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A new staff position just for you!

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Uh, no offense, but I thought this sounded pretty pointless from reading the initial announcement, and the "project" you posted just further solidifies this.

If something is so super urgent it needs immediate attention ASAP Zulu, then the chance of you seeing an email sent before any staff member notices a report, or any online staff notices an attempt at reaching them through the forum, or any staff member currently on IRC notices that someone needs the attention of someone with power, is almost non-existant.

As for the mailing list, it's probably useful, but it's not like it has something to do with the "position". You probably suggested the idea, you probably volunteered to be the email-me-to-be-added-to-the-list person, but... what? Could you not have done this without any such position? What purpose is this position supposed to serve?
 
Dangit, I thought it said I just received a new staff position.
Anyway, congrats, Musashi! Good luck on your new job! :)
 
No offense, Adamant, but I strongly suspect you have no idea of the challenges involved in running a staff with nearly 100 people, which Bulbagarden is at now.

With that many people "some mod will catch it" is a bad idea. Yeah, some mod probably will. And then he's going to ask one admin without too much of an idea which one to ask, and the problem will be solved one way...then the next time something similar come up, another mod will ask another admin and solve the problem another way and we'll wind up with everyone being confused as to what we're supposed to do.

This is why, instead, we have a few people at the top who clearly are in charge of this or that - Musashi in charge of user experience, Evil Figment in charge of rules, etc. This means that when a problem comes up, the staff knows which admin to ask, and once that admin has decided something. It tends to result in much more uniform answers to problems, and much more effective general policies. Organization like this is key to becoming a good and successful community like Bulbagarden strives to be.

Central control also means someone to take charge of discussions on a problem, and to stop ideas from getting out of hands (which can often happen with 100 people talking). Very useful.
 
Thank you, that clarifies the purpose of the position a bit further. Your explanation puts it as a sub-manager focusing on a specific field, though, an internal position, while the original post makes it come across as some sort of... weird forum camp counselor... thing. The explanation you're giving makes it sound like a worthy position, yes, but it sure as hell doesn't have much more than the title in common with what's described in both this thread and Musashi's announcement.

Plus, well, the announcement still literally states "If there's something that you feels needs immediate staff attention, please e-mail me and I'll try and get back to you right away." Emailing Single Person X who may not see said email for half a day is not the best way to get the attention of this 100+ collective you're referring to.
 
It usually wont be close to "half a day". If I wasn't able to get at my mail that infrequently I wouldn't have started this. Most of the time I can respond pretty fast.
 
If that email pops in right after you go to bed, it's going to take 6 hours at the very least for you to see it. Probably more.
Seriously, the idea that mailing one particular person is supposed to get urgent shit noticed faster than posting a report everyone online can see, PMing all currently available mods, or popping onto IRC to see if someone's being active there right at that moment is supposed to speed things up makes incredibly little sense. Even if no one with notable power is available, if it's supposedly so urgent, surely the word can get around much faster if you alert people directly and get them to spread the word instead of waiting for Single Emailed Person to wake up and notice she has an email.
 
Well yeah, isn't that what the rule used to be before that backwards "if it's not urgent, alert whomever or post a report or something like always. If response is needed ASAP Zulu, email this one particular person who may notice the email in 5 hours if you're lucky" rule got introduced?

I mean, it's like saying "call 911 if it's a normal emergency. If it's super fucking urgent, call the police chief's home and hope he's there/awake/not on the phone. If no one answers, please keep trying until he does, or you die. Do not call 911"
 
This isn't a rule. And it's not like my e-mail has only one purpose. But since I'm on a lot, I thought it might be more helpful to the users if I gave them a more direct line. If you don't think it's helpful, then don't use it. It's just that simple.
 
Musashi said:
This isn't a rule. And it's not like my e-mail has only one purpose. But since I'm on a lot, I thought it might be more helpful to the users if I gave them a more direct line. If you don't think it's helpful, then don't use it. It's just that simple.
Click to expand...

This. The basic idea of this position is to have one person ultimately responsible for how users interact with Bulbagarden's forums and make sure that the interaction is as awesome as we can possibly make it. Musa decided it'd be cool to user her Bulba e-mail to interact with users and encourage more user-decision maker interaction. And I think that's cool.

Lots of the stuff Musashi is doing is little stuff that you might not notice without us saying it's happening consciously, like making sure stickys get reduced. But it's also stuff that really makes a difference in how users experience the site. Beyond that, it's stuff that we often have a hard time focusing on because it's easier to draw attention to flashy, big-picture projects. But the amount of day-to-day grind work needed to make this site successful is substantial. Musashi is already doing a lot of that grind work. And now we're just turning that work to be public-facing and giving it a little more prominence.

I think it's great.
 
What you're saying makes sense, yes, and it's not a bad idea to have a direct line like that. It's just... not at all what the announcement says.

If there's something that you feels needs immediate staff attention, please e-mail me and I'll try and get back to you right away. You should still report regular problems with the report button, but if you feel there's truly an emergency that needs the staff's immediate attention, (such as a suicide threat) please let me know.
Click to expand...

It's a miscommunication problem, plain and simple, no doubt caused by the replying staff having discussed this beforehand and being quite informed of what this position involves, but not having done all that great a job informing the users, getting the wrong idea across. It happens, and I definitely understand the concept much better after the clarification.
 
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