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DISCLAIMER: This is long, really long. If you aren't going to read it, that's your prerogative. Please don't respond with some shitwitted sentiment regarding the length.
Now then, I had promised to expand upon some ideas I posted in qan's thread. That's what I'm doing here. By no means is this in a finished form. I most definitely want feedback. I'd love to see others contribute. Eventually, I'm going to write up as professional a proposal as I can muster and submit it to DoCk>, and perhaps some other upper staffers as well.
--- BEGIN COPY AND PASTE FROM MY WORD DOCUMENT ---
Original draft: Jason
Contributors:
Latest Revision: 1/02/05
Yeah, so basically these are my thoughts as to how we can fix some of the problems currently plaguing the staff of our beloved zone, SSCU Trench Wars. Not everything you will read herein came from me. I have passed my proposal around to various individuals whom I respect (the dudes listed as contributors directly above this passage), seeking their opinions and encouraging them to suggest any revisions they felt would improve the overall quality, clarity and cohesiveness of this document.
*** So I had this awesome table of contents/outline right here, but forum formatting is lacking, and it looks like shit. I've left it out so as not to confuse anyone. ***
SECTION I. – Structural Organization
I-a. Divide & Conquer
A tried and true method of attacking just about any sort of problem, a divide and conquer approach is exactly what the Trench Wars staff needs to consider. I had originally proposed the idea of committees, separate entities each responsible for a specific set of tasks. I still stand behind this idea; however I would like to amend it to some extent. Rather the committees, let’s use the word ‘divisions’. The Trench Wars staff needs to be separated into divisions. Here’s what I mean by that.
On-Call Division
First, you start off at the bottom. You have what I would like to dub the On-Call Division (OCD). The OCD is comprised of your ZH’s, ER’s and Mods. All of these staff members are on-call to answer your ?help and ?cheater calls, as well as host events. (Clever naming scheme, eh?)
ZH’s
I know that Epi has argued that ZH’s are, at present, useless, and I most certainly agree with him. This is why I feel that the use of RoboHelp needs to be severely cut back upon. The !tell command should be removed completely. Force your Zone Helpers to help! Require them to initiate one on one contact with the player base. RoboHelp should only send an automated response to a player in the event that there’s absolutely no one around to help, and the call has gone unanswered for a specified amount of time. Otherwise, ZH’s should be responsible for getting the job done.
ER’s
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. As far as I’m concerned, the premise behind this position is a solid one. I realize that laziness is a problem amongst ER’s, but I’ll get into that when I discuss evaluations later on in this document.
Mod’s
Again, as far as I’m concerned, the premise behind this position is a solid one. There are certainly problems with laziness and, of course, abuse, but I’ll get into that when I discuss evaluations later on in this document.
League Management Division
Running both TWD and TWL, as well as any other miscellaneous leagues that may come and go, should not be handled by any other division – i.e the rest of staff. It makes sense to separate out league staffers from other staffers. The leagues could, in fact, be considered a separate entity from the rest of the zone, could they not? So why aren’t they staffed by a separate group of people? We should have a League Management Division (LMD).
TWD Management
We should keep things the way they are now in the TWD department, more or less. Perhaps it would behoove us to stock this particular sub-division with just a few more operators than we currently have, but even still, I think our current number of ops, were they all to be as active as they should be, can handle the job.
TWL Management
We should have four, yes FOUR, operators in charge of TWL. Some may want to toss out the argument that “too many cooks can spoil the soup”, but I disagree. With only two ops, it’s far too easy to run into a situation in which you get a split opinion. It’s also far too easy for those two ops to fall behind on the workload, as there is a ton of shit to do in order to keep TWL afloat. (Biggest of ups to PUSH. Goddamn, he was amazing.) Yes, of course you can have the same situation arise between four people, but at the very least, you get more opinions (I don’t think four is too many, but rather just enough.) and more ways to divide up what has to be done. You also increase the likelihood that Joe Schmoe Player will be able to get in touch with an op when he/she needs to.
Working beneath the operators, we should have a team of league referees. These guys would be around solely to host TWL matches. That’s it. They wouldn’t be ER’s. They would be LR’s. I think that by having a group of people dedicated entirely to hosting TWL matches, and making sure we have a decent amount of them, we shan’t (what a funky word) ever have to worry about being short on hosts again.
Misc. Management
I only put this section in to cover all those leagues that aren’t TWD or TWL. Things like TWSBL and TWRC would fall into this category. The premise is the same here as it is in TWD/TWL. You would have ops and refs. It’s as simple as that.
Go-To Division
I call this the Go-To Division (GTD) because it would consist of the go-to guys. Here you would find those who are in charge of running the various other divisions and sub-divisions. Think of them as middle management, so to speak. I would say that the members of the GTD should be Smods, perhaps even some Sysops with limited power.
