News Department Feedback 2k13

[Martin]

News Department Action Plan 2k14

Problems currently facing the News Department:


Staff number too low: The News Department isn't really an attractive place to work in right now, even from an outside point of view you can tell things have become stale, boring and unimaginative. New initiatives need to be introduced to get people interested in creative writing and reporting news for Habbox. Staff need to feel appreciated, understand the creative side of news and most importantly- have fun writing. Does the department still have minimums, and if so- why havent all the staff (and heads) been fired by now?


Writing Style: The style of writing has become very sloppy and the majority of articles look very similar to those on Habbo/other fansites. Simply stating facts is not enough and is extremely boring to read- articles need opinions, creative structures and a more debated view on things. Reporters should be actively seeking opinions on the matter to gain public interest and a sense of personalisation within their articles.


SPAG: Not spaghetti bolognese. The spelling and grammar in some articles lately has been poor. Just looking at the top article right now I've noticed several highly visible mistakes which indicates to me that it hasn't even been ran through a spellcheck. "It seems Habbo have got two addidtions to the Habbo Staff Family" Sounds like it was written by a two year old (no offence to the writer, he is just not receiving the corrections to improve that he so badly needs.). The head news reporters are responsible for this so idk if they are away or something but it's taking ages for corrections to be made and some of the articles i'm seeing on the FRONT PAGE of Habbox- The first thing people see when they visit our site is absolutley shocking. I've looked down the staff list (although theres basically no staff so it was a pointless excersise) and the majority of heads/reporters and trialists are hardly posting any articles- my staff used to post 5+ a week with ease. Quite a few people have moaned lately about the quality.


Images: The images lately haven't been all that great. I've seen blury, resized, messy images that really look bad and give out a crappy example. As mentioned before, these are on the front page of Habbox which means they need to look smart, professional, relevant and bold. They need to be the perfect compliment to the article and right now I'm seeing such poor quality images which then gives me the impression that Habbox is a poor quality fansite with poor quality staff.


Motivation: Are staff really being pushed enough to improve? How many PM's with guidelines for improvement are being offered? Something which I've always found special about the News Department is the ability for someone to grow and bloom into a great writer, and in the past one of the main comments I've received from staff within the department is how much they enjoy that chance to improve, get better and of course all of the compliments they then receive etc.


Comments: Lack of comments seems to have been an issue for ages. Are people actually reading the news anymore? and if so, why is nobody commenting? I have some ideas to improve this within the 'suggestions for improvement' section, however more really needs to be done to expand the COMMUNITY side of news again. If you watch News programmes on the TV you will notice reporters going out to local events, interacting with the community and making it a more united feel, rather than solid reporting of events. This is particularly important at Habbox as we really are a community driven fansite.


Personalisation: Reporters need to put a stamp on their work, and it needs to be unique. There is far too much plagiarism going on and rather than reading a re-wrote boring recital of the News from Habbo, I want to read an interesting, diverse and opinionated version of events. It makes it far more interesting to read, it makes the reader feel more involved and it is also a hell of a lot more enjoyable for whoever is writing it too. I really think that letting people take a different approach and style can be a factor for getting more staff into the department as it becomes more fun and less of a chore.


Section of News: Recently in your '12 days of Christmas' event, you asked the question 'How many News Sections are there?'. This was probbaly a poor question to ask, as having looked at all of these sections myself they are hardly ever updated anyway. The last 'Article' was written in MAY, the last 'Room Review' back in SEPTEMBER and the last Interview was last month. If you are going to have so many sections, then they really do need to be more frequently updated and PROMOTED.


Important news frequently missed: Quite often high profile News is being missed due to lack of staff/lack of staff morale. Even big Habbox events should be reported on the front page. Was the 12 days of Christmas fansite thing even reported on? That should have been a major news article, with a big discussion in the comments, but unfortunately I can't see anything.


Advertising and promotion: I never see news mentioned/advertised around Habbox anymore. I don't see many News related signatures- we used to have lovely ones linking to the latest article etc which was nice. Big articles relating to big events on Habbo should be publicised like crazy, get people reading again and they'll come back for more. More competitions linking to news needs to be done- competitions within articles themselves on the front page too- this used to happen but I haven't seen it in absolutely ages.

Whether news should remain on site or be forum based: This depends on how V7 (LOL) has been set up really and whether space has been included for News etc, so I guess a member of the wonderful limey brigade could comment on this. There seems to be a debate about where news should be and it's entire purpose etc so perhaps that could be discussed in this thread at greater detail?


Things I notice when viewing news as a member of the community:

Show Hide Looks so professional and appealing irl

Show Hide Multiple corrections needed and its been days!

Show Hide I don't even know what the hells going on here but it needs fixing

Suggestions for improvement: (A lot have already been made in the problems section)

Push Applications: Encourage new (and old) faces to apply and return to the department. For this to happen the department needs to be a desirable place to work within, a strong friendly team and the ability to be creative, get involved with the community and make the News pages on Habbox look amazing!


Quality Control: Ensure that articles are checked properly. The News Manager is ultimately responsible for this and when there are such basic spelling errors, and quality errors on the main site it does give an incredibly bad impression overall. Send out regular feedback PMs highlighting both negative issues that can be worked on, but also positive things too which other reporters could take note of. Praise is always good for motivation and sharing ideas works wonders.


Staff Involvement: Get staff doing other things other than just writing News Articles about Habbo News. Get them being interative with the community, get them talking to people about the news and gathering opinions. Get staff running little News Based competitions and weekly promotions for news. Do a weekly '___ of the week' etc, or a roundup of that weeks important Habbo events in like a summarised, easy to read article.


