• Welcome to MCME!

    Minecraft Middle Earth is a Minecraft community that recreates the world described by JRR Tolkien and his writings. Everyone can participate in organized events in which we collaborate to create major landmarks, terrain, caves, castles, towns, farms and more.

    To get started, visit The New Player Guide

    Joining the server

    Joining the server can be done straight away, but you will have to pass the New Player Quiz. Use the The New Player Guide to get acquainted with our community.

    IP: build.mcmiddleearth.com

Two New Ranks Coming to MCME!

~:~ ~:~ ~:~ ~:~ Assistant and Lead Builder Rank ~:~ ~:~ ~:~ ~:~​

Hello all, **MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT** , we have two NEW RANKS coming to MCME!!!

Introduction:
Okay before we get into descriptions, who gets the ranks and etc...
This idea was brought into the Valar discussions and passed. Once passed it was talked, debated and had an entire meeting discussion for three hours by staff. It then went back to Valar to be finalized and presented to you. It was leaked in the process and people questioned the representation they get, but we (Valar) assure you: these roles are only to represent non-staff ranks more and connect the community even tighter.

These ranks have the duty of supporting to ensure efficient operation of the MCME Community and to support Admin and Staff through a variety of tasks related to organization and communication. These ranks will be part of the Staff Team and will be based on roles non-fundamental to the project and enforcement operations on the server.

The reason for making new Roles was fairly undisputed. However the reason primarily that displaying these roles through new Ranks than perhaps Badges was due to that these Roles are the primary role to which the bestowed player will be carrying out and not their previous or other role to the server. The Valar also felt that these players should be recognized for their contributions in and out of game. The decision for having two ranks instead of just releasing one, is that the roles could easily be categorized into two but being able to put them under one banner was confusing.

The Bigger Picture:
The bigger picture in making these roles a reality is MCME has got to the point where it “can” be more than just about the fundamentals: (projects and enforcement) with the occasional events. With things new things coming along soon, MCME has to decide whether or not to take a more business structure: which comes with more work, management but also with the benefits of more potential and expansion.

Assistant Rank:
A division in the community which focuses on shaping the operations in the community more efficient in the fields of communication and organization. The Assistant Rank is rank given to those within the Staff Team who's roles are to aid the Valar or are not part of the fundamentals (Project Leading and Enforcement). The candidates are chosen by the Valar and the roles within the rank are dependent on the time and necessity of the role.

Currently we will have 4 different assistant roles. They will all be shown in-game as Assistant. However, will have different perms on discord and forums.

Operations Assistant
The Operations Assistant role will be managing the Valar files, as well as the basic structure of the other rank files. This Assistant will be responsible for updating the promotions and demotions records and the MCME timeline. This Assistant will also be responsible for the upcoming MCME Calendar in forums and scheduling, organizing, recording the Staff meetings, Valar meetings, and Public meetings. This Assistant is also responsible for starting-off server-wide/community events and allocating a leader to them. This Assistant will also be working with the Media Assistant to look for new server partnerships and guest YouTubers, which would benefit the server.

Our canadite for this role: @lizzy_

Builder Assistant
The Builder Assistant is the personal assistant and aid to the Head Builder. The roles of this Assistant will vary depending on what the Head Builder needs at that time. This Assistant will not be influencing decisions on projects, promotions and etc, but purely helping in organization and communication. A few main tasks which the Assistant will be responsible for are: scheduling, planning Designer meetings, managing results and publishing to the public the project polls, updating documents like server wide status, the project supervision document with the results from the polls, updating the designer information lists: emails, who does what project and etc. This Assistant is also responsible for the organizing and updating the building rank folders: artist, foreman, and designer.

