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Staff Spotlight ~ July 2018 ~ the adminmon ft. asm

Please enjoy this interview as much as I enjoyed conducting it.
Erik: ok
Noivern: ok
Erik: asm
Noivern: yea

Erik: Welcome to our (somewhat) monthly Staff Spotlight interview! This time we have none other than Noivern, aka no aliases; recently promoted to site manager after having tenures as hack and graphics moderator, and subsequently manager, as well as being a member and eventually also leading the PR Team. How is you today?
Noivern: site manager is idol
Noivern: wait
Noivern: I'm idol
Erik: dang
Erik: *ahem* admin
Noivern: Today is a good day.
Erik: That's great. I think the same.

Erik: Let's talk your position for a bit. As an admin on the site, what have been your duties?
Noivern: Not a whole lot.
Noivern: Actually, I'm not sure if I can really answer that. I've done a few things, but I don't know if I'm allowed to make them public.
Noivern: So I'm gonna have to pass on that, sorry.
Noivern: But I will say it makes it much easier to update the feedback and ban/warning log threads.
Erik: we the cia now
Noivern: your security clearance has been revoked
Noivern:
Erik: dam
Erik: Though you've been admin for like what, 20 days, so far how are you feeling in your position? Having the Almighty Power and all that
Noivern: It feels the same.
Noivern: Actually, I've felt the same throughout every step of my blatant power grabbing.
Erik:
Noivern:
Noivern: fellow nitro man
Erik: NITRO POWER
Noivern: Anyway, idk I guess I should have expected to feel different as staff, then later admin, but I still feel the same as I did a year ago before any of this ever happened. It's weird.
Erik: Well then. Le's go back in time for a bit. Back in please tell me when you were promoted to help with the forum moderation. What role did you exacly play when you were promoted to the position? Did you only read through post and deemed them worthy, or did you also do more stuff such as rule revamping or more quality upgrades to the forum experience?
Noivern: Long ago in the past, in November 2017...
Noivern: Rule revamping and "quality upgrades to the forum experience" weren't my thing. That was Impetus's job as forum team manager.
Noivern: I just went about SMWC like I usually did, except a checked threads and forums I wouldn't usually check.
Noivern: Only the most blatant of rules violations with clear responses were dealt with directly by me. Things like posting a thread in the wrong forum (move the thread to the proper forum and PM the user) or garbage threads (lock or trash, depending on context).
Noivern: All other issues were (and still are) brought up with staff and handled there as a group.
Noivern: That includes warnings and bans; those are very rarely handed out by one staff member acting on their own.
Erik: I see.
Erik: Well now, you also moderated two hacking departments for a short while too: graphics and hacks. For now, let's focus on the former. What got you into pizel art?
Erik: hell do you even draw
Noivern: God I wish I could draw. I can't draw to save my life. Everything graphical I've ever made that looks good is based on something else that I'd manipulated in some way that I probably can't reproduce now.
Erik:
Noivern: It's true lol. All of my custom tilesets that I've used in my hacks are based off of vanilla SMW tilesets. The overworld graphics I posted last C3 are based off of SMBDX. The tree graphics I posted this C3 are based off of NSMBU.
Noivern:
Erik:
Noivern: I joined the graphics team last C3 because the team was pretty small and there were a lot of graphics waiting to be moderated, and because Hinalyte asked me to.
Noivern: But it always felt really awkward. I could easily reject something for clear violations of the graphics submission guidelines, but when something was questionable from a quality standpoint, I just left it for another mod to determine.
Noivern: I ended up staying on the team because there weren't many people on it, but with Magi recently joining the team that was the time to get out.
Noivern: The graphics moderation team is much better served by all of its members being skilled with graphics.
Noivern: For the record, I did apply for graphics mod during the last round of staff applications, but that was merely to get my application seen by staff for future consideration. At the time, I fully didn't expect to be picked and had no real intention of actually being graphics mod.
Erik: I see then.

