Site Staff Revamp/ Restructuring

[Tetsujin]

Ultimately, a staff review is probably not a bad idea if we want to be more productive. Or rather, have the productive people keep their staff status.

Nothing speaks against posting occasional contributions from non-staff people if they have something worthwhile to add after all.

 

[Airling]

Sorry if I'm being useless here, but most of brainstoming is apparently.

Your idea for contributor streamlining makes a lot of sense to me Lex. I'd wondered about it shortly before you'd mentioned it. The quarterly review sounds reasonable to me for determining who will be officially labelled as site contributor. But, as I recall you saying somewhere, this needn't discourage those who just have an article to add every so often. This is where having set editors would become useful, because anyone with an idea (or draft) for an article could approach the appropriate editor. Said editor could than check and approve the article and, if they see fit, publish it. Since "guest contributors" like these won't necessarily have WP access (not sure how that works, so I'm assuming), articles could be tagged with the authors name.

So if, for example, I had an idea for an article focusing on the variation in the size of Tifa's boobs throughout the compilation, and Shademp was the compilation editor, I would send him my article, he could check it, publish it and tag it "Airling" and perhaps "Guest Article". Although I seriously hope he would not publish that.

 

[Flintlock]

No, I'm not shunning contributions from anyone. The point of all this is that having staff who aren't writing anything is messy and pointless. If we want to talk about a structure where we keep every author on board even when they're not writing for prolonged periods then that's fine since that's what we already do, but I thought we were trying to move away from that. I have repeatedly said that anyone with article ideas or who wants to write is welcome to join, so if I've given off the opposite impression then I didn't mean to.

I do want to move on from that. I was just genuinely wondering what we'll do to allow "guest" contributions to continue.

What am I supposed to think when I've mentioned this quarterly review thing about 20 times and no one has said anything for or against it? Are people for or against the idea? How does a situation like Force's stand with such a thing in place? Do you see my point?

I have said, at least implicitly, that I think the review is a good idea as long as the minimum requirements are very light, at least to begin with.

I think I may have misunderstood your initial name proposal, because having specific editors is absolutely fine and make sense, what doesn't make sense to me is marginalising authors. It just feels a bit messy.

I don't want to marginalise authors either. Authors should work under editors but they should still get their own recognition.

Also no, removing WP permissions does not edit your ability to do that. I've just done a search on a previous author and their page is appearing fine.

Good good

 

[Shademp]

So if, for example, I had an idea for an article focusing on the variation in the size of Tifa's boobs throughout the compilation, and Shademp was the compilation editor, I would send him my article, he could check it, publish it and tag it "Airling" and perhaps "Guest Article". Although I seriously hope he would not publish that.

This article idea has honestly crossed my mind before and I think, if written in the right way, it could become quite excellent.

People would still make fun of it though and it would be a terrible introductory article for first-visitors to find.

I have said, at least implicitly, that I think the review is a good idea as long as the minimum requirements are very light, at least to begin with.

^what he said

 

[Lex]

Then I suppose the best way to move forward with this is to discuss each staff member individually and decide what they'd like to take on/ what title they should have. And if there's any contention for the same position we can put it to a vote.

When you talk about individual recognition for authors Flint, what do you mean exactly?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

FWIW, I would enjoy being a fan works editor and I think I might be quite good at it, in the sense that I am in contact with most of the FFVII fanfic writers and also with many of the artists, or I know who they are; I mean my knowledge of fan works is pretty comprehensive, though I know that same is true of many of the people on these boards. I'm constantly on the lookout for new writers/artists as well.

I'm probably a little less up to speed on things like fan-made games or speed runs, but I'd only need to be pointed in the right direction.

I feel this is an area of expertise for me in which I might actually be of use to the community. I am also pretty good at writing and editing.

My one problem is that my work really fluctuates, but at least my all-consumingly busy times and my relatively free times follow a predictable schedule.

If anyone else is interested, I'd be very happy to jobshare this post.

 

[Airling]

@Lex, I think he means that we should be careful of the authors becoming stuck falling under the editor's umbrella, and that they should each have their own place as an individual too.

Also, I vote Lic for Fan Works Editor!

 

[Lex]

I'm on board with Lic being on board.

 

[Flintlock]

Lex: Take this page, for example, which I linked to earlier. I would like it if there was a small section at the top that described the author, said a little about their background, and linked to their forum profile. There could be a picture, either a real one or their avatar. Something like this. That would help our contributors take ownership of their work and feel like they are being recognised for it.

