What makes Habbox.com part of Habbox?

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31-10-2010, 02:30 PM
Alex3213

What makes Habbox.com part of Habbox?

This is something I think should be picked up on, noteably it has but I still think forum is the centre of attention. Why though? This is www.habboxforum.com and the official site is www.habbox.com. I don't really think the excuse "it became forum orientated and now it's too hard to turn back" is acceptable and I still believe we should be making more of an effort for the Habbox site to be the main area of Habbox. I do know v6 is well on its way but the quality of things still needs to be brought up to scratch to be fair. I'm gonna see what I can say about what I think, as I don't do that often and sometimes it's nice to hear from different people once in a while (although I do post in feedback a fair bit but never really make large posts).

General

Halloween Skin

It's lovely to see that there is a Halloween Skin. I've been away so I don't know how long it has been on for, can someone enlighten me? It's not too "advanced" but I love it, it makes a nice change. Not fond of all the green but yeah, we'll leave it at that.

Item above Habbox Today

It's a good idea, I know it's been there since v5 (I think). What does annoy me, however, is that it's not noticeable enough! I never, ever see it. I think more people may join if they see it etc. but I think it needs to be easier to see I guess.

Habbox Today

I do take the blame for this as well because I was away but I still think it needs to be updated daily. I will try my best to do this on my day when it is my week but all of us dept. Managers need to do it (yes it's as if I'm writing this to Managers but I'm not, promise) so kudos to Martin and Dan who do it pretty much every week, as well as more sometimes.

Home

Above the navigation bars the word "Home" is there. Why?

News

Quality

Overall, the quality is reasonably good. Mrs.McCall, Haaaarry, Bolt660 and Nuxty to name a few are very good article writers but I think there are people who need to be picked up on. I won't name any names as that would just be rude but one article got changed (one of the team told me) and the quality is still awful. I think quality needs to be better BUT it's improving. In February it was a hell of a lot worse, so well done Martin for a splendid job. Well done Grig when he was Assistant and well done to the fabulous Senior News Reporters who do a great job in aiding Martin. A good exercise which could be done in Weekly Reports is taking a block of text from one of their articles and see if the News Reporter can identify the problems. I do think some news reporters forget to use a spell checker.

Categories

Can we have some figures on these please? Entertainment is doing alright, not as well as it had done if I'm purely honest but sport is quite a shame. I know that Sport would be difficult and I was all for it till I had no time to write news but in the last 2 pages, there are two news reporters writing the news and one very small article on the next. It's nice that it's not completely dead but it needs a boost again me thinks. Habbox looks scruffy, needs changing or removing- I don't like seeing articles from sierk and Xarea being copied exactly from the announcment.

Interviews

I've given this a section of its own for a reason. There has been no articles for 17 days and I thought they were going to try and do 3 a fortnight! It's a shame to be honest. In addition, 50% of the articles have been written by Martin and 37.5% written by people who have resigned (two news reporters and Garion). It needs a push as they were fun and interesting to read. There are plenty of people to interview and I think it would be nice that some of the new news reporters, or some of the old as well, should try to do this!

Image Quality

Some big images, some little. It's OK I guess but I don't like the headings, I think there's only been a couple but y'know.

Room Reviews

Heard that Martin was keen on starting this up again, go for it! Just make sure it's not dead like the interviews, as it were.

Overall

A lot better recently, well done Martin and the team as you keep the dept. arrive. It's also great that you're advertising Habbox things as well on the front page.

Habbox & Content Knitpicking

Staff List

(Assistant) Department Managers section has messed up. Also I've noticed a lot of clothes changes as well, not massively important. I think it could do with a revamp as it should be more personal in a way, I don't particularly like looking at the page.

Job Openings

Bit scruffy but does its job, is it up to date? I don't know really. Would be nice to see a "last updated". I think it is updated, though as Forum Mod is on there.

Charity Work

It looks so robotic with the "we raised..." "we raised...", make it unique and not so structured in the sense that you're repeating yourself but just changing X, Y and Z. I don't wanna say much really as it's so minor.

SPAG

Not perfect, have a quick check around the Habbox Section.

I've written probably around 1k words now and I'm tired and I have other things to do. I know i've got plenty of other sections to do but I'll build up on it during the day (in this thread).
31-10-2010, 03:08 PM
Judas

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex3213

News

Quality

Overall, the quality is reasonably good. Mrs.McCall, Haaaarry, Bolt660 and Nuxty to name a few are very good article writers but I think there are people who need to be picked up on. I won't name any names as that would just be rude but one article got changed (one of the team told me) and the quality is still awful. I think quality needs to be better BUT it's improving. In February it was a hell of a lot worse, so well done Martin for a splendid job. Well done Grig when he was Assistant and well done to the fabulous Senior News Reporters who do a great job in aiding Martin. A good exercise which could be done in Weekly Reports is taking a block of text from one of their articles and see if the News Reporter can identify the problems. I do think some news reporters forget to use a spell checker.

There will always be room for improvement in our articles, and like you said the quality is definitely on the up in general. I personally believe this is due to Charlie and I being promoted as Seniors, and everyday we are checking through every article making any improvements we see fit. The Senior position is definitely working as the progress of all reporters is carefully monitored and we have a strong team at the moment that is only getting better. I do agree that there are often silly spelling and grammar mistakes, which Charlie, Martin and I look out carefully for, but we as a team are getting better at preventing these mistakes.