Erik: Guess that wraps up the gfx yea. Time to move on to hacks. I guess that is an area you feel more comfortable in, compared to graphics?
Noivern: yea
Erik: yea
Noivern: asm
Noivern: I mean, hacks.
Noivern: Hack mod is the far more comfortable position to be in, it was what I initially wanted when I submitted the graphics mod application.
Erik: Hacks.
Erik: Being a hack moderator and so, you have been exposed to the diversity of hacks our users submit. When it comes to factors such as hack length and its difficulty, what kind of hacks do you like to moderate?
Noivern: The sweet spot for me is an easy or normal difficulty hack, around 50-70 exits in length.
Noivern: That said there are very few of those, so it hardly ever happens. Most medium- and long-length hacks are listed as hard or very hard. I'll chug my way through a hard hack, but it's not as fun.
Noivern: Anybody who has seen my VLDCX judging videos knows how long it takes me to get through levels sometimes.
Noivern: What I actually tend to get are short hacks and whatever's labeled easy or normal. I'll take what I can get.
Noivern: That doesn't lend itself to a good accept/reject ratio though. Minor mistakes matter a lot more the shorter a hack gets, plus short hacks are often made as first projects made by new hackers who aren't yet good at level design, so shorter hacks tend to get rejected more often. The inverse is true as well; longer hacks tend to be pet projects and have more attention put into them, so there are fewer minor mistakes and those mistakes are not rejection reasons because they're so small compared to the hack as a whole. So my accept/reject ratio is pretty garbage.
Erik: hard hacks 4 life tbh
Erik: What were your duties once you went promoted to hack team leader?
Noivern: Basically the same, actually.
Noivern: I was already doing most of the things Katerpie was doing as hack leader when they stepped down, which is probably why they recommended me for the position.
Noivern: Moderating hacks and SRAM and keeping the featured hacks thread alive.
Noivern: The only things I didn't do that I do now are keeping an eye on hack testing forum and being aware of the kaizo people.
Noivern: Said kaizo people are pretty much handling the kaizo hacks themselves and are doing a great job at that.
Erik:

Erik: and finally let's get to the last in your ever lasting pile of titles
Erik: asm
Noivern: asm
Erik: i mean, pr
Erik: PR.
Noivern: yea
Erik: As a member of Public Relations, what of our many areas is your focus?
Noivern: God, PR.
Noivern: I just kinda stumbled into PR didn't I?
Noivern: My focus was just keeping PR alive, honestly. It just kinda died after The Incident.
Noivern: Chugging my way through Member of the Month and Staff Spotlight interviews, and poking people to make sure they were still doing things. Interviewing always made me nervous... I'm surprised I managed to do it.
Erik: Interviewing can be scary, yes. Though I've always found it fun.
Erik: cause i can shitpost
Noivern:
Noivern: Now that PR feels vaguely back to normal, I just make sure the social media stuff still happens.
Noivern: Teyla runs the Twitter account unimpeded, I poke FP about podcasts every now and then, and Dan or Pablo pokes me whenever a video is uploaded to Youtube.
Noivern: Impetus handles the site event stuff now, though I still bug PR sometimes about picking someone for Member of the Month or Staff Spotlight.
Erik: Needless to say the job you've done with PR has been appreciated. I feel the site has been getting on his tracks again after the incident. PR Team
Noivern: Also the feedback and warning/ban log threads exist. I update those.
Noivern: And thanks.

Erik: Being one of our administrators, and seeing how our current staff team is, do you feel optimistic for the future of the site?
Noivern: This is a good staff team.
Noivern: The site has bounced back up from our low end a few months ago, and I feel confident we'll get even better in the coming months.
Noivern: It felt in the past like there was a rift between the staff team and the general userbase, and hopefully our recent attempts to increase transparency from the staff team will improve that.
Erik: I agree.

Erik: Well I think that covers your unending role amount.
Erik: Do you have any active hacking projects?
Noivern: Active, no.
Noivern: I have an idea for a hack, but that idea requires knowledge of things I don't have knowledge of. I would need a team.
Noivern: So whether that happens or not is up in the air. I haven't asked anybody yet.
Erik: This is so sad. How about...............
Erik: Collab.
Noivern: Collab.
Noivern: I mean... what's collab
Noivern: Most of the people who contributed to Collab have moved on. I don't think Collab in it's previous state can exist anymore.
Erik:
Noivern:
Noivern: Don't worry, we'll always have the memes.
Erik:
Erik: Collab.
Noivern: yea
Erik: yea
Noivern: yea
Erik: yea

