How do we get new/different staff members?

[Captain Untouchable]

Getting back to the progressive part of the discussion -

Over in the let's be relevant thread, Ogre suggested that maybe things like Facebook and sorta "community outreach" might be the kind of job that requires a new administrator. Mark suggested getting back to our roots as SW vs Titanic and trying to bolster the discussion/debate/OOC side of the community, and he's got a good point: the new movies are just as likely to give us potential movie opinions members as they are new roleplayers. Unlike when the prequels came out, we have platforms like not just Facebook, but also Tumblr and Twitter, and so on. There are news sites like Screenrant, io9, The Mary Sue, and so on that offer reviews and editorials, and it's easier than ever for people to blog their opinions - and we've got the capacity to provide at least some of that via articles, blogs, and the front page.

Ogre's suggestion of a Facebook/outreach/media admin seems to me like a really good idea. It's extra work rather than existing work, so it makes sense to add an extra person to do it.

It also brings up a couple of question marks about group moderators as well. If the difference between a group and global moderator is just a matter of jurisdiction, then is the way we're currently doing it the best way to divide it up? Does it still make sense for us to have faction-based group moderators, or are there alternative options that would work better, given how all of us are sorta sprawled across all of the factions nowadays? Maybe it'd make sense to split moderators by setting, rather than by faction? We've separated the boards into "Star Wars" and "General" already, and a little while back we added Andrew to the Global Moderators to make sure there was someone in there who could keep an eye on the General stuff (because Christin wasn't actively roleplaying in that side of things at the time).

Taking it a step further, what if we had a "Star Wars" team of group moderators, a "General" team of group moderators, and a "Discussion" team of group moderators. Star Wars moderators would look after sticky threads and thread deletion in all of the SW forums; General in all of the general forums; and Discussion people can handle stickied sports threads, articles and front page, that sort of stuff. Perhaps the Global Mods (who have Staff voting privileges, etc) could function as "team leaders" for the group/zone moderators, so we've still got a hierarchy, but a more functional one based on how we are now, rather than how we were.

Also, if there's a distinction made between Star Wars moderators and General moderators, etc, that potentially makes it easier for new people to find who to talk to. We have fewer, bigger buckets to catch questions - if you have a "what the hell is going on in this setting?" question, you've got a whole team of faces to contact, not just people pidgeon-holed into specific factions.

Also, a broader scope would allow people to be set up as a moderator on their "main" account rather than a faction-appropriate one: people would know to contact Captain Untouchable as opposed to Vansen Tyree; and because I'd be actively posting OOC as my group moderator account, it makes me more visible and easier to find.

Just spitballing.

[TheHolo.Net]

Group mods also serve the function of access to private forums and as an indicator of group leadership, but that is up for debate as well. The layers of complexity for what we have setup over the many years are fairly deep and interconnected. Some of those interconnections are easy to overlook and/or forget.

[Captain Untouchable]

Are there any private forums left? I thought we'd got rid of them all.

Also, the old user faction groups that we brought over from the old boards seem to be slowly getting replaced by the new kind of user group that we gained with the new forum software. Those are moderated by whoever set them up; we've never had any sort of staff/community discussion or decision of who should be administering those things, they've just sorta been popping up.

As far as group moderators being faction leaders, I think we've "broken" that, too. With the way that we've rearranged the Star Wars forums, the moderators no longer necessarily correspond with a particular faction. We've also got a lot of duplication, where a player is set up as a group moderator with multiple different characters (sometimes multiples in the same forum), so it makes it seem like there are more flesh-and-blood people leading things than there actually are. Sorry to pick on you again, Jenny, but you've got four different characters in four different forums set up as a group moderator; when technically you don't necessarily need any, because your admin access umbrellas over all of that.

Also, even though we deemed Mutants Unite and World of Darkness significant enough to warrant their own forum, we never appointed any group moderators to look after that: all we've got is Andrew, as a global moderator for everything non-Star Wars.

We should definitely still have "Faction Leaders", especially if we're hoping to increase our player population... but I don't think it works to regard group moderators and faction leaders as the same thing any more.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

A mod or two more for MU and WoD would be a wonderful thing, I think.

