Staff Head

Staff Heads are senior members of Sojourn's development team. The task of maintaining and improving Sojourn is split among the Staff Heads, who are each tasked with one or more aspects of the server to oversee. While they may be capable of contributing directly, Staff Heads are responsible for curating submissions from contributors and guiding developers and writers respectively.

Mandates

Staff Heads receive complex mandates regarding what they should and shouldn't focus on within their sphere. Each mandate is categorized into a group:

Code

These mandates focus on the technical well-being of the server, and are responsible for implementing features and elements within the game. Also responsible for the game's balance.

Lore

These mandates maintain a healthy and enthralling lore base, and integrating all approved proposals sensibly into the existing lore. Also responsible for the wiki's completeness.

Rules

These mandates are concerned with player-facing matters that directly influence interactions between players on the live server. Rules, SOP and Laws all fall under this umbrella.

Contribution Policies

Staff Heads are responsible for the policies by which contributions are judged, and the processes necessary for converting an idea into a finished contribution.

See Contributor Guide and Coding Standards.

Quality Control

Staff Heads also have the final say in whether or not a contribution is of sufficient quality to be integrated. A lore contributor could write a wonderful story, but if it's full of typos and awkward phrasing the submission may be rejected until capable. For code, this involves maintaining code standards and the cleanliness of the code tree.

Keep in mind that there are multiple ways that a contribution may fail to be of appropriate quality.

For one, contributions should mesh appropriately with all aspects of the server; a lore writer is no more empowered to demand the existence of a nonexistent in-game item as a coder is to add accessible features that are completely unsupported by lore. Unless both aspects are resolved together through one interdisciplinary contribution, neither is desirable.

Contributions should be coherent and cohesive. An amazing change to the lore, if incomprehensible to any but the most studious of Sojourn scholars, is no more desirable than a new game mechanic that is utterly divorced from the game proper. Both can most likely be fixed, and should be to be approved.

Completeness is key as well. Staff Heads are the highest line of secrecy when it comes to upcoming features and releases, but not releasing a whole change at once is different from not having the whole change ready. Whether it be a multi-part lore writeup that gets drip-fed to players, or incremental changes to a department's layout to transition players smoothly into it, the final product should be available before the intermediates go live.

Staff Vetting

Though the task of staff changes falls to Head Administrators, it is up to relevant staff heads to determine an applicant's continued competency in the matter. For well known applicants with a track record, simply examining their contributions may be enough to produce a recommendation. If others are being considered, staff heads are also expected to ask appropriate questions or set tasks to test the applicant's competency.

Keep in mind that anyone may contribute; one does not need a rank within staff to code or write. The staff roles grant credibility and a level of authority to the contributor, and directs other staff to consult with them when necessary. Anyone withholding their contributions for lack of a staff rank should have their value and intentions particularly well scrutinized.