My hope is that authors who are not permanent members of the team can still have their own "author pages" that link to all the articles they've written. The easiest way to do that is if they have their own WP logins. Actually, that should be pretty straightforward; we just have to change their user roles from Subscriber to Author when they want to post, and then back to Subscriber afterwards. As you said, they will still have a page of their own after we do that.

Lic: I think it would be great having you as our Fan Works Editor. I could always take the gaming achievement type stuff under my wings - I think I pay more attention to it than most people here - but then I'd like someone else to take social media off my hands. I think we have a couple of volunteers for that already, so it should work

Avec: I think you'd make a great editor (I suppose the proper newspaper-esque term would be "sub-editor", considering you'd be looking at how articles are presented rather than what they contain). Would you also be prepared to read and moderate comments? I'll take on some of the responsibility for that as Community Manager but it would be good to have another person catching spam links etc.

[Edit: actually, what are we going to do with WP comments? We discussed switching them off for new articles a while ago, while leaving the old ones intact, but I don't remember what the outcome of the discussion was. I wouldn't be against disabling them to drive more people to the forums.]

I feel like we've got a team coming together, finally. Exciting times!

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I enjoy having the ability to post something to the front page should something in particular come to my attention. But as I don't have anything like the Endgame series on the docket and if this is a use-it-or-lose it kind of thing, I won't be offended.

I had planned to announce this in the podcast this morning, but since that didn't come to fruition, I may as well quote Force and add "me too."

I've had a good run as a contribuor here and am proud of what I've accomplished, but -- outside of helping Shademp with some stuff here and there, as I've been doing more of here lately -- I'm done.

I have no plans to write more articles, nor do I have any ideas for more. I'm also not one for suggesting we hang on to site statuses for sentimental reasons or in recognition of past work, and I personally applaud Lex for taking this hardline stance on moving things forward.

If TLS as a community wants the site to develop into a more productive and "professional" (all I mean by this is "more consistently updated and with less of a Maytag repairman kind of approach -- e.g. 'I'll get around to it'") resource, it's going to take that kind of leadership.

Obviously, it's going to take a whole team, but it needs that unifying drive and someone to hold the rest of the team accountable to one another.

As for me, well, I'm almost 30. If you know anything about JRPGs, you know that makes me an over-the-hill grizzled washout eager to pass the torch to the next generation. I've got shit like being an active member of my church, a volunteer firefighter and generally being more active in my community that I'm more concerned with these days. On top of the other old people stuff.

So, yeah, I'm going to remain an active forum member. TLS is my online home. I'm just ready to fade into the background in other respects.

 

[Mage]

I approve of the suggestions made thus far and I'm enjoying reading the enthusiasm coming through here. I reckon Lic would be right on staff. I like the idea of contributors having a profile link too, that's a great idea for linking the frontpage to the forums.

 

[Lex]

I would thank your post Tres but I don't support you leaving

I don't want to push for anything that anyone isn't on board with, but I do think we need to be more organised and I'm glad to see it happening in this thread.

New Proposal (which I think is closer to what Flint is suggesting): People keep their wordpress permissions as long as their status is accurately reflected in their forum title - this opens up the floor for people to keep their permissions who are wanting to contribute in the future (such as Force) but can't commit to writing consistently. However, only those who consistently contribute (a la the quarterly review) will retain their user title on the forum. Wordpress permissions can stay as long as the member is trusted.

What do people think about that?

 

[Mage]

Seems like a valid compromise of the options IMO. Also makes more sense if there's going to be greater association of the forum and frontpage.

 

[Fangu]

[Edit: actually, what are we going to do with WP comments? We discussed switching them off for new articles a while ago, while leaving the old ones intact, but I don't remember what the outcome of the discussion was. I wouldn't be against disabling them to drive more people to the forums.]

Full forum thread integration isn't an option (because vB), but I did put forward the suggestion of using one of WP's extra fields (iirc there are a couple) for putting in a threadID into a field in the article edit mode, so that the latest 5 posts from that forum thread will be output (with a "read more here" link or some such.) The process kind of halted because I needed to figure out how to easily handle vB-code. Like, if the first sentence of a post is a quite, or an image, or a smiley, how to handle it so it outputs correctly? Doing this manually would be pain, so I was going to look around for a WP vB-reading/parsing plugin, but it kind of halted with the rest, mainly because I saw this as a major 'yes that looks all right, BUT...' and 'it's TOO HARD to look up a threadID, what is a threadID, buuuut what if I have TWO THREADS' and 'but what about the old WP comments?????' and 'what if the thread is not supposed to be public?' and 'OMG U STUPID Y U SPEND SO MUCH TIME ON THIS LOOK HERE'S A PLUGIN OLOL'* so I chucked it in 'cool to do, but high risk of too much work, and not very rewarding'.

