[Discussion] Defining Captainship

Summary:

Discussing what a Captain's responsibilities are, how people see them, and what they should be allowed to do.

[Discussion] Defining Captainship

Yossipossi 21 Jul 2021 20:49

Hello everyone.

I'm porting discussion over from this thread. A number of people expressed their views on the Captainship role, and believed it was not defined enough, or too nebulous in terms of actual responsibilities. I have created this thread so that any staff member can discussion and comment on what they believe the Captain role is, what it should be defined as, what their responsibilities are, what their capabilities are, and what their general thoughts on it are.

No explicit policy is being proposed here; however, if enough people are in support of a consensus definition of the Captain role, it could be proposed to be written up as an 05command page or included in the Charter Rewrite.

Any staff can comment on this discussion thread. There is no time limit, as there is no explicit policy being discussed.

Re: [Discussion] Defining Captainship

ProcyonLotor 21 Jul 2021 20:54

Temporarily appearing from loooong break to say that this seems like an attempt to (attempt to) make policy for policy's sake.

Besides "leading and serving their team", which is a duty so obvious that enshrining it formally is a waste of time, there is no one size fits all description of Captaincy. Nor is there a need for one. All teams work differently, and all teams should be allowed to work differently to best suit their aims. I am unsure of the intended point of this discussion.

Re: [Discussion] Defining Captainship

Yossipossi 21 Jul 2021 21:09

As per my original thread, no policy is being proposed here, and even if everyone agreed on what a Captain role means it would be a big "maybe" if it'd get written up.

The intention of this discussion is to gauge and communicate what staff's general perceptions of a "Captain" and its general responsibilities are, since there has been much discussion (and confusion) on the topic in the past month.

Having a thread to communicate these ideas seems to be more conductive to discussion than simply talking about it in Staffchat or SCPD.

Re: [Discussion] Defining Captainship

ProcyonLotor 21 Jul 2021 21:57

A captain is responsible for:

• Ensuring their team is working towards the generally understood goals of the team, a summation of which can be found on the respective team hub on 05
• Providing commentary and opinions on matters and policy (whether extant or proposed) relating to their team
• Communicating, both with site administration as a group and other team captains, both in regular meetings and as needed
• Managing the membership of their team, whether this be additions or removals.

All the obvious stuff, and nothing really beyond that.

Re: [Discussion] Defining Captainship

gee0765 24 Jul 2021 11:31

team captains should have one role: doing the jobs of a team that absolutely have to be done by one and only one specific person to be doable at any reasonable pace, and even then should be asking the rest of their team for input. i don't think a stricter definition than this is necessary, as it would differ a lot for each team, and i don't think it needs to be formalised either.

that being said, i do think things need to change regarding a different part of captaincy. more specifically, how one is chosen. captains, unlike admins, moderators, and operational staff, are entirely unelected - this is assuming there's no vote happening within adcap or admin chat, which would make me look silly but wouldn't actually change what i'm about to say. i could write paragraphs about this but i'm just going to simplify it to one sentence instead: team captains should be voted on by all members of that team (edit: or even all staff as a whole - all staff get to vote for OS and they have a smaller influence than captains), and there should be a way to recall them, again using a vote by the entire team/staff body. this, along with hopefully upcoming promotion reforms, would ensure that the higher levels of staff are representative of the opinions of the greater staff body (and hopefully the community too)

Last edited on 25 Jul 2021 17:01 by gee0765 Show more

Re: [Discussion] Defining Captainship

cybersqyd 26 Jul 2021 19:25

It would be good to have a formal outlining of how to promote and demote a captain somewhere — I think gee's idea to have votes on both is probably a good idea. I… don't know how I feel about opening it to all staff — there's advantages (since captains have a lot of responsibility) but also disadvantages (if e.g. a team votes for a new captain but the rest of staff votes against it, it feels uh weird to not make them the captain).

It'd probably be worth formally defining what a captain is too in general — which Procy has done well already in this thread — but also probably what responsibilities every specific teams captain has beyond the generic ones, at least for the ease of bringing new Captains/Vice-Captains into the fold better.

I don't think "What a Captain Is" needs redefined here but I think we could do better about delegating downwards — a lot of tasks end up being done by captains purely because no-one else gets delegated them but this is a known problem already that folk are working on solutions to e.g. the vice captain proposal.

I have concerns that AdCap is becoming the default place for e.g. policy etc. to be discussed — I don't think general policy discussion in there is bad per se but it feels too often like these discussions could take place elsewhere and include more voices.

Re: [Discussion] Defining Captainship

DrBleep 28 Jul 2021 11:29

As captain of MAST I am responsible for the following:

• Ensuring each section understands the goals, and major initiatives they are driving forward.
• Advising and training members of the team, section heads, and Vice Captains in critical thinking about policy and long term impacts of policy.
  • A training program would likely decrease my bus factor here.
• Providing executive decisions on policy prior to it's movement for view by adcap/general staff body.
• Ensuring section heads have the necessary advice and support to move forward their projects.
• Advising Adcap on the progress and major projects the team is currently undertaking.
• Adding/removing team members based on activity/performance and behavior. Adding team members based on manpower requirements.
• Assessing whether new initiatives fall within the teams purview, or would be better handled by other staff teams.