Quote:

Categories

Can we have some figures on these please? Entertainment is doing alright, not as well as it had done if I'm purely honest but sport is quite a shame. I know that Sport would be difficult and I was all for it till I had no time to write news but in the last 2 pages, there are two news reporters writing the news and one very small article on the next. It's nice that it's not completely dead but it needs a boost again me thinks. Habbox looks scruffy, needs changing or removing- I don't like seeing articles from sierk and Xarea being copied exactly from the announcment.

I actually agree. However I do believe that Entertainment is a great section, which allows us to show of our writing more outside of Habbo related news. For example, read Mrs.McCall's X Factor review from yesterday, which is an absolutely fantastic article and brilliantly presented. The sports section, I'm not a fan of. Not enough members of the team are interested in it, therefore find it a chore to write for, so I can see this going sometime soon, and hopefully be replaced with something that's a bit more of a success.

Quote:

Interviews

I've given this a section of its own for a reason. There has been no articles for 17 days and I thought they were going to try and do 3 a fortnight! It's a shame to be honest. In addition, 50% of the articles have been written by Martin and 37.5% written by people who have resigned (two news reporters and Garion). It needs a push as they were fun and interesting to read. There are plenty of people to interview and I think it would be nice that some of the new news reporters, or some of the old as well, should try to do this!

Interviews were always going to be a tricky thing. 3 a fortnight was aiming a bit high I believe. We as reporters should definitely try and do more interviews I agree with you there, but we have a minimum (as you know) of articles to produce a week and interviews take a long time to arrange and produce. With us trying to keep the quality of our Habbo section (our main priority) up, I think that is the reason why Interviews have slipped of late.

Quote:

Image Quality

Some big images, some little. It's OK I guess but I don't like the headings, I think there's only been a couple but y'know.

The sizes of the images are carefully chosen to fit in with the article. The images now are a lot better than they used to be, and Charlie and I have been heavily focusing on them recently and making sure they are a good standard and there hasn't been as many poor images to deal with as there was say, a few months ago. What do you mean by the 'headings', by the way?

Quote:

Room Reviews

Heard that Martin was keen on starting this up again, go for it! Just make sure it's not dead like the interviews, as it were.

I personally think we should only bring this section back when we have everything else 100% on track, including Interviews and Sports. Like Interviews, room reviews are a big commitment so we should only start it when we perfect the others.

Quote:

Overall

A lot better recently, well done Martin and the team as you keep the dept. arrive. It's also great that you're advertising Habbox things as well on the front page.

Glad you read still Alex :D
31-10-2010, 03:16 PM
Alex3213

Quote:

Originally Posted by Haaaaarry

There will always be room for improvement in our articles, and like you said the quality is definitely on the up in general. I personally believe this is due to Charlie and I being promoted as Seniors, and everyday we are checking through every article making any improvements we see fit. The Senior position is definitely working as the progress of all reporters is carefully monitored and we have a strong team at the moment that is only getting better. I do agree that there are often silly spelling and grammar mistakes, which Charlie, Martin and I look out carefully for, but we as a team are getting better at preventing these mistakes.

Yes I agree, how does the mentoring system work by the way? You are a great team and I think the articles have got better as a whole and as you have been in the department longer you continue to strive with increasingly wonderful articles. That's been proved by other members of news too.

I actually agree. However I do believe that Entertainment is a great section, which allows us to show of our writing more outside of Habbo related news. For example, read Mrs.McCall's X Factor review from yesterday, which is an absolutely fantastic article and brilliantly presented. The sports section, I'm not a fan of. Not enough members of the team are interested in it, therefore find it a chore to write for, so I can see this going sometime soon, and hopefully be replaced with something that's a bit more of a success.

Tell, tell! Also, yes. Joey is a fantastic writer and well done on getting him on board.

Interviews were always going to be a tricky thing. 3 a fortnight was aiming a bit high I believe. We as reporters should definitely try and do more interviews I agree with you there, but we have a minimum (as you know) of articles to produce a week and interviews take a long time to arrange and produce. With us trying to keep the quality of our Habbo section (our main priority) up, I think that is the reason why Interviews have slipped of late.

I do agree but it doesn't have to be a one day thing! I spent a whole week doing it in little parts when interviewing David. In a way I'm just saying it is unfair on Martin and I think you should just get more brownie points for doing one. I agree, Habbo is priority and when I was staff I do know that some Habbo articles weren't tip top shape or being left over 72 hours after. How's it getting on now? I've been on holiday! :P

The sizes of the images are carefully chosen to fit in with the article. The images now are a lot better than they used to be, and Charlie and I have been heavily focusing on them recently and making sure they are a good standard and there hasn't been as many poor images to deal with as there was say, a few months ago. What do you mean by the 'headings', by the way?

Also agree with this, they've been a lot better. I still believe that some are too small or some aren't in the best place possible, though. A heading being a banner or just a font generator thing- it's probably to grab attention but I'm not a fan of them.

I personally think we should only bring this section back when we have everything else 100% on track, including Interviews and Sports. Like Interviews, room reviews are a big commitment so we should only start it when we perfect the others.