As far as faction leaders, I agree that those and group mods should be separate. Also, tying somewhat into what was mentioned during the reordering and what to call the groups aside from 'factions', perhaps we could rename those leaders 'Mentors'? Just a thought.



So then, as I'm seeing it, the staff structure being proposed might look something like this?

TheHolo.Net
|
Admins
|
Global Moderators
|
SW RP Moderators - General RP Moderators - Discussion Moderators
|
Faction Leaders

I really hope I haven't forgotten anything.

[Captain Untouchable]

That's pretty much how it is in my mind.

I'm not sure if Faction Leader needs to be a specific rank, though. Having a moderator style rank is to do with what admin permissions you have, whereas being a faction leader is more about leading discussions, driving forward plots, and being visible and approachable to people who have questions. Christin and Jenny should absolutely be faction leaders, but if we make it a rank, no one is going to "know" that they are faction leaders, because their rank will say Admin. In fact, I'd wager that the vast majority of faction leaders are going to be a moderator of some sort... it just strikes me as the sort of thing where there is going to be a lot of overlap.

Maybe Faction Leader is something we can execute with a badge, an icon, a CT, a series of little pictures under the avatar, that sort of thing? Something so that when people (sorry for using you as an example yet again, Jenny!) look at the Dasquian Belargic account, they see a) administrator, but also b) faction leader for Alliance, Empire, Jedi, Circle, etc.

I feel like the two shouldn't be mutually exclusive, if that makes sense?

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

It makes sense to me. Treating the status of a faction leader as something of a blanket that can be overlayed seems a natural thing. People like Holly and Charley are good examples of what faction leaders should be doing. Charley's Vangaurds thread, and all of the planning that he did and folks he pulled into the story to tell an amazing yarn. Holly does a lot for the Jedi group and is inclusive to all, and is always ready and willing to help out with reconnecting old and new members alike to the galaxy that we've developed.

Though I also feel that anyone can be a faction leader, and that just because someone might not be a mod or admin they shouldn't be excluded from being a leader. Of course I may just be stating a given, heh.

[Charley]

What would faction leaders do?

I mean it sounds like all the tidying up and stuff is handled by the admins and mods and that's pretty cool and concise to me. Would faction leaders be kinda like loose game-masters in a way? Example - Holly's initiative in the Jedi forum about having a stockpile of mission threads. That was a wicked clever idea and I could kinda see FL's being not so much in the nuts and bolts of thread tidying and such but maybe the more storytelling operations of "hey gang we as a group are gonna try to get a big thing going, who's in" sort of thing. I mean obviously thats not the only wellspring of ideas in a group, but anybody putting forth plans and such I feel that if we did have a FL, they would be tasked with kind of arranging those ideas and tying them up with a bow to make it easier for folks to get eyes on them and to participate.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

The reason I posted this thread was simply to find out if we had a process for replacing inactive staff members. I do sincerely apologize if anyone was offended, and I know who you are, if I wondered aloud what we do if they don't show up again. We would be genuinely fucked if Ogre disappeared. I did not mean to imply that he had disappeared or even that he was disappearing, only that I hadn't seen him around lately much at all.

Anyway, whatever happened after that, I was following the conversation as it happened, and I stuck my foot in my mouth a few times. I'm sorry.

i have spent a good fourteen years here at Swfans, admin-ed it for a chunk of that time, and have tried to be an active and helpful member before and since my time on the staff. I have gotten a great deal of negative responses in the last day or so, which is why I'm not going to be posting for the time being. I will probably come back and write my characters after some of the drama in my actual life settles down, but that's probably it. If the groups I moderate want to remove me, they can, just PM me and let me know, otherwise when I come back I will continue to do that for them and apologize for any inconvenience my absence may cause.

[Captain Untouchable]

What would faction leaders do?

I mean it sounds like all the tidying up and stuff is handled by the admins and mods and that's pretty cool and concise to me. Would faction leaders be kinda like loose game-masters in a way? Example - Holly's initiative in the Jedi forum about having a stockpile of mission threads. That was a wicked clever idea and I could kinda see FL's being not so much in the nuts and bolts of thread tidying and such but maybe the more storytelling operations of "hey gang we as a group are gonna try to get a big thing going, who's in" sort of thing. I mean obviously thats not the only wellspring of ideas in a group, but anybody putting forth plans and such I feel that if we did have a FL, they would be tasked with kind of arranging those ideas and tying them up with a bow to make it easier for folks to get eyes on them and to participate.

