61 replies to this topic

[Hydrogen]

Introduction
We all know the problems at hand here: things move so slowly on the board that it's not even funny. We have tons of ideas on the board but there is this lingering notion that there aren't enough people to do the tasks. That's not entirely true as we have at least 10 active staff members that things shouldn't be put into the bottleneck so much as they are. That's why we have decided that it is finally time to implement a system much like the real world to adapt to the growth of our site and once more start to have things flow again.

The system we are implementing is the departmentalization of the Neocodex staff. Essentially we are creating internal departments within the staff as mainly a procedural upgrade in the system. It's nothing more than what we had before with the single difference that with the new system, each staff member knows exactly what they are responsible for allowing us to focus on one issue like a laser rather than being spread too thin over many. I'll go more in depth as to how this will all work in the rest of the post.

The departments

• Human resources
• Finances
• Content
• Management
• Advertisement and Recruitment
• Project management
• Technology

Human Resources
The human resources department is the public face of all staff relations on the website. Human resources will handle member suggestions, complaints, appeals and all communication with the staff in accordance to the rules. In addition, the human resources department will concentrate on seeing what members who do work on the board are happy and will work to make sure that what will make them happy is implemented. Finally, the human resources department will be responsible for ensuring that those who work on the website receive proper appreciation through use of creative means on the board.

Finances
The finances department will be the main financial arm to Neocodex. The main focus for the finances department will be to keep track of all of the financial data of Neocodex. Furthermore, all financial requests will go through the financial department to make sure that Neocodex has monetary ability for whatever items planned. The finance committee will also do small financial analysis to determine any trends with the data. Financial plans and budgets will be made a month in advance and posted to the board so that everyone can see the goals of that month as well as the results of last month. The finances department will also conduct fundraisers for the website in order to generate funds for use on the board.

Content
The content department will be in charge of the creation and upkeep of all content on the website. First and foremost, the content department will ensure that topics and guides on the board are up to date. This includes but isn't limited to board guides such as the ranks of Neocodex, board rules and pinned topics in all sections (the content department will not be making the new rules of the board but rather ensuring the rules are up to date). Obviously, the content department will be in close contact with all section leaders and will work in all sections to ensure that all topics have up to date information within them. The content department will also be the main group in charge of the creation of new content on Neocodex. They will then work closely with think tanks to get the ideas accomplished, delegating tasks to the members of the board who wish to give a lending hand. The content department may or may not be the ones doing the actual implementation of the ideas that they come up with.

Management
The management department will handle all member account related issues. The management department will handle the management of member accounts (i.e. name requests, IP lockouts, promotions, demotions, etc.), manage forum permissions and settings, and will be responsible for the training of all new moderators and super moderators. The department will be responsible for coming up with new and innovative ways to train new super moderators and moderators. Furthermore, the department will be responsible for the proper understanding of the rules and policies on Neocodex. The methods to achieve this is up to the department itself but one way to go about it is to give regular reminders of board policies and possible scenarios on the board to ensure that the entire staff has proper understanding of the rules and policies.

Advertisement and Recruitment
The advertisement and recruitment department will be responsible for organizing ways to introduce the web site to public so that the reputation and member base of the site can grow. It will also be responsible for constant communication with the members to identify special events that the Neocodex community can benefit from (i.e. decoder, programming, etc.). Also, the department will be responsible for coming up with benefits and perks for the different user groups and will work to get them implemented into the Neocodex system. This department is also in charge of recruiting new members and researching ways to introduce incentives for attracting members. The department will also be conducting surveys on the general public to see the feelings of the Neocodex members. A small survey monthly or bi-monthly will be good. Finally, the department will be responsible for following up with members who have left the boards in an attempt to bring them back and have them active. Lastly, the advertisement and recruitment department will be responsible for actively searching for affiliations on the Internet for Neocodex.

