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Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 41

Mrs Zen

PS - and this is a cross-post, not even slightly spam-like:

Can I pat the focus of this conversation gently in the direction of engaging with the community, both during the change and after it?

I need something on that by midday Saturday, midday Sunday at the latest. (I can potentially pick the bones out of threads myself, but it's obviously easier if I don't have to).

We do need to think about engaging with the web, but that's not quite as urgent.

I now return you to your original programming.


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the Community

Post 42

Haragai

> Can I pat the focus of this conversation gently in the direction of engaging with the community, both during the change and after it? <

So here we are at the subject that project managers lovingly call 'Change Management' and spent countless hours talking about.

The three phases Pre-change, Transition and Post-change that influence the engagement of the Community need to be adressed.

The most important thing to do in every phase is to Inform, Inform, Inform the community and I think we have got that bit covered quite well but maybe not completely.
While it is nigh impossible to reach every Researcher of h2g2 because some are dormant for a while and others have smiley - elvis'd the regulars are by now quite aware of what the h2g2c3 is doing. The visitors drawn here by chance/Google or by the covering in the online media may have gotten the message and are maybe a little shy of registering because the BBC is disposing of h2g2 and could be watching from the wings.

In engaging the Community we need to focus our efforts on the Researchers we know and hope that the visitors will tag along as we move.

As part of the "Declaration of Independance" we need to draw up a plan to make the transition as short and painless as possible for the Researchers so here goes with some suggestions:

1. Instate a 'Transition Team' that will provide support and instructions to the Researchers that may have trouble during and after the move and advertise this and make them the single point of contact for the transition during that period. This would include members of the h2g2 Community Consortium Committee as they are the ones 'in the know' but their role could be limited to advisory / oracle.

2. Convince the BBC, and the new owner if other than h2g2c2, to send out a mass mailing to all Researchers with a message that we are going to move at a certain date, what to expect and where to go for support/help.
This message has to be repeated prominently on the Front Page and stay there till after the transition.

3. When the time comes to move house we will be fairly certain as to what we can expect in the way of downtime, changes and painpoints for the Researchers. The downtime most certainly will influence/restrict the functionality of h2g2 but the site could still be accessible/readable whilst posting and writing Entries will be suspended for as short a period as we can manage.
In the mean time we have to keep the Researchers informed about the state of affairs by way of a 'blog' on the Front Page.

4. Plan a 'Grand Re-Opening Event' on site after the transition where we can swap war stories and can evaluate what's been done and can tell one and all how we love the all-new all-dancing shiny new house. This would also kick off the Showcase section of h2g2. Let's have some virtual drinks, toasts, garlands and bells and whistles. Oh, and online media coverage of the festivities would help as well.



Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the Community

Post 43

Mrs Zen

Wow! That's the Formal Version. smiley - bigeyes

Now... anyone got anything left field and hoopy for froods who know where their towels are? smiley - towel I want Yin and I Yang.....


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the Community

Post 44

Haragai

Well... Ask a serious question...


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the Community

Post 45

Haragai

And I just found this one : A82647165 "h2g2 Support Society".
AAArrrrggh they are scanning my brainz!


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 46

Witty Moniker

What's wrong with ACE? It stands for Assistant Community Editor and fell under the jurisdiction of the Community Editor back when we actually had one. Has something happened to taint the title?


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 47

paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant

Hi, Witty Moniker. The newbie might not immediately catch on to the fact that ACE is a clever acronym for "Assistant Community Editor," and will probably relate more to "Ace," who is someone very adept who can lead them through the maze. I'm not sure whether our goal should be to find a friendly, endearing alternate to the name we give the Assistant Community Editor, or whether we should focus on tweaking the ways in which he/she works. All that is certain right now is that relatively few newbies come back regularly. If we never hear from the newbies again no matter what we try, we can't even gather data from them for a survey.


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 48

Vip

Firstly, we don't have Editors any more. The Assistant Community part is OK, although they are less like Assistants and more like the main drivers (unless we get taken over by someone who can pay for staff).

ACE is OK, I just wonder if there isn't something more striaghtforward, as introducing yourself as an "Assistant Community Editor, known as an ACE" isn a bit wordy.

I'm not saying the name must definitely change, but I think it's worth looking at seriously to make sure we can't come up with anything better. smiley - ok If we can't, we can then be happy that ACE is the best title and move forward.

smiley - fairy


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 49

paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant

Hi, Vip.

Correct me if I've missed something that changed when I wasn't looking, but I *thought* our plan was to have elected editors. They would be volunteers, but they would powers conferred upon them by the community. What am I missing here?


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 50

Mrs Zen

We've been concentrating on processes, and you are right Paul, the editors will be elected.

That said, I think we should acknowledge the scale of the change we are facing and that the Editors were TDV and BBC employees by calling the new ones something like "Publishers" not "Editors". The Editors, you see, will have gone out to lunch....

B


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 51

Vip

Possibly it's just the term 'editor' that is confusing. I seem to remember it was agreed that we would drop the term to avoid confusion with the old, BBC role and the post-BBC volunteer role.

