Staff Changes: Needed, They Are

So, I hope you enjoyed the various pranks and jokes going on yesterday. Even if nothing actually happened on W-H. Which, as I said previously, was somewhat expected, if disappointing. I mean, April Fools is a tradition and all. Would it seriously have been that difficult for Karl to whip something up, even if it wasn't complicated?

Shimmer still hasn't seen any help for their invisibility; considering how long it's been, I'm beginning to wonder if they'll see any at all. After all, Karl didn't restore Alphyn after they were disbanded. This might not seem as severe, but it's actually fairly similar; the only real difference is the members are still in one group.

Also, Band appears to have joined Bone-Crew, probably dooming them permanently, due to, y'know, the Curse of Band and all that. You'd think people would stop inviting her, considering her track record and all. That, and how she's got an evil, communist hat...

In other news, W-H's advertisement policy has completely broken down, with people basically advertising whatever they want on the advertising board, and clickables and other off-site links abounding on profiles and forum threads. It's so broad that either Karl will have to mass-ban a ton of people (including prominent players), or change the policy entirely. Or ignore it completely, which seems to be a fairly common response.

Also, if you're bored, you might want to check out this link. It's a completely hidden forum accessible only by URL; have fun playing around with it. Just don't tell everyone and all that.

So, I'm going to address a fairly controversial topic today, because it's hard to piss people off with something that everyone will agree on. Specifically, staff.

Now, I'm not going to list any names, nor am I about to post a list of minions I recommend as staff members so I can conquer the universe. Because, between you and me, I'm only interested in controlling the galaxy. The whole universe sounds like too much work, y'know?

I think it should be obvious that the staff need some cleaning up. Some people just aren't doing their jobs. Heck, one or two are inactive and don't even seem to play anymore. Anyone who's familiar with the different staff should be able to tell who I'm referring to. And for those of you who have no idea who the staff are, here's the list, which was conveniently removed from nav when the menus were updated.

If any staff members are reading this, before you take offense, ask yourself the following: "Am I doing my job?" If the answer is yes, then this entry doesn't concern you, so don't worry about it. If the answer is no, then I think you're an idiot and you shouldn't be on staff in the first place. Hell, you can't even object to me calling you an idiot without admitting that you're not doing your job. I'm just too good at this...

Back on track... As you know, we've basically got three groups of the staff. The first are the artists. I'll be honest - I don't really have any idea who's doing what there, and I don't care either. After all, the main responsibility of the artists is to satisfy the endless horde of donators who want their customs done immediately.

Having said that, increasing the number of artists would always be a good thing, provided that the same quality of art is maintained. After all, they aren't getting paid or anything - so the more we have, the faster customs get done, the faster donations come in, the faster the money flows off some place where we'll never see it again. Wait... remind me why I thought this was a good thing?

Then we've got the moderators. First off, there's forum mods and normal mods. That distinction is completely pointless and should be removed. Why? Because forum mods are supposed to policy the forum (duh!). And normal mods are also supposed to police the forum, in addition to other things. So why the hell have two staff positions that overlap? Just stick with just having normal mods.

We do need more mods, though. Quite honestly, the ones we have just aren't enough. They do a good job, but they can't be everywhere, and often issues on the chat/forum continue for a while before one of them can get there. Also, the majority of them are all on at the same time. Of course, trouble almost never starts when the mods are actually there, and then we have to wait for them to get on. What we need is mods who work different hours of the day, probably accomplished by getting some from other countries/time zones. Things would run a whole lot smoother if we had staff readily available at almost all times, rather than just hoping one might show up.

The final category of staff is news editors (no, I'm not including admins; they're basically just glorified mods who also have ban buttons; no real diff in capability, since none have DB access). To be perfectly honest, I don't see why this position exists at all. Is it really that hard to post an article every week or so that you actually have to have a separate staff position to do it? Why, exactly, would it be unreasonable to ask other members of the staff to do it as well? I mean, let's say you give it to the mods, and say there are 4 mods, and you want one entry per week. So... each mod would have to write an entry once per four weeks. Yeah, that's obviously too hard... better get more people to deal with it.

I mean, here I am, posting three entries every week, every single one of them longer than any news entry on W-H has ever been. Heck, some of them are longer than every news entry on W-H combined! I know what I'm talking about when I say that writing an entry once a week is not so hard that you need to hire new people for it.

I will admit that an entry every week on W-H news concerning updates or the like is pretty much impossible, because we don't get updates on any sort of regular schedule. Which technically means the job is impossible, even with extra staff members for it. I mean, you need content to write about... The obvious solution here is to either accept the inevitable, remove the position entirely, and post news entries once every millennium like we're already doing.

The other option would be to change the standards on what can/should be posted as a 'news' entry to make it feasible. Of course, you still wouldn't need the extra staff for that; have the mods take turns. As for what to put in there... I don't know. What would you want to see? If you can't think of anything in particular, probably better going with the first option.

Besides, the entire thing is pointless in the first place. News on updates should be written by informed people - for example, if Karl coded a feature, he should probably put in the news himself. Otherwise it's just second-hand info that the authors gleaned from other people - already common knowledge. After all, to the extent of my knowledge Karl has never informed a news editor of an update and then given them all the info they need to write the entry; instead, they're stuck getting the info like everyone else.

So, yeah. I don't see any justifiable reason the news editor position exists in the first place. Not to mention that we haven't been getting news articles anyway. So... kill it with fire?

...What? You act like killing pointless things with fire isn't an acceptable response! Freaks...

Anyway, I've got to get back to playing Mass Effect 2. What with having spring break next week, I may not be around much. Don't worry, I'll make sure to get some updates on the schedule, though.