Our candidiae for this role: @superlolster

Guide Assistant
The Guide Assistant is an aid to the Head Guide, who is experienced and can fill in temporarily for the Head Guide when needed. This connects the guides to the rest of staff community even more as currently there is only one link and that is through Valar: all other guides are non-staff. This Assistant is responsible for maintaining the ever extensive Guidebook files, organizing and planning guide meetings, organizing guide files as a whole and representing the Guides in server wide events. This provides fewer distractions to the Head Guide and allows the Head Guide to focus on the rank and make new programs and ideas to benefit not only the guides but the entire community.

Our candidate for this role: @Arkengard

Media Assistant
The Media Assistant is the center of all MCME Media. This Assistant is in charge of a properly established Media Team and will lead this team to manage and update MCME media outlets on a regular basis. This Assistant will also be in-charge of the promotion and server partner program. The Assistant will be working closely with the Head Builder to produce a season of building tutorial videos and will work to have sneak-peaks for beginning projects and to have showcases of finished areas. Also will organize regular cinematics, time-lapses, and other media types for our server.

Our candidate for this role: @TotiGonzales


Lead Builder Rank:
A division in the community which focuses on shaping the operations in the building ranks (artist, foreman, and designer) more efficient in the fields of communication and organization. The Lead Builder Rank is rank given to those within the Staff Team who's roles are to aid the Head Builder. The candidates are chosen by the Head Builder. As well as doing their average building roles, they will also take on a more senior leading role, which will manage along with the Head Builder all three ranks respectively.

We will have 3 different Lead Builder roles. They will all be shown in-game as Lead Builder. However, the corresponding role will focus on that building rank more than the others and each Lead Builder will have some different individual responsibilities.

Artisan Lead Builder
The Artisan Lead Builder is the first member of the Lead Builder Team. As part of this team, they will work together with the other two Lead Builders and have independent responsibilities.
The duties which the whole Build Leadership Team has but the Artisan Lead Builder is responsible for pushing forward are: to manage the builder ranks as a whole: especially Artist. They will respond to applications: especially artist, alert the Head Builder for people to move to watchlist, hand-out artist challenges by working with Designers and finding them. Then once the applicant is ready they will alert the Head Builder to come and do a final evaluation and either promote them or determine they are not read yet. They will also try to improve the different build rank roles: especially of Artist and resolve conflicts within the roles.
The personal duties the Artisan Lead Builder will have is being in-charge of the Realism Guide Program, and ever developing it. Also to organize, plan Artist Meetings and Artist Workshops.

Our candidate for this role: @Lindolas

Foreman Lead Builder
The Foreman Lead Builder is the second member of the Lead Builder Team. As part of this team, they will work together with the other two Lead Builders and have independent responsibilities.
The duties which the whole Build Leadership Team has but the Foreman Lead Builder is responsible for pushing forward are: to manage the builder ranks as a whole: especially Foreman. They will respond to applications: especially foreman, alert the Head Builder for people to move to the Foreman Trial Phase, give the Foreman Applicant an experienced Foreman to work with. Then once the applicant is ready they will alert the Head Builder to come and do a final evaluation and either promote them or determine they are not read yet. They will also try to improve the different build rank roles: especially of Foreman and resolve conflicts within the roles.
The personal duties the Foreman Lead Builder will have is being back-up for the Theme builds, as currently, Ivan cannot do all of them. Also to organize, plan big jobs and work closely with whoever will be in-charge of (one of the three main projects going on in the server, but more orientated for lots of jobs) the job project. Also to work with the Operations Assistant when big events are coming to make sure there are enough jobs running and to try to schedule jobs in advance on the coming MCME calendar. Also responsible for when there is a building event on another server (like builder’s refuge) to organize an official team to go there and represent MCME and work with the Media Assistant to have people to record it.