If sports is going then this should replace it, it could even be in pitch-ins from the public. Show the room, get one news reporter a week to write the introduction and then build it up with user comments. When I was a News Reporter and I wrote my Habbo articles, I tried to relate to the forum, for example "Mr-Trainor says these look rather exciting, but don't have much use". It's the same sort of thing. :)

Glad you read still Alex :D

As if I'd stop reading? :P

In bold!
31-10-2010, 03:29 PM
Mrs.McCall

I won't do a quote and reply thing but thanks for your nice comments. I really appreciate it.

I think the quality is on the up for sure and, in all fairness, newer reports take time to adapt and sometimes SPAG gets skipped accidentally. Like, for instance, my most recent X Factor review I had to edit 4/5 times due to problems with spelling and images.

The bringing back of Seniors is a great idea and it was one I really advocated when I was manager myself. It means there are two people keeping an eye on quality at all times and Harry and Charlie do a fantastic job. They sent PMs to reporters often to tell us what we did right and ideas to fix what was wrong. It's extremely helpful.

As for interviews, it does get a bit difficult because I know it's sometimes hard to find a good person to interview and make it something people want to read.

The sports section I did give feedback on when it first came out and I think both Sports and Entertainment are having a tough time. I think it's been a bit slow news wise recently. Like when the Liverpool takeover was happening it was easier to report. We can't report everything because then it would be reporting for the sake of it. We need to give users reports they want to read with an opinion that matters. I don't know exact plans for the future but I do know that Martin is somebody who is a great innovator and really stands in News' corner so I can't wait to see what's coming.
31-10-2010, 03:29 PM
xxMATTGxx

Quote:

Halloween Skin

It's lovely to see that there is a Halloween Skin. I've been away so I don't know how long it has been on for, can someone enlighten me? It's not too "advanced" but I love it, it makes a nice change. Not fond of all the green but yeah, we'll leave it at that.

Halloween Skin was put out live to the public near enough the same day as the forum skin, I think it was probably a day after. I quite like the colours that were used and I may as well like it since I'm the one who uploaded it all and made most of the changes to make sure it fitted correctly but thanks to HotelUser, Alkaz and I think maybe Con for helping out with this. It's not the most "amazing" Halloween type of layout you could ever have but it's quite effective and simple and looks good in my opinion.

Quote:

Item above Habbox Today

It's a good idea, I know it's been there since v5 (I think). What does annoy me, however, is that it's not noticeable enough! I never, ever see it. I think more people may join if they see it etc. but I think it needs to be easier to see I guess.

Are you on about the image above Habbox Today that is on a rotateor and changes between a number of images?

Example:

https://habbox.com/images/banners/smallforum.gif

Bit lost on what you actually mean with that one. :(

Quote:

Habbox Today

I do take the blame for this as well because I was away but I still think it needs to be updated daily. I will try my best to do this on my day when it is my week but all of us dept. Managers need to do it (yes it's as if I'm writing this to Managers but I'm not, promise) so kudos to Martin and Dan who do it pretty much every week, as well as more sometimes.

It does need to be made sure that managers do it on a daily basis and I'm sure Oli will clamp down on anyone who doesn't. It's a an important factor that needs to be updated to show what's going in the different Habbox departments.

Quote:

Home
Above the navigation bars the word "Home" is there. Why?

I have no idea why there is text there saying "Home" as it has no purpose what so ever, something I'll probably look into and get removed.

Quote:

Staff List

(Assistant) Department Managers section has messed up. Also I've noticed a lot of clothes changes as well, not massively important. I think it could do with a revamp as it should be more personal in a way, I don't particularly like looking at the page.

If you click "Staff List" under Habbox it will first show you the General Management Team if you give it a few minutes to load fully you will be able to see the complete staff list. I'm not sure what which parts are messed up, I gave it a quick look before posting back to this and couldn't see anything. Clothes? The images should be coming from Habbo directly and I've noticed they have changed according to certain users such as my habbo has the skin colour change with the added horns onto it. Maybe I'm missing the problems?

Quote:

Job Openings

Bit scruffy but does its job, is it up to date? I don't know really. Would be nice to see a "last updated". I think it is updated, though as Forum Mod is on there.

It should be up to date and I gave It quick look and it mentions the recent moderation applications, yay! Maybe it would be a nice idea to have the "Last Updated on XX/XX/XX" which will inform the users when it was last updated.

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Charity Work

It looks so robotic with the "we raised..." "we raised...", make it unique and not so structured in the sense that you're repeating yourself but just changing X, Y and Z. I don't wanna say much really as it's so minor.

I've just looked at the page and It does seem it could do with an update and have certain sentences changed so it isn't very repetitive.

SPAG

I'm guessing that is spelling and grammar? If so, there is probably mistakes on certain pages but I'm sure if you informed the correct people who are able to edit it they will do.
31-10-2010, 03:35 PM
Calvin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex3213

This is something I think should be picked up on, noteably it has but I still think forum is the centre of attention. Why though? This is www.habboxforum.com and the official site is www.habbox.com. I don't really think the excuse "it became forum orientated and now it's too hard to turn back" is acceptable and I still believe we should be making more of an effort for the Habbox site to be the main area of Habbox. I do know v6 is well on its way but the quality of things still needs to be brought up to scratch to be fair. I'm gonna see what I can say about what I think, as I don't do that often and sometimes it's nice to hear from different people once in a while (although I do post in feedback a fair bit but never really make large posts).