* Yes but olol that plugin requires a forum version we don't have

tl;dr very often it's the people side of things that makes technology exhausting. This is a problem everywhere. And tbh, when I spend time on stuff like this, it's for _technology purposes only_.

 

[Fangu]

^ I don't know where I was going with that.

Also I forgot to say, Tres, nodding through your post. And I love you

 

[Airling]

All this talk about the staff and the stuffs is giving me this weird urge to make a flow diagram... For me, that's extremely rare and weird.

Fangu, what about Flint's idea for the author pages & insets? I love the idea, but it sounds like it could also become a nightmare.

Also! I know what I'm good at IRL, but I don't know how useful that would be here. Brainless busy work. Assisting. Stuff like what I do for the estate agents I work at, or what I did for the podcast, sloughing through a year's worth of articles and writing things down.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

You seem like a good ideas person, Airling.

 

[Fangu]

Fangu, what about Flint's idea for the author pages & insets? I love the idea, but it sounds like it could also become a nightmare.

It's already a functionality in WP. Try clicking on an author's name. It outputs as posts atm, but changing that to links only is something any n00b PHP programmer (with a bit of looking into WP's doc) should be able to handle. Might even be a switch in WP admin ("output links only").

 

[Carlie]

So, yeah, I'm going to remain an active forum member. TLS is my online home. I'm just ready to fade into the background in other respects.

Like that? I love you Tres. <3

New Proposal (which I think is closer to what Flint is suggesting): People keep their wordpress permissions as long as their status is accurately reflected in their forum title - this opens up the floor for people to keep their permissions who are wanting to contribute in the future (such as Force) but can't commit to writing consistently.

This would be the best for me. Aside from my involvement with the podcasts I can't commit to any writing consistently.

 

[Airling]

It's already a functionality in WP. Try clicking on an author's name. It outputs as posts atm, but changing that to links only is something any n00b PHP programmer (with a bit of looking into WP's doc) should be able to handle. Might even be a switch in WP admin ("output links only").

Oh derp, of course it is. They have it on Digital Photography School, which also uses WP if I remember correctly. I's having much excite over this!

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I'm currently working on mockups for the front page and the sub-pages (which have really been ignored design-wise). So those should be out soonish.

For over a year I've been thinking of doing write-ups (and cometary) for all the OSTs of the Compilation as I've been listening to them for years and I love them to death. I'm thinking they'd mostly be of where all the music plays in the game as well as whatever musical cometary I can think up of. Even without the fan-music we have, that would make for a pretty long series of articles (I've got around 10 different OSTs on my computer and that's not counting the individual disks). As for why I'd be willing to do music, I've played two instruments for over a decade and studied music theory and music history. So good OSTs are an important part of game design for me.

*has no clue where that would fit in site-wise*

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

That sounds awesome. =) I for one would read the shit out of that.

 

[Flintlock]

I'm thinking they'd mostly be of where all the music plays in the game...

I think Shademp was looking into doing something like that for FFVII once. It would be a mammoth undertaking for each game, let alone the whole series. It would be a great thing to have, though. I'm sure you'd be able to find some volunteers to help you make it into a team project

I have something else to say in reply to your post but I'll put it in the podcast thread.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Don't know if I should put this here or in the Site Design thread, but anyway...

Here's the site map of TLS. This is mainly focused on how site navigation flows from the Main Page. "Index" pages are represented by solid borders, articles by dashed borders. Given how many articles we have on the site, I decided not to show the ones on the index pages, but only show the ones linked directly from the Main Page. Links are represented by lines. The colors show what pages the links originate from. Index pages that only link to articles are grey/white.

If anyone has questions/corrections about the site map, let me know so I can fix it.

 

[Lex]

I say.

*applauds*

This makes it much easier to review things. My first thought (and I've thought this for a very long time) is that there should be a more direct link to the audiobooks from the front page.

EDIT: Also it really does belong in the site design thread btw, but it's so pretty so just leave it there and maybe post it again in the site design thread to continue discussion there XD.