Division/Sub-Division Leaders
The best way for me to explain the GTD is to just jump right in with an example. Let’s look at the OCD. There are three sub-divisions of the OCD, those being ZH’s, ER’s and Mod’s. I say we have a “team leader” of sorts for each of those sub-divisions. So we would have a ZH Team Leader, an ER Team Leader and a Mod Team Leader. Each of these individuals would be responsible for overseeing their respectful sub-division. To carry the example further, let’s look at the ZH Team Leader. This person would be responsible for managing all of the zone’s ZH’s. He/She would conduct training, offer guidance, and so on and so forth.
Also to be found in the GTD would be the LMD operators, that is the TWD and TWL ops as well as the ops for any other miscellaneous leagues.
What do any of the staff members who belong to one of the various teams (be they a ZH, ER, LR or Mod) do if they have a question? What do they do if they need clarification on a rule? What do they do if they have ideas they’d like to be heard. They go-to the GTD. If you’re an ER and you don’t really know how to host an event, but you’d really like to give it a shot, well then you just go-to the GTD, most specifically your ER Team Leader, and you ask for help. Or what if you’re a ZH and you have an idea as to how we could improve TWD? Go-to the GTD, most specifically a TWD Op, and talk to them. (Now of course, one team leader may not be sufficient for those sub-divisions which may be quite large in size. You might want to have two, possibly three people overseeing all the ZH’s, same goes for the ER’s and Mod’s. That kind of thing is a detail that can be ironed out though.)
The GTD, as I have explained it thus far, seems to be a disparate group, one that doesn’t function as a single entity, but rather a switchboard of sorts. You go to the GTD, but then get switched over to the specific person you need to speak with. I would have the GTD carry an additional responsibility though. It would be responsible for acting as a liaison between individual members of the OCD and the upper echelons of staff, that is the Executive Division (which I will get to next). For instance, if a member of the OCD, let’s say an ER, really wants to get in touch with DoCk>, a honcho, he/she could relay his/her message through their team leader. This way you would keep the communication more streamlined, rather than having guy A talking to guy B who then talks to guy C who leaves a ?message for guy D asking him to speak with DoCk>. Yes, the GTD is a middle management, middle man of sorts. I think it’s a necessary body though. You wouldn’t simply want a bunch of different ER’s and/or ZH’s and/or Mod’s pestering the honchos from all different angles. That’s how things get messy in a hurry.
Now then, I had promised to expand upon some ideas I posted in qan's thread. That's what I'm doing here. By no means is this in a finished form. I most definitely want feedback. I'd love to see others contribute. Eventually, I'm going to write up as professional a proposal as I can muster and submit it to DoCk>, and perhaps some other upper staffers as well.
--- BEGIN COPY AND PASTE FROM MY WORD DOCUMENT ---
Original draft: Jason
Contributors:
Latest Revision: 1/02/05
Yeah, so basically these are my thoughts as to how we can fix some of the problems currently plaguing the staff of our beloved zone, SSCU Trench Wars. Not everything you will read herein came from me. I have passed my proposal around to various individuals whom I respect (the dudes listed as contributors directly above this passage), seeking their opinions and encouraging them to suggest any revisions they felt would improve the overall quality, clarity and cohesiveness of this document.
*** So I had this awesome table of contents/outline right here, but forum formatting is lacking, and it looks like shit. I've left it out so as not to confuse anyone. ***
SECTION I. – Structural Organization
I-a. Divide & Conquer
A tried and true method of attacking just about any sort of problem, a divide and conquer approach is exactly what the Trench Wars staff needs to consider. I had originally proposed the idea of committees, separate entities each responsible for a specific set of tasks. I still stand behind this idea; however I would like to amend it to some extent. Rather the committees, let’s use the word ‘divisions’. The Trench Wars staff needs to be separated into divisions. Here’s what I mean by that.
On-Call Division
First, you start off at the bottom. You have what I would like to dub the On-Call Division (OCD). The OCD is comprised of your ZH’s, ER’s and Mods. All of these staff members are on-call to answer your ?help and ?cheater calls, as well as host events. (Clever naming scheme, eh?)
ZH’s
I know that Epi has argued that ZH’s are, at present, useless, and I most certainly agree with him. This is why I feel that the use of RoboHelp needs to be severely cut back upon. The !tell command should be removed completely. Force your Zone Helpers to help! Require them to initiate one on one contact with the player base. RoboHelp should only send an automated response to a player in the event that there’s absolutely no one around to help, and the call has gone unanswered for a specified amount of time. Otherwise, ZH’s should be responsible for getting the job done.
ER’s
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. As far as I’m concerned, the premise behind this position is a solid one. I realize that laziness is a problem amongst ER’s, but I’ll get into that when I discuss evaluations later on in this document.