Our candidate for this role: @QuantaCube

Designer Lead Builder
The Designer Lead Builder is the third and last member of the Lead Builder Team. As part of this team, they will work together with the other two Lead Builders and have independent responsibilities. However, even though pretty much equal in say, he will be responsible for the productivity of the team and making sure they have set tasks.
The duties which the whole Build Leadership Team has but the Designer Lead Builder is responsible for pushing forward are: to manage the builder ranks as a whole: especially Designer and Building Badges. They will respond to applications: especially Designer and Building Badges, spark new discussions in staff considerations thread on applicants for these. Once the applicant is ready for the building badge they will alert the Head Builder to come and do a final evaluation and either promote them or determine they are not read yet. They will also try to improve the different build rank roles: especially of Designer and resolve conflicts within the roles.
The personal duties the Designer Lead Builder will have is, just as the Guide Assistant represents guides in server-wide events, the Designer Lead Builder represents the building portion, so they will work closely with the Operations Assistant to ensure to have big building events when there are community-wide events. Also to organize, plan Contests and Build days and alert the Operations Assistant to record them on the coming MCME calendar. To organize and plan Designer Meetings on projects and to make sure Designers in particular but all building ranks post on the forums updates in build projects.

Our candidate for this role: @Thijs1801

Not Done Just Yet:
Another change you might have noticed is a name change from Head Designer to Head Builder, as the Valar felt it represented the role better.

P.S:
As like the Head Developer Rank, the in-game and technical aspect will come out soon.
 
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I guess the rank count kind of goes up and down depending on the time and where the community is at. I know it might seem a bit hypocritical to introduce new ranks after (I guess 3-4 years) we had a rank purge and reduced it significantly. So I guess its possible that something like that can happen @Indorilian , but let's see. We were going to put these under one banner, however the roles seemed a bit too different and it split apart too nicely when categorizing.
 
Lead Builders as said in the post do not have anything to do with the build projects, they are mainly to help lead the build ranks, improving them and other things related purely to the build ranks.
 
I know I haven't been active at all in the past month, but I'd like to say my opinion on this.


I think that these seven new ranks are completely pointless. The "assistants" basically just manage docs and organize events, which as far as I know, was and still is something that guides do. The "Lead Builders" are basically those who manage build ranks applications and now do stuff that was previously done by designers or by the head designer.


Operations Assistant
This rank is basically a whole bunch of guide stuff put together. And the person that manages this stuff is an artist. Also, I don’t think we need a calendar, we don’t have a whole bunch of events, but maybe with two new dedicated ranks to organize them we’ll have.


Builder Assistant
This rank is made appositely for superlolster. It’s just a compilation of the things she does, even without this rank. Again I don’t see the purpose of this, we don’t need a rank to specify every single little thing that somebody does.


Guide Assistant
Another way to say Head Guide 2.


Media Assistant
The only kind of useful rank of these, just because we don’t have a ‘Head Media Manager’ Rank yet.


Artisan Lead Builder
I still don’t understand why ‘artisan’ and not ‘artist’ but I guess it’s cooler. Anyway, this is ‘Head Artist’, a role that is not needed in my opinion. If you want more people to manage applications, have more head designers, don’t make 3 new ranks.


Artisan Lead Builder
‘Head foreman’. Again make more head builders.


Artisan Lead Builder
‘Head designer’. Yeah, It couldn’t be more confusing. Manages the remaining build-related applications and organizes building events (another thing ehich the head designer used to do).




I don’t know if you have noticed, but the assistant roles just give perms ‘officially’ to people that already had them and the lead builder roles just take away duties from the head designer to give them to others. And this is not necessarily a bad thing, but there is no need for it. The ‘assistants’ did what they do now even before ‘assistants’ were a thing.

Arkengerd already had the ‘Guide leadership’ rank on discord. Superlolster already was BWOT’s assistant. Lizzy was already doing the stuff she’ll do now. And this just makes the already confusing rank system more complicated. When I joined the server we ‘just’ had: Oathbreaker 1 and 2, Adventurer, Commoner, Guide, Artist, Foreman, Designer, Enforcer, Head Designer, Head Guide, Head Enforcer and Eru Iluvatar. Now we have all of them + 5 badges + 4 assistants + 3 lead builders + head developer. Now let’s look at discord ranks. Arkengard, whose only role was guide at the beginning of the year, now has the Guide, Assistant, Guide Leadership, Staff and Times Editor roles. BWOT, who only had the ‘Head Designer’ role when he was promoted now is Head Builder, Valar/Admin (Because one isn’t enough) Designer Staff, Donor, Times Editor and Texturer. If we continue like this we’ll have a whole bunch of roles like ‘events organisation’, ‘application manager’, ‘media team’, ‘photographer’, ‘calendar manager’, ‘meeting organisation’, ‘promotion program leader’, ‘instructor program leader’, and so on.