Erik: That should round up that. Now time to move on to the site for a bit.
Noivern: asm
Erik: asm
Erik: When did you find out about hacking and SMW Central?
Noivern: Sometime in 2008, as a sophomore in high school, I stumbled on a hack called Super Demo World: The Legend Continues.
Noivern: It was all downhill from there.
Noivern: I found the site pretty soon after that, I don't remember how. I lurked for a while, then finally registered, I think during SMWCP signups. Wow, SMWCP is old.
Erik: and bad
Noivern: Of course it is now, with modern design standards. We were proud of it then.
Noivern: My first SMW level was garbage, it was just a few screens of flat ground then several more screens of nothing that you had to fly through multiple times, to get a p-switch to access a silver p-switch to remove a wall of floating and stacked munchers to get to the goal.
Noivern: The first hack I was submitted to the site was rejected. It was actually a silly reason, because in one of the levels sprites could walk on slanted lava. That's something that probably wouldn't even get a batted eye today. In fact, I bet that's a gimmick in some JUMP level somewhere.
Noivern: The hack was designed poorly anyway, so it'd still be rejected, so oh well. But I was so proud of myself when I completed it.
Erik: Ok last topic, still in hand with the site...
Erik: Forum games!
Erik: What got you into forum games?
Noivern: I don't even know. As far back as I can remember, I was always participating in forum games.
Noivern: It was just a fun thing to do.
Noivern: And then I jokingly suggesting hosting a game based on Paper Mario when I had never played a Paper Mario game, but people actually wanted me to do it.
Noivern: And then I died.
Noivern: Mafia was cool too, we should bring that back.
Erik: effort lol
Erik: Needless to say you are one of the most involved users in Forum Games. I guess it should feel cool.

Erik: Anything you want to add before getting into more asm yea spam?
Noivern: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Noivern: That should be it.
Erik: dude, same....

Erik: alright then, into the random questions!
Erik: asm
Noivern:
Erik: yea
Noivern: yea
Erik: Who will win the World Cup?
Noivern: Who is playing in the World Cup?
Erik: me
Noivern: What's the World Cup?
Erik: yeah, I agree. though I'd rather see Croatia win.
Erik: Where is TRS?
Noivern: I posted the coordinates at least once in staff chat.
Noivern: I know you were there.
Erik: The userbase needs to know!
Noivern: next question
Erik:
Erik: When will you release the ASM?
Noivern:
Noivern: ASM?
Erik: ASM.
Noivern: no comment
Erik: you eluding me, buddy
Erik: When will you play Civ V with me?
Noivern: Do I even own Civ V?
Noivern: Hang on...
Noivern: Whoa, I do. And all the expansions.
Noivern: When did that happen...
Erik: im pretty sure you told me to buy it
Noivern:
Noivern: anyway
Noivern: at never
Erik:
Noivern:
Erik: Last question. What's the worst color? Only objectivelly right answers allowed.
Noivern: clear
Noivern: the lack of color
Noivern: all colors are objectively good
Noivern: even hot pink
Noivern: and whatever color you're using for your username color
Noivern:
Erik:
Erik: I'm being bullied. Cue the ending words.

Erik: Alright. Anything you want to add?
Noivern: I'm holding you hostage.
Noivern: If you want to see Erik ever again, send $5,000 dollars to my moving fund.
Noivern: This is not a drill.
Erik: help i'm tyiping this as im held hostage
Erik: this was a good interview
Erik: i sure wasn't forced to say that
Erik: goodbye halp
thats a big wall of text, dont know if i can read all of that #smrpg{gasp}


but congrats to noivern aka the objective only good staff on the website ! #smrpg{y}
ask me if i give a f*ck...
well good job trs
Very fun admin, and when I say fun, I mean the good kind of fun!

NITRO POWER
Twitter
That was a fun interview. I should be staff spotlight every month.
who's noivern

(Congrats! I'm proud of how far you've gotten!)
Windowless ride, feeling alive
Are you alive or just breathing?
Congrats Noivern!

Yeah, tbh, I miss older days when hacking wasn't as strict. :/ Though, there are a bunch of things I WON'T miss.
Please pardon the eye.
ok_hand

congrats!! You've done a ton to help improve this site, thanks for that!
Originally posted by interview
Erik: When will you play Civ V with me?

Don't do it it's a trap he already got me addicted and you'll be next
also wtf is pizel art you fool

Congrats! From what I've seen you're a very active staff member, and you seem like a nice guy in general, so you're probably one of the best staff out there. Stay with us till you die! jk
:LHB:

awesome work noivern!