Mod’s
Again, as far as I’m concerned, the premise behind this position is a solid one. There are certainly problems with laziness and, of course, abuse, but I’ll get into that when I discuss evaluations later on in this document.
League Management Division
Running both TWD and TWL, as well as any other miscellaneous leagues that may come and go, should not be handled by any other division – i.e the rest of staff. It makes sense to separate out league staffers from other staffers. The leagues could, in fact, be considered a separate entity from the rest of the zone, could they not? So why aren’t they staffed by a separate group of people? We should have a League Management Division (LMD).
TWD Management
We should keep things the way they are now in the TWD department, more or less. Perhaps it would behoove us to stock this particular sub-division with just a few more operators than we currently have, but even still, I think our current number of ops, were they all to be as active as they should be, can handle the job.
TWL Management
We should have four, yes FOUR, operators in charge of TWL. Some may want to toss out the argument that “too many cooks can spoil the soup”, but I disagree. With only two ops, it’s far too easy to run into a situation in which you get a split opinion. It’s also far too easy for those two ops to fall behind on the workload, as there is a ton of shit to do in order to keep TWL afloat. (Biggest of ups to PUSH. Goddamn, he was amazing.) Yes, of course you can have the same situation arise between four people, but at the very least, you get more opinions (I don’t think four is too many, but rather just enough.) and more ways to divide up what has to be done. You also increase the likelihood that Joe Schmoe Player will be able to get in touch with an op when he/she needs to.
Working beneath the operators, we should have a team of league referees. These guys would be around solely to host TWL matches. That’s it. They wouldn’t be ER’s. They would be LR’s. I think that by having a group of people dedicated entirely to hosting TWL matches, and making sure we have a decent amount of them, we shan’t (what a funky word) ever have to worry about being short on hosts again.
Misc. Management
I only put this section in to cover all those leagues that aren’t TWD or TWL. Things like TWSBL and TWRC would fall into this category. The premise is the same here as it is in TWD/TWL. You would have ops and refs. It’s as simple as that.
Go-To Division
I call this the Go-To Division (GTD) because it would consist of the go-to guys. Here you would find those who are in charge of running the various other divisions and sub-divisions. Think of them as middle management, so to speak. I would say that the members of the GTD should be Smods, perhaps even some Sysops with limited power.
Division/Sub-Division Leaders
The best way for me to explain the GTD is to just jump right in with an example. Let’s look at the OCD. There are three sub-divisions of the OCD, those being ZH’s, ER’s and Mod’s. I say we have a “team leader” of sorts for each of those sub-divisions. So we would have a ZH Team Leader, an ER Team Leader and a Mod Team Leader. Each of these individuals would be responsible for overseeing their respectful sub-division. To carry the example further, let’s look at the ZH Team Leader. This person would be responsible for managing all of the zone’s ZH’s. He/She would conduct training, offer guidance, and so on and so forth.
Also to be found in the GTD would be the LMD operators, that is the TWD and TWL ops as well as the ops for any other miscellaneous leagues.
What do any of the staff members who belong to one of the various teams (be they a ZH, ER, LR or Mod) do if they have a question? What do they do if they need clarification on a rule? What do they do if they have ideas they’d like to be heard. They go-to the GTD. If you’re an ER and you don’t really know how to host an event, but you’d really like to give it a shot, well then you just go-to the GTD, most specifically your ER Team Leader, and you ask for help. Or what if you’re a ZH and you have an idea as to how we could improve TWD? Go-to the GTD, most specifically a TWD Op, and talk to them. (Now of course, one team leader may not be sufficient for those sub-divisions which may be quite large in size. You might want to have two, possibly three people overseeing all the ZH’s, same goes for the ER’s and Mod’s. That kind of thing is a detail that can be ironed out though.)
The GTD, as I have explained it thus far, seems to be a disparate group, one that doesn’t function as a single entity, but rather a switchboard of sorts. You go to the GTD, but then get switched over to the specific person you need to speak with. I would have the GTD carry an additional responsibility though. It would be responsible for acting as a liaison between individual members of the OCD and the upper echelons of staff, that is the Executive Division (which I will get to next). For instance, if a member of the OCD, let’s say an ER, really wants to get in touch with DoCk>, a honcho, he/she could relay his/her message through their team leader. This way you would keep the communication more streamlined, rather than having guy A talking to guy B who then talks to guy C who leaves a ?message for guy D asking him to speak with DoCk>. Yes, the GTD is a middle management, middle man of sorts. I think it’s a necessary body though. You wouldn’t simply want a bunch of different ER’s and/or ZH’s and/or Mod’s pestering the honchos from all different angles. That’s how things get messy in a hurry.
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