chaos
Owner
An introduction to the "What needs to be done" series
A while back, I made this thread in the hopes that it would help people be more proactive in contributing to the site. I don't think it's working - I still get people asking me every now and then "how they can help." Judging from the relative amount of inactivity on the articles project, I'm not sure those who are active contributors really know what to do either.
It's time for some changes.
What needs to be done (3/27/08)
The main project of C&C right now is getting together our articles section. I've been searching around the Internet to see what people have to say about Smogon - and to my surprise, they had a lot of positive things to say! However, one comment bothered me: they referred to Smogon as a "forum site." "That's not true at all!" I exclaimed to myself loudly, startling hybrid from his dream of giving Steelicks a full-body massage. I wondered to myself what on earth could possibly give people that impression, and it became quite clear: every one of our guides linked to contained "showthread.php" in the URL (the breeding guide is a favorite, heh heh).
That's not right. We need to finish proofing all of the old articles on the site and get them up as soon as we can! The molasses-esque rate we are getting stuff done, as far as the articles project goes, has been bugging me as of late. Not to say that you all are a lazy bunch, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. I don't think I acknowledge people for their good deeds enough these days (I blame it on stress :cloud:). What's going on is a product of a) the lack of suitable leader to coordinate contributions and b), horrible organization. Let's solve both of these in this topic.
Project description
The articles on the old site were written when we didn't really have any standards of quality to go by. Some are in better shape than others. The scope of this project is to identify the weaker articles, correct them, and eventually place them on the site where they belong.
Max is project leader.
What has been done?
Great Sage and some others have rewritten a few articles.
What needs to be done?
First of all, the rewritten articles need to be quality checked, re-HTMLized, put on the site, and locked. There are about 6 topics in the forum currently - a few are rewritten, and there are about 16+ more that haven't even been looked at yet.
My suggested process
The project leader is free to do what he/she wishes (within reason of course) but I have suggestions on how to organize this.
First, a forum shall be created: "Old Article Project." The project leader, and whoever else the project leader designates will be given temporary moderatorship of this subforum.
Inside the forum will be the articles to work on, except there isn't a quota of 5-6. The amount of articles imported will be dependent on the number of volunteers for the project. Each volunteer will be given a thread to claim as their own - they will be responsible for merging suggested changes/section rewrites into the main article. When the volunteer feels the article is up to par, it will be marked as ready for HTMLization.
After HTMLization and placement on the site, the original topic is locked and a new thread is made in the Article Workshop for "last minute edits" that didn't make it in the reworking timeframe.
Articles that are not deemed ready by the volunteer (or project leader) that have not been touched for X amount of days will be assigned a different volunteer to rework the article if there are no other articles in active consideration at the moment. The project leader will be responsible for delegating new volunteers and making sure article threads are either in an active editing stage or being HTMLized.
Questions, comments, project leader volunteers, article volunteers?
Feel free to post. :)
A while back, I made this thread in the hopes that it would help people be more proactive in contributing to the site. I don't think it's working - I still get people asking me every now and then "how they can help." Judging from the relative amount of inactivity on the articles project, I'm not sure those who are active contributors really know what to do either.
It's time for some changes.
- Instead of having a stickied topic, I am going to start making occasional "What's going on in C&C" posts. These will include descriptions of the active C&C projects, who's working on them (and thus, who to contact to help on the project), and how you, personally, can help with the project. This topic will also serve as the first one of these; more on that later.
- "Projects" will gain temporary subforums to more effectively manage what is going on. Project leaders will be given temporary moderator status to effectively manage their projects. Some projects last forever - for example, the Analysis Workshop. Once we clear the backlog of articles, the Article Workshop will become perm too. HTML Workshop is tentative - it will most likely be perm.
What needs to be done (3/27/08)
The main project of C&C right now is getting together our articles section. I've been searching around the Internet to see what people have to say about Smogon - and to my surprise, they had a lot of positive things to say! However, one comment bothered me: they referred to Smogon as a "forum site." "That's not true at all!" I exclaimed to myself loudly, startling hybrid from his dream of giving Steelicks a full-body massage. I wondered to myself what on earth could possibly give people that impression, and it became quite clear: every one of our guides linked to contained "showthread.php" in the URL (the breeding guide is a favorite, heh heh).
That's not right. We need to finish proofing all of the old articles on the site and get them up as soon as we can! The molasses-esque rate we are getting stuff done, as far as the articles project goes, has been bugging me as of late. Not to say that you all are a lazy bunch, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. I don't think I acknowledge people for their good deeds enough these days (I blame it on stress :cloud:). What's going on is a product of a) the lack of suitable leader to coordinate contributions and b), horrible organization. Let's solve both of these in this topic.
Project description
The articles on the old site were written when we didn't really have any standards of quality to go by. Some are in better shape than others. The scope of this project is to identify the weaker articles, correct them, and eventually place them on the site where they belong.
Max is project leader.
What has been done?
Great Sage and some others have rewritten a few articles.
What needs to be done?
First of all, the rewritten articles need to be quality checked, re-HTMLized, put on the site, and locked. There are about 6 topics in the forum currently - a few are rewritten, and there are about 16+ more that haven't even been looked at yet.
My suggested process
The project leader is free to do what he/she wishes (within reason of course) but I have suggestions on how to organize this.
First, a forum shall be created: "Old Article Project." The project leader, and whoever else the project leader designates will be given temporary moderatorship of this subforum.
Inside the forum will be the articles to work on, except there isn't a quota of 5-6. The amount of articles imported will be dependent on the number of volunteers for the project. Each volunteer will be given a thread to claim as their own - they will be responsible for merging suggested changes/section rewrites into the main article. When the volunteer feels the article is up to par, it will be marked as ready for HTMLization.
After HTMLization and placement on the site, the original topic is locked and a new thread is made in the Article Workshop for "last minute edits" that didn't make it in the reworking timeframe.
Articles that are not deemed ready by the volunteer (or project leader) that have not been touched for X amount of days will be assigned a different volunteer to rework the article if there are no other articles in active consideration at the moment. The project leader will be responsible for delegating new volunteers and making sure article threads are either in an active editing stage or being HTMLized.
Questions, comments, project leader volunteers, article volunteers?
Feel free to post. :)