Hi! It's taken me a long time to get to the point where I'm confident enough in myself to write something like this, so here goes.
I've been an active part of the community for a while, over the past year I've taken it to myself to improve my activeness within the community. I've spent most of my good days in chat, socializing, I think everyone in there knows me pretty well (and pretty personally, too). I've helped contain and moderate drama as a silver star, I've participated in most modes of moderation in the chat. I am sociable and frequent the chat often, and am a source of help for new users or users who have questions they need answered.
I'm known for being one of the most motivated and hard-working mappers out there right now, I've released quite a few maps within the past year I think are some of my best. I'm currently working on quite a few alphas, dedicating close to a full-time job's worth of work on them. Some of my projects include Alloy, Hella, and the nearly 3-year project Sunshine, which has become a popular competitive map and a half-official map with the Halloween reskin Sinshine. I take feedback well and I communicate efficiently. I deliver my opinions to my peers while also treating every bit of incoming feedback as valid, no matter how it's been worded.
I'm very friendly and I love working with people. I've collaborated in projects with many people, including iiboharz, and am currently planning potential collaborations with Crash and others. I love working with people I know and I have a lot of interest working alongside and with Staff.
My activity here includes running imps, participating in community events like chat-held Drawful and CAH, and helping out with imps when I am not running. I am a common go-to person if people need announces or map lists made for imps, and I am available for the majority of my day for duties and anything I may need to do. I've currently run one gameday, and plan to run many more; with staff permissions, it will make that much easier.
Speaking of staff permissions, some of the things I would be able to do better with them would include:
- Being able to set crits on demand during VIP-run imps and my own tests, whenever needed
- Moderating the chat when no other admins are active or around (as has occasionally happened in the past); as well as moderating the server when imps are running
- Writing and editing official posts and announcements, as I'm good at making things bridge the “knowledge gap” between writers and readers – in other words, I'm concise and I write in a way people can easily understand
I'm really motivated to help and improve positivity and helpfulness in the community. I'd love to help host and organize community events.
Lastly, and most importantly, I have a proposal for a sort of gameday-like event that would help shorten the distance between TF2M and competitive. I've been in attendance for many competitive map testing groups before, and know what works and what doesn't work – and I'd love to be able to set up something directly alongside other mappers and testers.
What I have in mind is a sort of biweekly event – twice a month, one 6v6 test and one Highlander (9v9) test. I would open a submission thread, formatted like a gameday but slightly differently – aimed towards mapmakers who'd like to get their maps tested in an organized environment but don't have the resources or dedication at hand to directly approach the competitive community themselves. With admin privileges, I'd be able to implement competitive configs on our TF2M servers (or, I would at least be able to inform the people in charge of the servers how to set those up), and execute them whenever a competitive test is called for. I'd be able to disable configs back to normal after the tests finish.
Finally, I'd be able to be a sort of community ambassador for us to the competitive communities – specifically, teamfortress.tv. I'm already a well-known mapper there, for creation of Sunshine and Reckoner, and I'd cross-post announcements about our tests to tf.tv once they've ran here for a while and are confirmed to work. We might even be able to get and make use of a mumble server again!
Anyways... that's about it. I love this community and really want to help make it even better – while I do have impediments in my life that might prevent me from doing as much as I want to (unsupportive parents, clinical depression and anxiety), I'm still committed towards helping.
Sorry for this being so long.
Thank you,
Phi