Curators will have editing rights to Entries.
Publishers will oversee the whole process and make sure it gets done.

Does that help?


smiley - fairy


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 52

8584330

It's not confusing. It is a very good word, a good job description, and not nearly as confusing as curator, which makes me think of a museum full of dead animals and bones.

If we are a live writing site, we should use writing language so that writers can feel at home here. I thought we wanted to attract writers.


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 53

Mrs Zen

I'm uneasy about the word "curator" but I hesitated to say so because I'm not invovled in the writing processes these days.


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 54

8584330

Well, I am, and honestly I don't want to have to wear a magic decoder ring to translate h2g2-site specific language. Sorry about the rant but we have to think about the newbies and the alienating process of excluding them by using our own special language.

Yes of course some site-specific jargon always occurs but let us honestly call things what they actually are as best we can to avoid confusion. We call it an 'editorial process' not a 'curatorial process' so we have editors not curators.

Even Douglas Adams had an editor. Are we too proud?


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 55

Vip

Hurrah! Some opinions! I was starting to think that nobody was reading anything I'd written. smiley - biggrin Seriously, this is the sort of debate I was starting be afraid we'd never have.

Do you mind if we shift this specific topic - that of volunteers - over to A82661051, the Volunteer Page of Magrethea? Thanks. smiley - smiley

smiley - fairy


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 56

8584330

>>> Can I pat the focus of this conversation gently in the direction of engaging with the community, both during the change and after it?

I know this is going to sound really cheerleader-ish and I'm sorry about that, especially after having been the anti-cheerleader all the way through school and college. I've never really been a 'people person' but this is something that I just noticed really works in some weird way. The examples are from my experience with amateur community women's team sports.

Teams that appointed an Ombudman, a team member who volunteers to handle complaints, got a lot of complaints. Complaints from one team member about another, about the refs, about team management, etc.

One team that had especially bad morale appointed a Morale Officer, a team member who volunteers to raise morale. After a while, the team got almost no complaints. Even the fans were happier.

The idea of Morale Officer is now spreading through the league. A Morale Officer is usually someone particularly good at spotting problems before they start, early intervention, and baking, because apparently nothing raises morale quite as much among female amateur athletes as smiley - cake.

I bring this up because, since the Jan 24 disposal announcement, h2g2 community morale has been an issue. I don't know if this is a Volunteer thing or a Community Engagement thing.


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 57

Vip

I see that as part of the role of the new ACEs. They are the leaders of the Community, and morale is what keeps us coming back. They think of competitions, of rewards, of talking to people one on one, manage heated debates, that sort of thing.

It's both topics, I think (unfortunately). Happy to discuss this part here.

smiley - fairy


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 58

Magrathea

I've just realised that 2)Attracting and Retaining Researchers is pretty much what I wrote up last night in this document:
http://docs.google.com/document/d/1T_lxIk3W1toYtmeAd307qnJgzr8wErf2WlchuaHodwA/edit?authkey=CND_lbIN&hl=en#

I think it would be a good idea to keep it all in one place. Would you like to take this text and absorb as much of it as you need for your doc, or would you like to cut that section from yours?

smiley - fairy


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 59

8584330

Hmm...
Thinking...
Okay.

When I joined in 2007, I got Feisor's ACE greeting F7505349?thread=4238822

As you can see, there was some back-and-forth discussions. Somehow I got the idea that I *should* write for the Edited Guide, and I'm blaming 2legs for this, even if I didn't know him or about blaming him at the time. I remained unaware of the UnderGuide as anything but a retired experiment for quite some time. Yes, I'm sorry, that's actually what I thought.

I didn't read much of the Post smiley - thepost for a long time. It was just too cumbersome to navigate. (Yeah, I got over it, but navigation could be better in the future.)

I bumbled around h2g2, occasionally posting at the bottoms of entries that I liked, more often not, because I kept getting strange answers. Such as, 'So-n-so won't answer you, because he elvised a long time ago.'

Now, what is strange about this answer is not the use of 'elvis' as a verb, but the type of answer, which is to say, a dead-end.

Say instead, 'I'm glad you liked it. Here's another entry you may enjoy', or better 'If you like that one, here's a link to a club dedicated to [fill in the blank]' or better yet, 'I'm glad you like that entry, I visited that place once, it was lovely, and TeaDrinker* and I were just talking about that on this thread, won't you join the discussion?'

In other words, get the newbie INVOLVED in something. Don't let him wander around trying to find where the action is. TAKE him over to some action or POINT him to some action.

Ask someone who has ever done new student orientation at a University. They will tell you the secret to retention is to get the froshmen (freshmen) involved in a club or activity. Graduation rates are higher among people who joined an extra-curricular organization during their first term. Because when something bad happens, and in four years of university smiley - bluesmiley - brokenheartsmiley - ill is very likely, these students had friends for smiley - hugsmiley - cheerupsmiley - zensmiley - tea.

* Made up name


Magrathea's Journal - Engaging the rest of the web

Post 60

8584330

Are you talking to me? Yes, I can incorporate it.


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