Project Management
The project management department will be responsible for coordinating various projects within the site. It will work very closely with the content department to ensure that the ideas which come out of it are implemented correctly. This department is mainly a organizational department which will delegate tasks to members on the board who wish to lend a helping hand or use staff manpower in order to complete tasks which are in the pipeline. Essentially the project management department will keep track of the progress of all ongoing projects on Neocodex, set task deadlines, divide up the project to many different people and assemble the work done by the individual into the large final product at the end. The project management department will also be responsible for the regular updates to the administration on the progress of each individual project. This will most likely be done in a constantly up to date page detailing each project that is in progress. The project management department will work very closely with think tanks to make things happen.

Technology
The technology department will be in charge of ensuring all Neocodex technology (forums, codex checks, etc.) is working correctly. They will regularly perform updates to these technologies such as forum software upgrades and ensure that the forum is fun and usable for everyone. The technology department will be responsible for the design of the forum (forum and group permissions set up, software design, etc.) and all running software within the site. The technology department will also make sure that the site's SEO is at an adequate level for the site.

Again, this system is nothing new but rather just a formalization of the infrastructure we had before. It should help in getting things done faster on the board once it is fully implemented and working. The staff is already under way in changing towards this new system and it will also change how we hire new moderators for the better (more on that later).

For future reference, I've also posted a copy with some extra information in the board guides area. Please check there as well.

If I've missed some Neocodex responsibility in what the departments of the staff cover, then please let me know and I'll find a department which can take on that responsibility.

I just wanted to tell you guys about this since I was so excited myself. Let me know what you think .

[Frizzle]

Just a quick note, April Fools day was like a week ago.

[Oaken]

Just a quick note, April Fools day was like a week ago.

Always the pessimist

Sounds great Hydrogen. Having things more organised can only help Codex in the long run.

[Silk]

I guess it's worth a shot, but to me it sounds like we're turning into a company.

Well I've already given my view on the issue over MSN

What's the point in posting then?

It's kinda like saying:
"Oooh! I just remembered something"
"What?"
"Sorry, it's a secret"

[Cataliste]

Did I get another promotion yet?

[Frizzle]

Always the pessimist

Sounds great Hydrogen. Having things more organised can only help Codex in the long run.

Always the brown noser

[Lawivido]

Did I get another promotion yet?

You are undeserving.

Sounds good Hydro. Good luck with it. :]

[dolphinbomb]

So, is there any reason you're trying to turn a small non-profit neopets forum to be run like some kind of business or corporation?

I guarantee that if you list this as "work experience" on a resume, employers will laugh at you.

I personally don't see this helping much to "help things flow again," seeing as how you've been promising new and exciting things for a good year now, at least. Perhaps the problems lie within the staff themselves, and not within the structure of the site.

Edited by dolphinbomb, 08 April 2008 - 12:24 PM.

[Oaken]

Always the brown noser

A typical reply by a pessimist to that of an optimist

[Frizzle]

A typical reply by a pessimist to that of an optimist

You've been put on the ignore list until you buck up your ideas. Sorry but you had your chance and blew it and only have yourself to blame.

[Oaken]

You've been put on the ignore list until you buck up your ideas. Sorry but you had your chance and blew it and only have yourself to blame.

Oh...dear god....no

[Hydrogen]

Well I've already given my view on the issue over MSN

Which is? Could you remind me again?

I guess it's worth a shot, but to me it sounds like we're turning into a company.

While it may be similar to how a company is set up, I like to think that there are organizational reasons to having companies set up that way. Non-profit charities are also organized in a similar way. But just because we are moving towards more organization within the staff doesn't mean that we are turning into a company. Furthermore, there is some sort of stigma that comes along with mentioning that we are becoming more like a company. I don't quite understand why that is as this only shows that we are becoming more organized allowing members of staff to focus better on projects and have everyone within staff understand who is to handle what.

So, is there any reason you're trying to turn a small non-profit neopets forum to be run like some kind of business or corporation?