Yeah the forum and HabboxLive is more the center of attention and the site just seems "on it's own". The thing is that everything is on the forum such as Job Openings and people normally tell them the link to the thread instead of the Job Openings page on Habbox.com therefore Habbox is hardly advertised in most cases.

General

Halloween Skin

It's lovely to see that there is a Halloween Skin. I've been away so I don't know how long it has been on for, can someone enlighten me? It's not too "advanced" but I love it, it makes a nice change. Not fond of all the green but yeah, we'll leave it at that.

At first I wasn't sure whether we was getting a Halloween skin but it seems we did. I really like it aswell, big thanks to Connor (I think?) who designed it. :)

Item above Habbox Today

It's a good idea, I know it's been there since v5 (I think). What does annoy me, however, is that it's not noticeable enough! I never, ever see it. I think more people may join if they see it etc. but I think it needs to be easier to see I guess.

I agree, the banner needs to be a little bit bigger and put somewhere else more noticeable so more users would see them.

Habbox Today

I do take the blame for this as well because I was away but I still think it needs to be updated daily. I will try my best to do this on my day when it is my week but all of us dept. Managers need to do it (yes it's as if I'm writing this to Managers but I'm not, promise) so kudos to Martin and Dan who do it pretty much every week, as well as more sometimes.

I've never really checked Habbox Today but looking at it, it seems only certain departments are using it whereas other departments could.

Home

Above the navigation bars the word "Home" is there. Why?

That's a mini navigator, so if you go to a different page you can just click Home instead of going on the dropdown menu.

News

Quality

Overall, the quality is reasonably good. Mrs.McCall, Haaaarry, Bolt660 and Nuxty to name a few are very good article writers but I think there are people who need to be picked up on. I won't name any names as that would just be rude but one article got changed (one of the team told me) and the quality is still awful. I think quality needs to be better BUT it's improving. In February it was a hell of a lot worse, so well done Martin for a splendid job. Well done Grig when he was Assistant and well done to the fabulous Senior News Reporters who do a great job in aiding Martin. A good exercise which could be done in Weekly Reports is taking a block of text from one of their articles and see if the News Reporter can identify the problems. I do think some news reporters forget to use a spell checker.

I think News is doing pretty amazing. Martin is doing an excellent job along with the News Reporters. Perhaps an idea would be to have more of an opinion instead of just putting information that you would find from Habbo too.

Categories

Can we have some figures on these please? Entertainment is doing alright, not as well as it had done if I'm purely honest but sport is quite a shame. I know that Sport would be difficult and I was all for it till I had no time to write news but in the last 2 pages, there are two news reporters writing the news and one very small article on the next. It's nice that it's not completely dead but it needs a boost again me thinks. Habbox looks scruffy, needs changing or removing- I don't like seeing articles from sierk and Xarea being copied exactly from the announcment.

All categories except Habbox are doing great. I agree the Habbox section could be removed as I don't think anyone hardly uses it. And Xarea should be changed to Bolt.

Interviews

I've given this a section of its own for a reason. There has been no articles for 17 days and I thought they were going to try and do 3 a fortnight! It's a shame to be honest. In addition, 50% of the articles have been written by Martin and 37.5% written by people who have resigned (two news reporters and Garion). It needs a push as they were fun and interesting to read. There are plenty of people to interview and I think it would be nice that some of the new news reporters, or some of the old as well, should try to do this!

They should try and do more articles with other users instead of just staff, maybe Habbo staff. I'm sure more people would read it then.

Image Quality

Some big images, some little. It's OK I guess but I don't like the headings, I think there's only been a couple but y'know.

I remember when News used to use all the old bad quality JPEG images haha, but they're much better now.

Room Reviews

Heard that Martin was keen on starting this up again, go for it! Just make sure it's not dead like the interviews, as it were.

All my views explained in a previous feedback thread.

Overall

A lot better recently, well done Martin and the team as you keep the dept. arrive. It's also great that you're advertising Habbox things as well on the front page.

News has improved magnificently since Martin became the manager. It's actually worth read now! :)

Habbox & Content Knitpicking

Staff List

(Assistant) Department Managers section has messed up. Also I've noticed a lot of clothes changes as well, not massively important. I think it could do with a revamp as it should be more personal in a way, I don't particularly like looking at the page.

Should be fixed soon.

Job Openings

Bit scruffy but does its job, is it up to date? I don't know really. Would be nice to see a "last updated". I think it is updated, though as Forum Mod is on there.

Should be added soon.

Charity Work

It looks so robotic with the "we raised..." "we raised...", make it unique and not so structured in the sense that you're repeating yourself but just changing X, Y and Z. I don't wanna say much really as it's so minor.

Yeah, that page needs improving I think. I'll speak to the Content Designer.

SPAG

Not perfect, have a quick check around the Habbox Section.

I'll have a look.

I've written probably around 1k words now and I'm tired and I have other things to do. I know i've got plenty of other sections to do but I'll build up on it during the day (in this thread).

Views in red.
31-10-2010, 03:40 PM
Nuxty

Well Alex, I'll give some similar feedback to what Harry gave you - just regarding the news side of things!

Quote:

News

Quality

Overall, the quality is reasonably good. Mrs.McCall, Haaaarry, Bolt660 and Nuxty to name a few are very good article writers but I think there are people who need to be picked up on. I won't name any names as that would just be rude but one article got changed (one of the team told me) and the quality is still awful. I think quality needs to be better BUT it's improving. In February it was a hell of a lot worse, so well done Martin for a splendid job. Well done Grig when he was Assistant and well done to the fabulous Senior News Reporters who do a great job in aiding Martin. A good exercise which could be done in Weekly Reports is taking a block of text from one of their articles and see if the News Reporter can identify the problems. I do think some news reporters forget to use a spell checker.

