h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It upset me enough to make me resign.

I would come on to hootoo and spend on average 2 hours every 2 days ACEing. (I took every other day off) I spoke to Natalie about it specifically and what the situation was. After a while I couldn't take it any more and gave up.

New Aces are enthusiastic and get on with it, then I think they too get fed up with it and ease off. Then more are recruited and the same thing happens.

Creating new Aces will help keep the list down for a while and then once their feet are firmly under the table they will ease up on it. It is only natural that any original enthusiasm will wane, but when the general attitude is 'you don't have to welcome' to be an ACE then it is hard to keep momentum going.

Here's the (boring ) statistics I promised.

The relevance being, that we've been told there's enough of us to keep the newbie list down.

There are 84 ACEs on the list, of those 84:

46 are not subscribed to the 'ACEs Home Page'

The relivance being: Over half the ACEs do not see calls for help with newbie list, and miss conversations such as this one.

8 of those listed have not posted this year, and a further 12 have not posted for over a month.

The relivance being: That if it's because of the amount of ACEs that we can't recruit new ones, some of those can be contacted by Italics and taken off the list.

Emmily

All ACEs should subscribe to this page, true, but they should be checking the New Users list anyway! Why should people have to post messages asking for help?

In the other volunteer schemes, Scouts have to make three picks and sub-eds have to edit at least a batch per month, so why can't there be a rule stating that ACES have to welcome x amount a month - AND subscribe to the help forums and carry on with the other ACEly duties.

"The relivance being: Over half the ACEs do not see calls for help with newbie list, and miss conversations such as this one."

And more annoyingly is the fact that I posted that very point on the aceforum asking people to make sure they are!!

(I am particularly interestd in this thread as I had thought about revolunteering, as well as it being the reason I quit.)

Amy, I nearly resigned for the same reason as Mort, (my partner talked me out of it) I took a break, and then stayed 'in the back seat' for a while, I'm glad now that I didn't resign.

It's not so much that some ACEs do lots and some do few, it's more that some don't do *any* Welcoming at all. And then when you mention this in the aceforum, you get replies like - 'we don't do the welcoming bit, we do other ACEy things instead' - but, those of us that do the welcoming do those other things too.

It does get very frustrating.

Emmily

...make sure that they are subscribed to the aces homepages that should be !

It does indeed get frustrating sometimes Emmily, but at least those of us who do take our duties a bit more seriously can take comfort in that

ford...

If they dont take it serious they realy shouldnt have the Ace badge you could argue that yes its a *volunteer* scheem but there are duties that need to be done as well not just passing the test geting it then picking the bits you like or that dont boar the out of you as some clearly are doing

But that's exactly what I've been saying all along

and the point i weas trying to make

So, we're all agreed that welcoming ought to be only one part of being an Ace, and that welcoming shouldn't be done by so few that it becomes tedious and mechanical. There's a concensus that being an Ace involves welcoming *and* other responsible activities, and not just one or the other.

Whoami?

yep, I reckon that about sums it up Whoami

But, there is so few of us in this conversation, it's not us that have a problem with our responsibilities.

Emmily

Yup, I'm with that. I think with a little fine tuning the ACE scheme can be made into a great machine

Fords, methink Intern got you mixed up with AMy The Ant.

I think the concensus goes beyond that. I think for this debate to have been any use we must all agree to start putting minds into motion through the guidelines defined by Whoami:


1) Preparation / Contacting Italics.
2) Discussion on aceforum with Aces and Italics.
3) Presentation of ideas onsite and subsequent discussion.
4) Second discussion on aceforum.
5) Some people to carfeully summarise the proceedings briefly and with minimum possible bias.
6) Presentation of ideas back to Italics.

I may be going away for a week tomorrow. So don't get too carried away as I'd like to put some of my idea forward again. Now that we for the most part have agreed that reform is needed. Despite what Amy the Ant says [which I feel is coming from her Guru perspective rather than that of an ACE] that culling out the group to make room for new ACEs is the way to go. Besides Jim had already expressed an interest in reducing ACE numbers.

I would have thought a italic might have poped in before now its been going a few days this thread??

They're probably lurking

yeh i might have a look see if there subscribed