I guarantee that if you list this as "work experience" on a resume, employers will laugh at you.

I personally don't see this helping much to "help things flow again," seeing as how you've been promising new and exciting things for a good year now, at least. Perhaps the problems lie within the staff themselves, and not within the structure of the site.

I answered the first part of your question in my original post and in response to Zulfi as well. I don't feel like retyping it so please look there . Also, if anyone was thinking of listing Neocodex as work experience, it probably would look weird but it's all about transferrable skills. Regardless of that fact, it's most definitely not work experience as at the end of the day this is just a website but as I said before, our website is ever expanding and we need to set up the infrastructure so that we can take care of all the things we need to take care of.

One of the major problems as to why we have not been able to complete things is that we have been spread too thin. We as a staff and website need to learn how to push lower priority projects back to make way for the higher priority projects. This is just one step towards having a multi-faceted staff working on multiple projects at once.

In any case, I just wanted to inform you guys of this . It really doesn't affect the public as much but I thought you may want to know at least a little about it .

[ToxicS]

Sounds good. It'll be interesting to see who makes the new tags for the different sections of staff

[Cory]

Sounds good. It'll be interesting to see who makes the new tags for the different sections of staff

There is currently no plans to do so.

[Sweeney]

Sounds good. It'll be interesting to see who makes the new tags for the different sections of staff

I don't think there'll be any new tags

Damn you Cory
*shakes fist*

[ShadowLink64]

So, is there any reason you're trying to turn a small non-profit neopets forum to be run like some kind of business or corporation?

I guarantee that if you list this as "work experience" on a resume, employers will laugh at you.

I personally don't see this helping much to "help things flow again," seeing as how you've been promising new and exciting things for a good year now, at least. Perhaps the problems lie within the staff themselves, and not within the structure of the site.

I fail to see how this is going to be a bad thing. If anything, it's going to make the moderators work on the site more, since not much is being done. It may look like some business or corporation or whatever with the formal lingo, but at the end of the day, I'm still going to be ShadowLink64 and the same one that's been here for four years. I could probably say the same about Hydro too since I don't think he's doing this to put on a resume or anything, but rather it's just another approach we want to try out to see if stuff can get done. I can say for sure that in the last year or so, work has been slowly crawling to a standstill and so I think this might do some good. Everyone was complaining about how the staff was inefficient and not structured enough.

I don't think implementing this will sacrifice any part of our original identity, and if anything, it will just make things more productive. Just so long as everyone's ego doesn't float to their heads with the departments, we can still remain a community and get shit done at the same time.

[ShadowLink64]

I think that's his point It's just a Neopets community, we'll get stuff done whenever. The main reason people come is to chat, talk, hang out, learn, etc. Least that's the way it is for me. Trying to run it like a business (e.g get stuff done) gives a static feel to a rather dynamic site.

Well sure, I'm totally a fan of the whole laid back attitude when it comes to doing work. I'm not suggesting that with these departments, we treat it like a day job. This is more just to keep things organized and so at least some member of staff (whether it be an admin or not) is handling different aspects of the site. A lot of people are not satisfied with lack of upkeep and the lack of new innovation on the site and would like to see the community more active again, like it was in the past. In order to do this, staff need to be around more and actually doing stuff, so why not designate tasks to them that they enjoy doing, in the form of departments? That way, each staff member has a 'niche' I guess.

Also, when I mean get shit done, I don't mean just expanding and all that. It takes a lot of effort just to maintain the community too, as in, supervise the moderators, answer questions and concerns with members, handle IP lockouts, handle suggestions.. all that stuff. The daily day-to-day work of the board is a large part of this, and unfortunately, the admins cannot do it on their own like it has been done in the past (unless of course, you remove school from my life, but that only happens in the summer time ).