This is always going to be a problem in my opinion but it is something we are willing to spend a lot of time on in order for it to improve. As Senior News Reporters, Harry and I focus around quality control. Martin is absolutely amazing as he helps us with this even though he has his management and moderation duties to tend to. Wherever we see problems, we try to correct them as soon as we possibly can. However a recent theory we have come up with is sending a personal message to the reporters highlighting the mistakes they've made in an article, we then like to see if they can solve these problems themselves as it is all about learning from your mistakes in order to make progress, on other occasions we correct the smaller mistakes for the reporter and inform them of the changes we've made. I can assure you though if you ever feel that any articles aren't up to the standards they should be then send a PM to either Martin, Harry or myself and we will happily have a look at it for you and make any changes or corrections. :)

So that's my first point sorted - Quality Control is our first priority.

Quote:

Categories

Can we have some figures on these please? Entertainment is doing alright, not as well as it had done if I'm purely honest but sport is quite a shame. I know that Sport would be difficult and I was all for it till I had no time to write news but in the last 2 pages, there are two news reporters writing the news and one very small article on the next. It's nice that it's not completely dead but it needs a boost again me thinks. Habbox looks scruffy, needs changing or removing- I don't like seeing articles from sierk and Xarea being copied exactly from the announcment.

Entertainment is something I am working on. I used to dedicate all my time to this section writing articles however now that I am in the Senior role I don't get to write for Entertainment as much as I would like though. Mrs.McCall has been doing some amazing X Factor work and it really is reading! I will be trying harder with the Entertainment section as it really is a great section and I wouldn't like to see it go from the site.

Sport on the other hand is still fairly new. We are trying to add more variety to the section but it is a matter of having reporters who are interested in the topic. You can see that Shockwave.2CC is very passionate about Leicester City, he is a great sport reporter and hopefully he will be able to variety his reports a little more so that they revolve around other teams and sports.

The Habbox Section I believe isn't really within our control. I think it is a feed from the announcements made on the forum targeted at those who go on the site but don't use or forums. This is however something else we could work on but this would be a decision that would have to go forward to Martin.

Quote:

Interviews

I've given this a section of its own for a reason. There has been no articles for 17 days and I thought they were going to try and do 3 a fortnight! It's a shame to be honest. In addition, 50% of the articles have been written by Martin and 37.5% written by people who have resigned (two news reporters and Garion). It needs a push as they were fun and interesting to read. There are plenty of people to interview and I think it would be nice that some of the new news reporters, or some of the old as well, should try to do this!

I agree that Interviews have been fairly slow but we have a few reasons for this. Firstly, we had a couple of resignations earlier this month. Secondly, a lot of my time, Martins time and Harry's has been dedicated to the trialists and reviewing their articles this month and finally because Martin is planning something big for this section and so am I. So watch this space as we have a few tricks up our sleeves for it! ;)

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Image Quality

Some big images, some little. It's OK I guess but I don't like the headings, I think there's only been a couple but y'know.

As Harry has said we have been cracking down on this. We have image limits that apply to the Habbo section; I think the largest for the Habbo section is 250x250. The limit doesn't apply to sport or entertainment at the moment - instead we ask for these sections that the image suites the article and that it doesn't "overtake" the text.

You have to also remember that a lot of our reporters have just passed their trials, they are still learning and it will take a bit of time for them to try and have every single little thing perfect.

We spend a lot of time on the images as our reporters are getting a lot better! We will however continue to build on this and hopefully by the launch of version six you will see only a small amount of problems with images.

Quote:

Room Reviews

Heard that Martin was keen on starting this up again, go for it! Just make sure it's not dead like the interviews, as it were.

First I have heard of this! I think that it would be nice to have it back in the future however I feel at the moment we still have the challenge of establishing Sport and bringing Entertainment up to its old standards.

Thanks very much for your feedback Alex! x

(Apologies for any spelling/grammatical errors I had to zoom through that all pretty quick!)
31-10-2010, 03:58 PM
Judas

Quote:

There will always be room for improvement in our articles, and like you said the quality is definitely on the up in general. I personally believe this is due to Charlie and I being promoted as Seniors, and everyday we are checking through every article making any improvements we see fit. The Senior position is definitely working as the progress of all reporters is carefully monitored and we have a strong team at the moment that is only getting better. I do agree that there are often silly spelling and grammar mistakes, which Charlie, Martin and I look out carefully for, but we as a team are getting better at preventing these mistakes.

Yes I agree, how does the mentoring system work by the way? You are a great team and I think the articles have got better as a whole and as you have been in the department longer you continue to strive with increasingly wonderful articles. That's been proved by other members of news too.

Obviously there are the reports every week that Martin writes which includes graphs and statistics for every reporter to let them know how they have done. Charle and I also now have our own section in the reports, and each week in this section we each focus on one different aspect of writing articles, e.g. images, parapgraphing... this way we bring specific things to attention and ensure that these things are taken into consideration and therefore are improved on. And of course everyday we are sending out PMs picking out ways to improve, and as well as that, congratulating the reporters on good work.

