Minutes of TLS staff meeting #2 - February 2013
A full chat log is available
here.
Opening of the meeting
The meeting was opened. Present were Aaron (Rory Williams), Avec (AvecAloes) Cthulhu, Dawnbreaker, Fangu, Flintlock, Kuroto, Odinson (Thor), Prince Lex, Shademp, Satsufeis (Satsugaizake), Tet (Tetsujin) and Username (Morrigan). YACCBS (Dana Scully) also arrived just before the end of the meeting. Flintlock chaired.
Announcements
Prince Lex might be going to Norway for 10 weeks. Username said that the Dissidia Project was due to start in the next week.
Reminder of what happened at the previous meeting
Bots on the forum: Cthulhu asked if the bots showed a pattern in their first posts, because if so, he could add keywords to the spam filter, but nobody could say. Flintlock pointed out that one of the registration images was broken, Cthulhu said he would fix it later if someone reminded him - consider this a reminder!
Front page changes: Fangu said she hadn't gotten around to making the changes yet, but that she would still do them. She reminded us to update the "happening now" bar when something was going on. Prince Lex said he had done it for one of the FFIX playthrough streams and would do it again. Cthulhu said that the bar would ideally be a system that allowed messages to expire after a certain time, to be queued and so on, but that he couldn't be arsed to write it. Fangu said Wordpress already had such a feature and it wouldn't be too much work to implement.
Youtube access: Shademp said he had got access to the TLS Youtube account but had forgotten to make and upload a particular video. Flintlock asked if he was still planning to. Shademp said he didn't know. Prince Lex remembered that Pixel had asked for help redesigning both the Youtube and Facebook pages. Flintlock said he could help with Facebook but knew nothing about Youtube.
Post of the month: Aaron said he had forgotten about this, but would start it shortly. Flintlock asked how it would be run. Cthulhu suggested looking at the most thanked posts, but then filtering out inappropriate posts before putting it to a vote. Aaron agreed.
Movie nights: Cthulhu said he needed to be reminded to organise them. Username said she'd handle it. Cthulhu said there could be a clash with the FFIX playthrough, but Prince Lex disagreed, saying it just can't be held on Saturdays at a specific time. Flintlock suggested streaming movies on Saturdays after the IX Skyping, because everyone would already be gathered.
Drinking nights: Flintlock and Prince Lex realised nobody had agreed to organise them at the last staff meeting. Prince Lex said he would post in the drinking thread about it to find a volunteer. Cthulhu said they could happen spontaneously without needing to be planned in advance.
Gold Saucer: Flintlock said he'd organise it once the FFIX playthrough was finished. Prince Lex said there was no reason why it couldn't happen simultaneously, but Flintlock said he was worried about players not having enough time.
"Top seven" articles: Flintlock said the first one would go up next week.
How TLS is doing
Cthulhu gave us some stats for the front page in January. Visits stood at 27,057, up from December but down from the previous January. Page views stood at 54,621, up on both December and January 2012.
Cthulhu also shared the most viewed articles from January. Character profiles took the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th places, with the homepage in 1st, Ultimania translations in 3rd and the "LTD is over" article in 7th. He noted that character profiles provide consistent page views for us and wondered if we should change our navigation structure to reflect that. Flintlock asked Shademp for his opinion. Shademp said he said he wanted to resign as Content Manager, but commented that the site's character profiles have all been translations and should remain in the translations section. Fangu said we could keep them where they are but link to them from a separate character profiles section. Shademp said that could work.
Shademp then spoke about why he was resigning his position. He said no passion left for his work and felt like he had been working unwillingly for some time. He wanted to stay as a contributor for some occasional features he may write, but felt someone else should take over. Basically everyone in the chat said that he had done a fantastic job and would be difficult to replace. Flintlock asked who Shademp thought could do the job. He mentioned Fangu, Flintlock and Prince Lex. The first two ruled themselves out, while Prince Lex said he'd like to do it but thought there might be other candidates. Shademp asked how the decision would be made. Thor said that all the staff should have a chance to influence the decision, while Cthulhu said it should be made public. Shademp agreed to make the thread, so we moved on with the meeting.
Events on TLS in the past month
Flintlock said that the start of the FFIX playthrough had been the only real community event of the last month. Fangu said that CameoAmalthea had been streaming Before Crisis, and said that we should make that into a TLS event were it not about to finish. Flintlock said we could ask Cameo to stream some more things for TLS in the future.
Events that will happen in the next month
Flintlock said the playthrough would continue and was probably enough in terms of major events. Cthulhu said we should make a shared OKCupid account for TLS.
Any other business
Flintlock mentioned that there had been a little bit of drama resulting from the picture thread and wondered if that was worth discussing. Username asked why that discussion hadn't been separated from the thread. Cthulhu said laziness. Aaron said he wasn't sure if much could be done to make people get along. Fangu disagreed but said it wasn't worth discussing because most of the people concerned weren't present. Satsufeis noted that some people were annoyed at the rules and thought they should be clarified. Cthulhu said they could be put up for review. Odinson said that the incident seemed to have resolved itself, and Dawnbreaker said she didn't want to discuss it further.
Next meeting
The possibility of holding the meeting on a different day was raised. Nobody seemed to feel strongly either way, so eventually it was decided that Sunday could be tried. Flintlock said it would have to be held earlier, and hoped that some Americans could make it. The date of the meeting was set for the 3rd of March, and a final time will be announced later.
Closing of the meeting
The meeting was closed after one hour and thirty-four minutes.