But for new resources, I'll take your example of learning new things by talking about learning how to program. You need resources and others who know these things to do this, right? Plenty of our resources worked for us in the past, but now our programming area is full of source code that is outdated or is just irrelevant, and somebody needs to be doing work to these areas. There's also a lack of programmers around these parts (or at least compared to the amount of demand we had in the past, no offense to our current veterans ;P). People just don't want to stay to program because we are not giving them enough incentive to. Building programming resources is something that really needs to be done.

[illicit]

I think it's a good idea

Good luck with it anyhow, I'm interested in seeing how this turns out =)

[ShadowLink64]

While I can accept the part about people wanting the community to be active again, a key point you made was like it was before. I think maybe we ought to look back at why we were so active before, and don't give the excuse that it's because Neopets was popular. I think we need to look at what we did before and compare it to what we're doing now because obviously it's not working too well. I believe over time whether it be the development of multiple rules, the introduction of some not so good staff, or even too much stuff, that Codex has become a lot stricter than it was two years ago, when it was active. Hope you understand my point.

Yeah, I understand that the circumstances of the site now are a bit different than they were in the past. We have new staff, a new member base, and even new interpretations of rules. While I still believe that we can work out whatever differences there are between the members and the staff, we're definitely going to have to examine the rules a bit and see what has worked historically, and what has been stretched over time. Perhaps we can use the input of some older members and some newer ones too and see what chances need to be done. I'll have more time to work on this later though, these are just some of my thoughts that I wanted to throw out there.

My example of looking at the old codex applies to this too. Remember quite a while back when the programming area was in the same stage it is now? Hardly anyone active, the last programmer promotion hadn't been since like the beginning of codex. We had this idea (I can't remember it now) to revamp the area starting with promotions and several other modifications and lone and behold a few months later and the section is buzzing with activity. What ever we did there worked, and I think we can learn from that and work to get it back in it's prime state.

Perhaps we can sneak in recruitment in there too? The idea that I was using as a base was that we build up our resources a bit so that programmers will be compelled to stay on the site for the reason that there is knowledge to be had. I'm not too sure if promotions will do much this time around since there aren't too many people to promote. I'd probably be more comfortable promoting people if we have what it takes to attract more programmers.

I think it's a good idea

Good luck with it anyhow, I'm interested in seeing how this turns out =)

Me too.

[Hydrogen]

One of the main points that Alias brought up was how we used to be less strict. This is something I'm going to be personally working on in the future. This departmental setup will allow other staff to handle the problems that go on on the site while giving me time to work on easing the rules up and such. If you want to think about it this way, codex has seen the effects of lobbying.

Another important point that Alias brought up was the fact that two years ago we were active because we had a strong neopets footing. We have fallen into the trap of feeling that we are the best and so we no longer need to work as much. That coupled with the fact that we have somehow gotten obsessed with creating board modifications for everything slows things down to a crawl as every theoretically good idea is waiting upon some board modification. I'm going to move the board and staff away from this philosophy and get back to working on cool neopets stuff. Once we have neopets great and self sustaining, we can work on other games. Hear it now then that for the majority of the other games we support in the form of a section for it, no real work will be done until we can finish what we started on Neopets.

[Hydrogen]

See, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Tell us then, what would you have us do differently? I'm begging to know exactly what we can do that will make you say 'good thinking, that will be good for the site' without someone else accusing that person of brown-nosing.

To me, this allows people to focus on the areas they are better at, without fear of other areas being left behind, because those are being handled.
I chose content department because that's where I feel I can do really well in compared to some of the other areas.
And for the record, no this does not involve telling the admins a couple ideas for the neopets section. That's an aspect of it of course since that is our main focus, but certainly not the only part.

Kitsune brings up a good point. This allows the staff to focus on what they are individually good at allowing us to work as a team to bring out a better product. Somehow, Neocodex has evolved into something where we need to be coming out with something new all the time, where it doesn't have to be that way. But if it is, then it's cool.