Quote:

I actually agree. However I do believe that Entertainment is a great section, which allows us to show of our writing more outside of Habbo related news. For example, read Mrs.McCall's X Factor review from yesterday, which is an absolutely fantastic article and brilliantly presented. The sports section, I'm not a fan of. Not enough members of the team are interested in it, therefore find it a chore to write for, so I can see this going sometime soon, and hopefully be replaced with something that's a bit more of a success.

Tell, tell! Also, yes. Joey is a fantastic writer and well done on getting him on board.

Theres nothing to tell yet! :P

Quote:

Interviews were always going to be a tricky thing. 3 a fortnight was aiming a bit high I believe. We as reporters should definitely try and do more interviews I agree with you there, but we have a minimum (as you know) of articles to produce a week and interviews take a long time to arrange and produce. With us trying to keep the quality of our Habbo section (our main priority) up, I think that is the reason why Interviews have slipped of late.

I do agree but it doesn't have to be a one day thing! I spent a whole week doing it in little parts when interviewing David. In a way I'm just saying it is unfair on Martin and I think you should just get more brownie points for doing one. I agree, Habbo is priority and when I was staff I do know that some Habbo articles weren't tip top shape or being left over 72 hours after. How's it getting on now? I've been on holiday!

That could work for others, but I know for me personally, I like to get things out of the way so dragging it out over the course of the week could make both sides of the interview get a bit bored of it, but who knows! I think it is somethig we should try out in future. And the speed of getting Habbo articles done is defiitely getting a lot better. Especially recently, Felix who passed his trial the same time as Joey is great at getting articles done quickly.

Quote:

The sizes of the images are carefully chosen to fit in with the article. The images now are a lot better than they used to be, and Charlie and I have been heavily focusing on them recently and making sure they are a good standard and there hasn't been as many poor images to deal with as there was say, a few months ago. What do you mean by the 'headings', by the way?

Also agree with this, they've been a lot better. I still believe that some are too small or some aren't in the best place possible, though. A heading being a banner or just a font generator thing- it's probably to grab attention but I'm not a fan of them.

The size and position of the image lay in the hands of the reporter, and if Charlie, Martin or myself felt that they were in a bad place we would edit. If you see any examples of these kind of images that you dont like, don't hesitate to contact one of us three, or indeed the reporter themself and we could see how it can be improved. Ohhh that kind of heading, well those aren't used that often in our reports, and I don't think they are much of a problem.

Quote:

I personally think we should only bring this section back when we have everything else 100% on track, including Interviews and Sports. Like Interviews, room reviews are a big commitment so we should only start it when we perfect the others.

If sports is going then this should replace it, it could even be in pitch-ins from the public. Show the room, get one news reporter a week to write the introduction and then build it up with user comments. When I was a News Reporter and I wrote my Habbo articles, I tried to relate to the forum, for example "Mr-Trainor says these look rather exciting, but don't have much use". It's the same sort of thing.

The future of sport has not been discussed yet and for now it is staying, it was just my opinion that I think it should. Martin will probably see this thread soon but I will direct him here so he can take your comments on board, as of course it his decision.

Thank you for the feedback :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skizzling

I think News is doing pretty amazing. Martin is doing an excellent job along with the News Reporters. Perhaps an idea would be to have more of an opinion instead of just putting information that you would find from Habbo too.

We do encourage the use of opinion in our articles, and most of them are seen when you click "Read more" and read the full article :) I think a lot of people dont click "Read More", something we might have to start promoting a bit more in the article itself.
31-10-2010, 04:07 PM
Alex3213

Too many replies! I'll just sum up

News

Great, looks like you've got everything in action. It's all uphill for you and @Harry: yeah the headings aren't used often but sometimes they do look messy. :(

Staff List (MattG)

I can only see four dept. managers, one of them being me in my particularly handsome clothes! Hoorah! However, it's not all great. I am not wearing those clothes on Habbo currently! It might take a while to update or something, I don't know. I think also for each AGM should explain some of their past. They've all been a dept. manager in at least one department.

Calvin

Sounds good to me but the Home is just ugly, don't like it. Please remove it :(

SPAG

Yes matt, it stands for Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar.

If there's anything you want me to focus on especially, I have read it all I promise, I'd like to reply but there's so much to reply to! :(
31-10-2010, 04:10 PM
Josh

If you want a link to home, make the big and ~~bad~~ (jk) picture of jin and mattg link to home page. unless you want the path you took to the site...
31-10-2010, 04:10 PM
Judas

Haha, thanks for the feedback its much appreciated :)
31-10-2010, 04:14 PM
xxMATTGxx

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex3213

Staff List (MattG)

I can only see four dept. managers, one of them being me in my particularly handsome clothes! Hoorah! However, it's not all great. I am not wearing those clothes on Habbo currently! It might take a while to update or something, I don't know. I think also for each AGM should explain some of their past. They've all been a dept. manager in at least one department.

I can see all current department managers on the page. I'm not quite sure why the images aren't updating to the ones that match Habbo really as most of them use the same script to grab them.

http://www.habbo.com/habbo-imaging/a...img_format=gif

That's the image that is directly from Habbo and it's the same clothes that match the Habbox.com page. I'm guessing your look doesn't look like that at all?
31-10-2010, 04:17 PM
Josh

he was dressed as an army dude last time I saw him... hmm weird
31-10-2010, 04:18 PM
Alkaz

I think everything which needs to be said has been said.

