soloists (one no longer active).
Of course one of our primary functions is simple policing of chat to ensure that everyone has a good chat experience, so obviously a player needs to be experienced in irc.
Another function of ops is to try to greet players and welcome newcomers, and answer questions of every skill level. It's very subjective, and there are many players who are wonderful in helping the community this way.
To me, the four new ops chosen demonstrated the two functions that are basic requirements, and gave me the sense that they have the quality of seeing beyond their teams or solo status to the entire community.
Specifically, though, to me, there were extra abilities that each of the new ops could bring - Timo is our current script expert, and can both help with script questions and interface more easily on issues of that sort with the devs. Susume has had experience in modding boards, and has demonstrated her willingness to share her expertise with the community. Spdenne (Datacute) is always willing to answer an advanced question in global, and lives in a critical time zone where there has been a gap in coverage for many months. Silverberg is often present in global - greeting, welcoming, diffusing, chatting, and helping to make it a fun place to be.
Those are just a few of my reasons. Yes - it's all very subjective, but I hope that this attempt to explain from one ops point of view is helpful.