In any case, I'm not very good at everything and I have areas where I shine. This allows me to concentrate on those areas where I really shine and let someone else take the areas where I don't shine.

Really, it's the most obvious method to choose but I think people's frustrations are deeper than just an idea. While it may seem empty to you, I'll work on changing that.

[Tyler.]

If no one worked before,

what's to say they're gonna work now just because they're in a certain area? Didn't they have the choice to only work on things they feel comfortable with BEFORE this "revamp"?

[Tyler.]

Ange, out of this I definitely see a lot of "Staff isnt' working on stuff".

And, I'm saying that I'm sure you guys weren't being forced to work on everything at once. You still could see if there was something you could do, and if there was, do it.

Now you're just being told that you can only work on certain things, instead of doing it yourself.

So, if it wasn't being worked on before, I don't think this'll help.

I fail to see how this is going to be a bad thing. If anything, it's going to make the moderators work on the site more, since not much is being done. It may look like some business or corporation or whatever with the formal lingo, but at the end of the day, I'm still going to be ShadowLink64 and the same one that's been here for four years. I could probably say the same about Hydro too since I don't think he's doing this to put on a resume or anything, but rather it's just another approach we want to try out to see if stuff can get done. I can say for sure that in the last year or so, work has been slowly crawling to a standstill and so I think this might do some good. Everyone was complaining about how the staff was inefficient and not structured enough.

I don't think implementing this will sacrifice any part of our original identity, and if anything, it will just make things more productive. Just so long as everyone's ego doesn't float to their heads with the departments, we can still remain a community and get shit done at the same time.

Well sure, I'm totally a fan of the whole laid back attitude when it comes to doing work. I'm not suggesting that with these departments, we treat it like a day job. This is more just to keep things organized and so at least some member of staff (whether it be an admin or not) is handling different aspects of the site. A lot of people are not satisfied with lack of upkeep and the lack of new innovation on the site and would like to see the community more active again, like it was in the past. In order to do this, staff need to be around more and actually doing stuff, so why not designate tasks to them that they enjoy doing, in the form of departments? That way, each staff member has a 'niche' I guess.

Another important point that Alias brought up was the fact that two years ago we were active because we had a strong neopets footing. We have fallen into the trap of feeling that we are the best and so we no longer need to work as much. That coupled with the fact that we have somehow gotten obsessed with creating board modifications for everything slows things down to a crawl as every theoretically good idea is waiting upon some board modification. I'm going to move the board and staff away from this philosophy and get back to working on cool neopets stuff. Once we have neopets great and self sustaining, we can work on other games. Hear it now then that for the majority of the other games we support in the form of a section for it, no real work will be done until we can finish what we started on Neopets.

[ShadowLink64]

If no one worked before,

what's to say they're gonna work now just because they're in a certain area? Didn't they have the choice to only work on things they feel comfortable with BEFORE this "revamp"?

Before, it was mostly the responsibilities of the administrators to get stuff done. As you can plainly see, I'm not as active anymore as I used to be and same goes for the rest of the admins. Therefore, we needed some kind of system that would put the rest of the staff in charge of various parts of the site to reduce the amount of our workload. Basically, the department can do all of the prep work for a certain task (whatever it is), and all the admins really have to do is give it approval or suggest something else. Before this came out, we really didn't have an "efficient" way of allocating this work, and most of it basically rested on the shoulders of the admins.

What I am saying is that it worked well in the past, but there's no denying that we are now much busier with other things and have less time for Neocodex. There's not much we can do about it though.

Ange, out of this I definitely see a lot of "Staff isnt' working on stuff".

Mostly because these new things and the upkeep depended on the admins. This is partly to remove dependance on the admins so things can still happen in our absence.

So, if it wasn't being worked on before, I don't think this'll help.

Nobody said this is going to definitely work. It's worth a shot though, right? If its not, then you should suggest something better because we're only trying to help things.

[zpoy]

Sounds great. I'd love to help.