As Calvin said, the home above the navigator is so you can just click back home. It serves the same purpose as the links above your post (Forum - Help / Questions / Feedback - Habbox Feedback). As for the news categories etc there isn't any way that we can give you any viewing figures or anything like that. Admin CP doesn't allow us to see that information. All we have to go on is what everyone else can see; the amount of articles, amount of comments etc. As for the Habbox of news I agree it really is pointless. You mentioned about Sierk and Xarea, there is a feature somewhere that will allow us to change it but as the only person with any real experience with Joomla is Yonder, it's something we have been unable to change. A while ago Martin was talking about doing like a 'newsletter' type section for Habbox in general. If that is planned and does go ahead then I see no problem in actually removing the Habbox cat in favour for this.

The small rotator above Habbox Today would have been viewed a lot more when the site in general was more popular. A lot of people believe it or not did used to read Habbox Today and they would see the mini rotator. The intention of that was to only ever had a couple of items rotating on it though. At the moment there isn't anything we can actually do with it but the rotators in general will hopefully be dramatically improved with the plan for them with v6.

Again as Matt said, the staff list is a script. Matt and subsequently Garion used to have to update the Staff List and it simply took too long to do it every single day. I'm not totally sure why it does take so long for the normal staff list to load because other sites have similar features and load almost instantly. Again as well, referring to what others have said I'm not quite sure what you're referring to about not liking to view the page. Those who don't have a Habbo name linked to their account have a silhouette which I think looks a lot better than it used to as well.

The staff list shows everyone for me as well.

https://habbox.com/assets/images/86stafflist.png
31-10-2010, 04:32 PM
Alex3213

Thanks Joe and Charlie, I'll reply later.

Part B

Win! Win! Win!

Events Calendar

Lots of code on the main site, looks disgusting. This part should really be pushed out a bit more, I don't go to many events anymore because there are so many bloody announcments and there's no other notification of them. As for the monthly calendar, it has hyperlinks on events. Probably to do with some Events Panel or something but it doesn't look nice etc. and has no "GMT" or "EST" or "AEST", whatever. Again, it's this thing that we are a merged hotel now.

Competitions

I'll be the first to put my hands up and say that it's not looked after properly, and I will take some of the blame for this. It's not a hard job but it's so flipping time consuming and I forget. It looks dreadfully empty when there's only 1 competition too. Shame that there weren't many departmental competitions, especially for Habboween. :(

Donations

Eugh? Read the text? Do I have to say anything else?

The Habbox Lottery

Bit of formatting screwed up and, whilst on the subject, it needs to be a must tbh. It's a good way to fund credits for Habbox but can't be done if you don't work hard for it! Also says site's been open for 6 and forum for 5. Is this correct?

Guides

I'm glad there's not a drop down box from the Guides section, it looks much nicer like this. I'm not going to go through them as I think most of them are up to date but y'know, there's always room for improvement. Remember, wired has came out and it would be nice to get a guide on that ASAP.

Other Stuff

I'm not gonna do RV as I think we don't need another discussion, however fun stuff is a must. I'm sure you can bring something unique into it and it'll attract people, I use Habbo Generators off another fansite I'm afraid as there are more of them. I'll do Fun Stuff later today as there's a lot which can be done to it.

Rotator

Job Openings, Habbox, Welcome, Habbox Group, Graphics Comp, Sports are the ones I see on it. Graphics comp has ended, welcome is nice to show it's not just UK now but the merge was a few months ago, you've already got the "Habbox" one. Habbox Group, Job Openings and Sports are OK I guess. Other things could be introduced though- the Competitions banner got removed prior to the merge (dunno how that worked but kk) and there was no banner for Halloween! Needs to be organised a bit better I think.

Statistics

A statistics page would be nice and could be shown in this newsletter that Joe said Martin was planning? I don't really like the stats at the bottom.

Ta!
31-10-2010, 04:42 PM
Chippiewill

I hate to be nit-pickity but Jin, Yoshi and Matt aren't "(Assistant) Department Managers"..
31-10-2010, 04:44 PM
Calvin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chippiewill

I hate to be nit-pickity but Jin, Yoshi and Matt aren't "(Assistant) Department Managers"..

It's taken from the HabboxForum showgroups so if they're in the Department Manager usergroup then it shows them in that section.
31-10-2010, 04:51 PM
HotelUser

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex3213

Thanks Joe and Charlie, I'll reply later.

Part B

Win! Win! Win!

Events Calendar

Lots of code on the main site, looks disgusting. This part should really be pushed out a bit more, I don't go to many events anymore because there are so many bloody announcments and there's no other notification of them. As for the monthly calendar, it has hyperlinks on events. Probably to do with some Events Panel or something but it doesn't look nice etc. and has no "GMT" or "EST" or "AEST", whatever. Again, it's this thing that we are a merged hotel now.

Competitions

I'll be the first to put my hands up and say that it's not looked after properly, and I will take some of the blame for this. It's not a hard job but it's so flipping time consuming and I forget. It looks dreadfully empty when there's only 1 competition too. Shame that there weren't many departmental competitions, especially for Habboween. :(

Donations

Eugh? Read the text? Do I have to say anything else?

The Habbox Lottery

Bit of formatting screwed up and, whilst on the subject, it needs to be a must tbh. It's a good way to fund credits for Habbox but can't be done if you don't work hard for it! Also says site's been open for 6 and forum for 5. Is this correct?

