This guide will help you understand the guidelines of writing your application. What follows will be a list of the required questions that you will find on the application form, followed by an idea of how you should answer them.
You can apply for moderator at any time, simply navigate to the main forum page, and select Moderator Application from the sidebar on the right hand side
Expect to wait a couple of days, or even a couple of weeks for your application to take hold. We get a lot of applications everyday and cannot review all of them within one day. It takes time for our admins to closely review each application, judge them based on the answers provided and the history of the person in question, only to then take time to post their responses.
Do not take this as an excuse to not keep in contact however, as applications may be quoted on to make changes, if these are not met, applications may be declined due to lack of them being updated.
You can re-apply after being declined, yes. We do not stop people from trying again, however it is best to wait for a period of at least 2-3 months, before applying again.
Anything that isn't defamatory, vulgar or racist works.
Due to privacy laws we cannot accept any applications from anyone under 13.
Simple Yes or No answer. Have you received a communication or server ban in the last two months prior to your application?
If yes, providing information is helpful for reviewing this.
Simple Yes or No answer. Have you posted an application within the last 3 months, which has been declined for any reason?
If yes, providing information is helpful for reviewing this.
Simple Yes or No answer. Having a microphone is not explicitly required.
This won't normally be evaluated either negatively or positively. Keep in mind, we only mean which country, you don't need to list your current address.
Your Discord ID can be found at the bottom left corner of the Discord window. Being in our Discord server is key to being able to keep in contact with our staff and receive updates and event details.
Simple Yes or No answer. Have you managed or maintained any servers before applying with us?
If yes, providing information is helpful for reviewing this.
Information provided by the Owner or Staff from these servers, will be used towards reviewing and ultimately affect your application.
For Example: If you had bad reputation or were forced to step down, or if you were exceptionally good and praised will have a negative or positive influence on your application. Likewise, lying about this will greatly negatively influence your application.
Which of our servers, do you play the most and which would you like to moderate? The servers you play on may influence your app a bit. If you have experience with many servers you would also be able to deal with rule breakers in a wider range of servers and occasions.
If you don't actually play a certain gamemode but know the Rules we have for that gamemode is something you should write in here.
Simply put the reason why you want to be a moderator, here you can put a lot of work, good example of things to mention are:
- When you decided to apply.
- Why you decided to apply.
- Why do you think you should become a moderator.
- Experiences, abilities and knowledge that might be of use (for you and Blackwonder in the future).
- Maybe even some of your history at Blackwonder.
Simple Yes or No answer. If yes, please provide their names.
VALID reasons to add someone:
- You asked the Staff Member if you could put their name and they said yes. (Best case scenario).
- You communicate with the Staff Member often and he/she can distinguish you from the multitude of other players on the servers. (Them knowing you as THAT PERSON who constantly gets reported or dealt with and has to constantly talk to you about it, does not count).
- You know the Staff Member in real life.
- You have known the Staff Member since before you joined Blackwonder and he/she still remembers you.
- You had some other contact with the Staff Member outside of Blackwonder related media, or even TF2/Steam and have built a relationship from there on.
INVALID reasons to add someone:
- You spoke with the Staff Member once on discord/the forums/steam/TF2.
- You've seen the Staff Member once or multiple times in a server.
- The "Staff Member" is not a Member of Staff and is in fact just a donator, with fancy colours in their name.
- The "Staff Member" is not a Member of Staff and just a talkative regular.
- The Staff Member cannot distinguish you from "Random A" and "Random B".
Placing a the name of a person that isn't a Staff Member, will make us consider that you haven't researched enough before applying and it will negatively affect your application.
Placing the name of a Staff Member who later says that they do not know you, or you did not ask for their permission to add their name will also negatively affect your application.
Having some or many Staff Members who recognize you is good, seeing that you took the time to build connections with the Staff Members before applying.
Knowing Staff Does Not automatically mean you will be accepted!
Depending on the timezone your app will be seen more positively as we don't have Staff online around the clock.
Blackwonder has over 200 servers and many different gamemodes played on them.
Some notable gamemodes worth mentioning are:
- Jailbreak
- Trade
- VSH
- 2Fort
- Times X servers (10x, 20x, etc)
- Uber Upgrades
- Zombie Fortress
- MvM
These servers have different ways to play and some have a different set of rules, try to put how you would deal with certain cases of someone breaking a certain rule, and how you would deal with it if the person has broken a rule before, or if it is their first time, second time... nth time breaking it. Make sure you elaborate a lot on the rule set of the servers you actively play, if you can also on servers you don't play much but have an idea how to deal in certain cases, if you aren't sure that it is too long or too short just say it.
Different things are dealt with different commands, think about it and think if something should be used with command X or command Y and how long a person should suffer under the restriction imposed by that command.
Some examples of commands are:
- Mute: User cannot use Voice Chat (Cannot join blue on Jailbreak servers)
- Gag: User cannot use Written Chat
- Silence: User is both Muted and Gagged
- Sprayban: User cannot place sprays
- Teamban: User cannot join blue (Jailbreak Only)
- Kick: User is forced to leave the server (Is able to rejoin)
- Slay (Slay/Smite/Explode): User is killed.
- Ban: User is forced to leave the server and cannot rejoin ANY Blackwonder server
Some punishments last for a certain time defined by you based on am incrementing punishment ladder, while others are permanent.
Think of this part as an extension of "Why do you want to become a moderator?". Add things here that you considered that you considered not really connected to "why you want" but rather "why you should become a moderator". Here you can type anything, literally anything.
Some examples of this you can write here are:
- Gaming experience.
- Your experiences as staff on other games (If you have any).
- Your experiences as a donator (If you have any).
- Examples of your abilities in making maps, coding, etc...
- Anything else, provided that it is related to the application and not some experience you had in school or work, as this holds little to no value in this situation.
Can you speak (And write) in any other languages other than English? Being able to only say Hello and Goodbye would not count.
A clean past is really valuable when applying for Moderator, therefore some things will be really bad for your application, such as:
- You having a significant amount of punishments.
- You having lost your donator due to abusing it.
- Bad experience on other communities; such as being banned.
- Racism, non constructive criticism, being rude.
- Bad Grammar, lack of vocabulary.
- Being a known scammer.
- Being part of a known scammer group/hacking group, etc...
- If you had racist/defamatory previous names.
- If you have/had pornographic sprays, profile pictures, etc...
- Having bad blood/animosity with Staff Members.
Before you apply for moderator you should also be aware that we want to have some knowledge of who you are, therefore try to have some contact with other Staff Members, be active on our Discord and on the Forums. Don't make an application as soon as you can, but wait a while, communicate more, make constructive posts/threads, make some reports so we know that you are active on the forums and are actively trying to improve the servers when online.
If you want to become a moderator, but made a mistake a while ago, or if you have bad reputation, try to improve your reputation slowly and try to make people view you positively before applying.
Should you of have a previous application declined, be sure to read the reasons why it was declined. Be sure to improve or resolve these issues before you apply.
If it was due to bad behaviour, change yourself and act better. Make sure that the Staff Members know that you aren't the "Old You".
If it was due to poor grammar, use a better auto-corrector. Work a bit on your grammar and make some posts on the forums.
Just because your application was declined, does not mean that you cannot join the Blackwonder Staff Team. Once you have improved and you have shown us that you are a better you, there will be no reason left for us to say no.
A Final Good Luck to you, if you are applying, be sure to of read all of this guide and take note of the key points. Remember, you can always check previously accepted applications and note what they did good and what they needed to improve. DO NOT just copy paste someone's application. This Will result in an Immediate Decline of your application.