BWOT said:
The Assistant Rank is rank given to those within the Staff Team
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This is what makes the least sense out of all that is written here. All of these people except one were not within the staff team before receiving the rank. They were promoted to staff for no reason other than to receive this rank. If previously the only way to be staff and have these duties (quoting designer manual)


was to apply for a staff rank, but now you can just become a server representative, gain access to staff forums and all other staff perms just because you help another staff member.
 
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I agree with what @reycraft says in his long post, yet I mostly have a few questions concerning this.
@BWOT how will these ranks be implemented, will they be only outside of the server, like developer is, or will they also be on the server?
Will there come more ranks after this, or are we going to say stop as to avoid what happened before, and appears to happen again to many?
Why is the need for foreman lead builder so important, the foremen is and will be a small rank that does not need leadership, if anything a designer can take charge of them. (which I think will be still overkill)
What tasks will the Head builder have when the Lead builders and assistants ranks are implemented?
Lastly, why make these ranks official ranks staff, as the assistants and lead builders will only document and lead (last thing that should be done by designers)?
 
False point number 1: Guides do not manage docs, I mainly did before Liz came back
False point number 2: Rank applications are not done by designers, designers focus on projects
False point number 3: Its not seven new ranks, just seven roles (yes they were somewhat around before but were not official which hindered because of lack of permissions, organizations and etc
False point number 4: This person (Liz) who does this stuff is also an artist yes, but she was previously enforcer, foreman and etc, etc
False point number 5: We plan on having a lot more events so it will be more useful, just like almost everything it was discussed and passed through staff
False point number 6: re-read the description for operation assistant role and you can see it's not "a whole bunch of guide stuff put together", when did guides ever record staff-meetings, do you know who does that now... because rn its a scramble to always find someone who can do it, so this bring consistency
False point number 7: Its a role not a rank for the Builder Assistant, only one rank , I gave you those extra description of the roles so you saw what each person would be doing, why would we give an artist staff perms and the rest without officially making her staff? Then the system just looks corrupted
False point number 8: You are totally right that the guide assistant is for more connection between guide and staff which is a big part of Head Guide, however Head Guide is an admin, higher than designer and enforcer. we don't just create valar positions when we think there should be more input and management from or to a rank, also this role has a number of things the head guide had to spread his time on and he had to pick and choose what to focus on even though his main aim is to manage guides, not events
False point number 9: Guides are not an event managing rank, yes they sometimes help out but usually it was always a non-guide rank who lead these events: Finrod, etc etc
False point number 10: We had an artist committee before managing your applications, it wasn't all just me, eriol left the artist committee when becoming head developer and after long discussions in staff team we wanted something more established
False point number 11: Head Builder manages all building and projects, it was only later with Finrod taking on so much that he had to manage all applications etc etc
False point number 12: its not 3 new ranks, only one, three new roles, again we were just explaining what each one of them would do in focusing more on each part
False point number 13: Remeber to change the title Artisan, Foreman, Designer when copying and pasting , we don't want any more Valar, we don't mind more staff
False point number 14: Its called Designer Lead Builder because it just focuses on designer, again badges are new, takes time to respond and manage all those applications, if you have a problem and think I am slacking off I will show you how many hours I put in to make things run around here, it has always been a problem that Head Designers have had too much work, ask Credoo, Finrod. It's only till now that the work is always manageable and I don't cringe when I see the 30+ messages on discord I get every morning when I wake up.
False point number 15: I will still approve every application, however now I am not the only official person replying to them
False point number 16: The reason for so many discord roles is to easily communicate with people, when we had the massive converge of all sister discords to the main we needed extra chats and stuff to manage things like the Times, guides and etc. I sometimes wonder if the rest of you realize the amount of work there is behind the scenes.
False point number 17: You have staff rank all wrong, and this has been a misconception which has been slowly getting worse and worse, staff applications mean nothing more than, look at me I am interested, you are only discussed in becoming staff if some other staff member else recommends you. If I feel some artist is worthy of designer, they don't need to apply, I could tell staff hey what about this guy, wanna offer it to him and if he says yes, promote him on the spot. They are not just helping other staff members (exception to super) they all lead their own things as well. The reason super is an exception was due to that Head Builder is the most demanding role of all Valar, so yes I do need help and it is necessary that she has access to staff forums, docs, chat and etc.

