Hi DanTMan, I am glad to hear that you value staff and appreciate what we do. Much of what the community team does is in the background and can go unnoticed despite being very necessary.
You are correct that we have been spending less time in IRC. I've asked the team not to simply hang out in IRC waiting for something to happen but rather to be there for a few hours a day. The goal is to allow them to focus on other community related tasks and also to encourage the community to help each other when staff is not in IRC. In the short term it may feel like we're not around as much, but we're definitely not disappearing. Our IRC presence has been reduced recently due to Sannse being sick and Splarka taking a leave of absence. This should improve as Sannse returns to 100% over the next few weeks and we find someone to replace Splarka. Recently, we have been working on several projects aimed at freeing up the team from repetitive or administrative tasks so they can eventually spend even more time with communities, newbies and founders. Let me give you a few examples. * Over the last few months, I have asked comteam staff to work closely with the engineering team to design and build tools which will decrease the amount of time spent on certain tasks. For example, we've begun automating much (but not all) of the wiki creation process to reduce the time it takes to create a new wiki (create the domain, populate the description page on Central, send a welcome email to the founder, add a breadcrumb/hub, etc) from 20 minutes to 2 minutes per wiki. We're currently making over 250 wikis each month, so this is a big time saver. Please note that this does not include the time spent reaching out to potential founders to clarify their wiki proposal. Also, in order to automate the wiki creation process, the whole request a wiki process had to be redone as well. * We've also added an IRC Recent Changes feed (still buggy) so that monitoring thousands of smaller communities can be done more efficiently. Angela is working with a few users to create bots to make it much easier to patrol for spam and vandals across multiple wikis. This is a work in process. * Sannse and Catherine have spent a lot of time revamping our help and FAQs and are working with the engineers to develop a publishing solution so that all wikis have the latest and most complete version of help at all times. * IRC is a great way for members of the community to help each other. But it isn't always the most comfortable or familiar place for newbies. To better serve this group, we're evaluating a new email ticketing system for emailed questions which will allow us to better track our responses and response times. * Angela is setting up user groups to help other users. For example, there might be a user group one could turn to for help creating a logo. * The Janitor program has been expanded. In addition to GHe, Jack Phoenix has recently started working as a Janitor. Jae Sharp will join us as an intern this week and will also have Janitor status. I don't want to add anymore at this time as Sannse is their adviser and she won't be at 100% for a few weeks. The examples above represent about 20% of the projects we've been working on, so the team has definitely been busy! My hope is that you'll see the benefits of all this in the near future. Thanks, Bill On Nov 2, 2007 8:48 PM, JohnQ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi DanTMan, > > As always, a pleasure. :) > > I can answer the js part for the user menu ... it used to be non-js and > it will be again for exactly the reason you're saying. This came up > internally from both Splarka and Christian. Christian will be looking > into it for a release in the near future (and the comment in the js file > that tells people how to get separate js files for debugging purposes). > > For the community stuff, I'll let Bill address that one... he's much > more eloquent that I am. > > Thanks, > John Q. > > > > DanTMan wrote: > > I've been on Wikia for awhile, but it's starting to look a little > > different than it used to be. I started in August of last year and Wikia > > kept going up with the things it was making and the support given by the > > staff members. > > But I'm starting to see a decline in some of the nice things on Wikia. > > > > The first issue would be with the new stuff. Don't get me wrong, I love > > the new skins. I'm working on setting up the Wikia ACG wiki so that > > they're ready for a complete change to Quartz on almost all (Probably > > not for larger wiki like Yu-Gi-Oh! if it joins) of the Wikia ACG wiki. > > But there are some issues that I don't like. > > I'm fine with a large reliance on JS to add nice features and > > everything. But not when the reliance is without a fallback that is > > needed to keep important core functionality of the site. For the main > > point, the user menu I'm talking about. If you are to disable JS you > > cannot drop the menu down. I'm fine with users without JS not being able > > to mess with the Widgets and stuff. But if the dropdown contains the > > very important userpage, talkpage, and preferences links cannot be > > accessed by someone with JS disabled then there's a big issue. It isn't > > that hard to do. A simple class can be added to the menu and the JS > > script that sets up the menu can remove that class. And that class can > > have some CSS associated with it to add an old CSS dropdown menu. The JS > > will still be there, but if JS is off then users will still be able to > > get to the important pages. > > It's kinda ridiculous when a newer user not knowledgeable about special > > page naming or listing with JS turned off can't get to their preferences > > to change their preferences to Monobook because they can't get around > > Quartz because they need JS to get to their preferences to workaround > > the fact that they have no JS. > > > > The other issue is with the staff. Not the staff themselves, but I'm > > expecting that someone higher up has been starting to go in more of the > > business direction. The staff used to be nicely active in the IRC > > channel and issues were always swiftly dealt with. But now we see fewer > > in the IRC, and there are long times where we are without any in there, > > the responses are starting to lag, and valuable com team staff are > > starting to disappear. > > But by all means, don't forget that there is a community willing to > > help. If the staff absolutely must be taken off some time, then it's ok. > > But if that's the case, then find a way to let the global Wikia > > community autonomously deal with the issues on it's own. We used to have > > one of those ways; It was called Global Sysops and finalized as > > "Janitors". Great creation, let issues be dealt with, without needing to > > bother the Staff about every issue. But it looks like that's been > > halted. Datrio got janitor for testing, and GHe got it for spamfighting. > > But it stoped there, it didn't look like anyone else was hunted out for > > service to Wikia and decided to be given the flag to help out more. Even > > with the Staff and GHe as Janitor we still have long times inside of IRC > > where there are big issues, and there are no Staff or Janitors around to > > help solve the issue. > > Even Wikipedia has created methods of dealing with community issues. > > ArbCom, Sysops (Similar to having Janitors on Wikia), community > > discussions on issues rather than bringing it all before a staff to have > > one of them handle it, etc... There are plenty of ideas that can be > > adapted from even Wikipedia's methods to help give the community a bit > > more autonomy to cope with a lack of staff. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > _______________________________________________ Wikia-l mailing list [email protected] http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l