What if we went a step further, and instead of "Faction Leaders" we had "Story Leaders"?

With Star Wars, and especially with Fans, the people at the top of the pile aren't really the ones who matter. It isn't the Jedi Council who travels to Naboo and meets Anakin, who thwarts the Trade Federation, and whose exploits we follow in the Clone Wars: it's Qui Gon and it's Obi Wan and it's Luke and Han... it's rank and file people who the story focuses on. Lately, Fans has been very much like that this time around (since Reset): there's much less focus on Empresses and governments and Senators and much more focus on smugglers and pilots and gangsters and Jedi refugees. The upper echelon characters are there, but they're facilitators as much as anything else - they're the guest stars that a TV show brings in to move things along: for most of us, it's the "regular people" that are important.

That's something I think we should be incredibly proud of, and should make a big deal about, because that is a much easier situation to get on board with. Coming into a roleplay community that takes it's factions and it's status super seriously can make it feel very hard to get started. If you're coming into a situation where almost everyone is a Padawan, then starting out as a Padawan isn't so bad by comparison. Things like the Novgorod, like Cloud City and Tatooine keep the playing field level: it's about how good your character is, and how good your story is. Even when it comes to the Alliance Senate, to Hapan nobility, to the Corporate Sector: you come in at the same level that everyone else does within that context. If you want to play a Senator, then you can play a Senator: you don't have to spend years earning ranks and ascending up the tree. That level playing field makes it much easier (in theory) for new people to interact with us old people. Join the Black Sun gang on Cloud City, and straight away you're talking to Sanis Prent. Join the Corellian resistance, and you're having drinks with Jamo Jakatta. Join SpecForce, get assigned to the Novgorod, and you're in Cirrseeto's ship, hanging out with Lyanie and Mara Tallen.

To me, something like "Story Leader" sounds friendlier, because it makes it seem like we treat the story of the Novgorod or Tatooine or Corellia with just the same respect as we treat the story of the Jedi, the Empire, and the entire galaxy: which is true, and is the reason that I have never been able to find a roleplaying community like this one anywhere else on the internet.

Having "Story Leaders" to keep momentum going in RP sections, and "Community Leaders" to keep discussions, games, sports debates, etc in OOC sections seems like the most Fans-style way of doing things, to me.

[Morgan Evanar]

That's a dang good idea.

[Charley]

I like that because it then falls on them to organize interest and gather ideas from interested folks to work into the next plotline. Kinda what we sort of do already, but more of a thing where, say, Emelie Shadowstar can post in OOC "alright all you cloud city people, we're gonna have a big thread about a mysterious murder" and get folks who are already vested into the larger plot to chime in on how they plan to be involved, or if they feel it would even involve them. We gather up the folks who want in, and then jump into the fray.

[Captain Untouchable]

That's my thinking, yeah.

I dunno about anyone else, but I always get a bit anxious when I try and make plots happen, for fear of stepping on toes and rubbing people up the wrong way. Making it clear that mod/admin has no bearing on story stuff (by having a separate system) is probably gonna be at least a little bit reassuring for chronic worrier type people like me.

[Charley]

I'm a bull in a china shop with that. I throw a story idea on the wall and see if it sticks and only give a damn if someone specifically mentions there is a conflict.

[Captain Untouchable]

It looks like we've reached the point where everyone has contributed the opinions and ideas they want to at this point. It also seems like a few things have started to be put into action already (Christin seems to be a full admin now - congrats!), but if there has been any sort of "We here what you're saying, this is what we're going to do" response / explanation from the staff, I've not seen it. Since communication was one of the issues raised here, it might be a smart idea to have some sort of game plan announcement, particularly for the benefit of people who haven't necessarily been following this discussion.

If the staff are still discussing things amongst themselves, fair enough: but as has been said already, we don't know that unless you tell us.

[Vince]

A bit late on this, but that story leader thing is probably one of the best ideas I've read in this thread, and that's saying something, because it has some great ones.