@NicTheFifth why does Foreman have to remain small? Whats the point of having people visit if you never want to grow, right now yes there are jobs, but at completely random times, sometimes the reason for no jobs is that I have nothing to do. So there is an obvious gap which needs filling. Oh so just lay it on a designer to lead the foreman, noo. I pick the best person for the job, not the choice which involves the least change, our server evolves constantly. Read my rank description Nic and you will see what I have to do, also btw I also lead the Times and I'm currently the resource pack for Mordor which I have also planned and I'm going to lead. If you still don't get what I do from my description, I lead all projects and building on the server, and anything that has to do with building on MCME is my field. Which is a lot as we are a 'building server" and we play a game which is all about building. As said in the post these ranks will be on the server.
 
How did all the staff and valar come to the conclusion that this is a good idea?
I don't think any of the non-staff who had no part in the decision likes the idea, so what other points were brought up to convince the other staff. Rn it just looks like a way to favor the fondest pets of some powerful ppl on the server. Either way if the idea is good in the long run or not, it's putting division and envy in the server.
 
@BWOT Firstly, I don't say that the foreman rank should remain small, rather that it will always stay a niche, as not all builders have leadership qualities, and I don't see the rank applications happen as often as artist or guide, which is why I made that comment. Also I think that maybe you should add a motivation, as I do not feel that quanta is an appropriate person for that rank, though that might just be me.
Secondly, there is no doc or post(atleast none that I can find) that says what a Head builder does, that is why I asked that question, so if you could link, or answer the question in detail that would be great.
Thirdly I think that implementing these ranks on the server will only cause confusion, as the ranks have ABSOLUTELY nothing to contribute in game, they only do things outside the server. (maybe the heads are an exception, but the Assistants 100% are not)
Lastly, could you maybe answer the questions which you had not answered in the your reply, the questions are below.
NicTheFifth said:
Will there come more ranks after this, or are we going to say stop as to avoid what happened before, and appears to happen again to many?
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NicTheFifth said:
Lastly, why make these ranks official ranks staff, as the assistants and lead builders will only document and lead (last thing that should be done by designers)?
Click to expand...

P.S. Saying false point comes across not professional, rather say that there are a few misconceptions, though that might just be me.
 
reycraft said:
This rank is made appositely for superlolster. It’s just a compilation of the things she does, even without this rank. Again I don’t see the purpose of this, we don’t need a rank to specify every single little thing that somebody does.
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ye its a compilation of the things I do, I did it before the rank was a thing so now its official, I see no problem with it ?

Also, was wondering why AC need to chime in here as it doesn't affect their server in any way whatsoever, but glad to see you guys still care about MCME
 
Beathaven said:
These new ranks are just an extension of the system where players work for a new colour to brag about.
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I agree, this is true even more so for these ranks than it is for the other ranks. For all the other ranks, you can apply for once you feel ready for it and working up for that is one of the main motivations of most ppl on the server. These new ranks appear not to be something you can work up to, but the candidates have been chosen by staff already.
 
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