Guides

I'm glad there's not a drop down box from the Guides section, it looks much nicer like this. I'm not going to go through them as I think most of them are up to date but y'know, there's always room for improvement. Remember, wired has came out and it would be nice to get a guide on that ASAP.

Other Stuff

I'm not gonna do RV as I think we don't need another discussion, however fun stuff is a must. I'm sure you can bring something unique into it and it'll attract people, I use Habbo Generators off another fansite I'm afraid as there are more of them. I'll do Fun Stuff later today as there's a lot which can be done to it.

Rotator

Job Openings, Habbox, Welcome, Habbox Group, Graphics Comp, Sports are the ones I see on it. Graphics comp has ended, welcome is nice to show it's not just UK now but the merge was a few months ago, you've already got the "Habbox" one. Habbox Group, Job Openings and Sports are OK I guess. Other things could be introduced though- the Competitions banner got removed prior to the merge (dunno how that worked but kk) and there was no banner for Halloween! Needs to be organised a bit better I think.

Statistics

A statistics page would be nice and could be shown in this newsletter that Joe said Martin was planning? I don't really like the stats at the bottom.

Ta!

Good grief you're right about that Events Calendar for the monthly view. It's only intended to be a temporary measure--again--until the revision of the site is released. Although I'm not sure why we can't make it look nicer in the meantime. I'll remove those hyperlinks now.
31-10-2010, 04:52 PM
Alkaz

I agree that the events calendar does look ugly. Originally like everything else it was going to be updated manually but was changed in favour of an automated script. I have been unaware that it actually looked like that, I can assure you it didn't look like that when the change was first made. With v6 we're planning for users to be able to set their own reminders for events which will either give them a pop-up notification on the site or (I think) send them an e-mail. Again, at the moment this isn't something we can set up but is something we are already working on to improve for the future.

I can't really say much about the competitions page as it should be being updated ;). As for the donations page I've changed that and there is a short little paragraph about the page telling people who and how to contact Roxy about making a donation to Habbox. Hopefully that looks and reads a lot better now. As for the Habbox Lottery page, the site has now been open around 7 years so I will change that. As for the forum, I'm not totally sure when Sierk took full control of the forum but that to is around 5 or 6 years ago.

Guides have been left to deteriorate. We've been working on making the information more striped back and concise. We've also been working on the presentation of the guides which is something I am sure Calvin will continue with. By the time v6 comes around to be released, you won’t recognise the section!

Again as you've mentioned about Rv, that is another discussion. We know that RV's are not as an important part of the site compared to a year or so ago. We have ideas about this and again, what we have planned can't be done now so will be released with v6. I'm sure there will be a lot of things people will enjoy there.

As for the banners that is my fault. We removed a lot of the banners for the merge and unfortunately for one reason or another not all of them were added again. We also have to remember that people won't just sit there to view the rotator. It isn't random and the banners go in a an order on when they were added. We can't do anything about that and I'll be looking at the rotators later tonight to add and remove the necessary and unnecessary ones.

To finish with your last point about statistics, we can remove these. I will have to speak to Matt or Jin though about what we do actually remove from the bottom. They aren't really doing any harm anyway.
01-11-2010, 07:45 AM
Grig

Thanks for that Alex. Yeh on the news front, we started making changes ever since the start of the year to boost what was a mess of a department back in January. Improvements are continuing as I witness. Good to see room reviews back on the planning, as I always wanted those to continue in my time and also you might consider dropping Gemma a PM and trying to do music reviews yourselves too, on the main Habbox site- this may include artist scoops, insights, all the latest gossip etc. It was always a wanting to do so, however things fell apart with us and HxL under the old management.

For categories, Martin and I fought for both sports and entertainment. Sports is a really generic thing, and either needs something unseen of. I never actually intended that category to be simply a report on your favourite football team, because if this is what it is used for now- close it. Simple as, you need insights into the sporting world and not be biased by reporting on a team you favour. It is one of the worst traits a reporter could have.

Featured News Stories

I added a heading for this as I feel it's important. If you go back to some older articles, I used to go out and do research for feature news stories, to break away from the usual spot news stuff. Faboosh did a few great featured stories on Lady GaGa when she was a reporter and I managed to research some on Habbo, by going beyond the website paraphrasing and looking at external links, email tip-offs (and yes I did email various staff and sometimes speak to Ludus on MSN- who was the hotel manager at the time). Stuff like that always got the most comments, and they were actually useful comments like opinions etc. not the smiley faces the bug the hell out of me nowadays.

Anyway, well done to the news team, you continue to keep up with excellent standards (when I do read Habbox news, as I haven't done so in months!) No other fansite is even close to beating Habbox at news.
01-11-2010, 03:59 PM
Judas

aww love you grig.

i agree 100% about the sports thing about one team, its something i have tried to stop but to no success so i actually look forward to sport going.

i was always well up for the music reviews thing cos i remember it was nearly introduced. a cross department effort with hxl would be great, though there are occasionaly album reviews posted in the entertainment section, the latest one was of the joe mcelderry album that charlie (nuxty) did a review of, and it was an excellent article.

on the features idea, i have been trying to carry on your ways there :P i have got quite a few exclusive stories in the past. going out of our way to find stories like this is something that has always been encouraged.