Competitions: As mentioned before, do competitions on the main site, put them in an article and get people to answer via the comments. Once people START using the comments feature on the main site they may be more intended to use it in the future too, and once people see a high number of comments it gives a good impression that the community is still alive. These can be both creative and quiz type competitions, get people doing creative writing, christmas poems- all sorts!


Big featured articles: For big articles (major events on Habbo), Habbox promotions etc- do a special article and link to it in the community notice board. We used to have featured articles back in the day and it really worked well! The community notice board is perfect for linking to bigger articles that may caputure peoples interest and get them reading more news articles in the future.


Revamp of sections: These need looking into and evaluating. They can work really well if they are updated frequently, promoted well (advertised) and really made a fuss of. The interviews and room reviews especially can be very beneficial and provide a good link with people.


Interviews with Staff: Linking on from that, perhaps secure some little interesting interviews with staff and 'famous' Habbo people. People will love to read these and find out gossip etc. Make news less fact based and more a community thing where people can come for gossip, and to see what the general opinion on something is.


Images and article structure: Ensure staff are given the help they need to put good images on their articles. They should not be distorting the quality by resizing them and they should be to a set margin of size etc so that the front page looks good and gives off a good impression. I used to have guides on this set up and would remove images and put my own image on if I was not happy with a reporters image. There should be an image bank of premade ones to use too. Ensure all articles follow a similar structure, paragraph spacing, colours etc.



More ideas would be to; (and a summary)

Work with other departments/managers more efficiently to provide better results
Allow staff to be more flexible/creative and maybe more people will apply
Be more active in ensuring articles are of a good quality
Ensure that as much as possible is reported on
More links with the community
Article based Competitions/Prizes
More advertising/promotion/featured articles
Make the front page look amazing
Ensure the various News Sections are up to date and promoted well
More presence on Habbo itself
Report on Habbox stuff too so that its promoted on the front page (things like the return of the wengles show would have been a good one and provided a bit of interesting history etc, just little unique things like that which are unique to Habbox rather than generic news all the time.
Hire an active manager who has a passion for quality and community involvement and who is good at motivating staff



I truly believe that the News Department still has a purpose and there is so much that could be done to take it back into its prime. When you have a department with keen, active staff and the whole department feels like a 'family' then any results are achievable and it seems lately that the case with most areas of Habbox is that people have simply 'given up' and that passion seems to have been lost which is a shame. As a member of the community I want to see things stay fresh, things updated frequently and big events really pushed.



I have no idea what is planned for Christmas at Habbox because I've yet to see any advertising around the place etc and surely the annual Christmas Habbox period should be starting tomorrow? I hate how these days everything is left until the last minute and the community arent given a chance to prepare, get excited and motivated for stuff etc, it turns out to be a real damp squid! (idk if thats a saying or not LOL), but yeah shout out about the good stuff that Habbox does I guess!!

[Inseriousity.]

this is what I had in mind when I suggested an action plan btw! still not seen it!

Good suggestions there.

[Kardan]

Does Habbox even have a news manager?

[AgnesIO]

Ok, not going to pretend I have read all of the post, however I disagree with the need for opinions. Personally, nothing puts me off an article than one that says "personally, I think..." - particularly when the thought is uninformed. One thing that really annoys me about "cnet".

[BigtimeRyan]

Sorry I had a few issues in an article but I'm only a trialist news reporter and I've only been here less than two weeks. Obviously I'm going to make a couple of mistakes in my first article but thank you I have fixed one that I noticed..
The news tasks section in the news reporter forum is hardly ever used so we have to come up with our own ideas for news reports. I think we need to hire lots more news reporters and defiantly more editors. I'm pretty sure only one person in my department is able to edit other peoples articles and i'm sure it is frustrating for a lot of people.

Anyways apologises for my errors in the report and if I pass my news trial I hope I can help make the news department succeed again!



I agree there is a lack of personalisation in news reports and the news sections need to be used more. I'm going to do a news report on a fellow Habbo and I'm also currently planning a room review.

I think there should be a section in the forum available for everybody called 'News suggestions', where users can suggest an article to be written or even submit there own that can be posted!

Anyway the snapshot where the posts are distorted isn't our fault and I assumed it was just my browser. That seems like a problem with the site @xxmattgxx

As I'm pretty sure there hasn't been a new news manager hired I think @emily you should try to edit more. I have two news reports that haven't been edited yet.

[Martin]

Does Habbox even have a news manager?

Nope, although Samanfa is still in the News Department usergroup according to the staff list so I'm guessing she's looking after the department currently idk.

Ok, not going to pretend I have read all of the post, however I disagree with the need for opinions. Personally, nothing puts me off an article than one that says "personally, I think..." - particularly when the thought is uninformed. One thing that really annoys me about "cnet".

Yeah I would agree with that to an extent too, it can be over the top if done incorrectly, and I think if there's going to be opinions then there does need to be both sides to the argument too. So if for arguments sake there was something controversial reported I think its nice to have a mixture of positives and negatives so that it's a balanced and fair article really rather than being over the top and aimed at one view in particular. In terms of opinions I think its nice to get other peoples opinions (not just your own as this can become too 'me me me', and its just nice to get a general idea of what various members of the community think about something. It shouldn't be done over the top though and shouldn't take up much of the article at all and detract from the main point.

[Aiden]

Warning: Contains inappropriate content Hide

o,t; I agree with you. The news department is far from the best out there and has been like that ever since I joint Habbox (2 years in 3 weeks woo). I think they should just move to the forum or get more ideas to improve it (i dont even know if there is anything you can do now)!@!@!

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talking of errors hahaaa

[Martin]

Sorry I had a few issues in an article but I'm only a trialist news reporter and I've only been here less than two weeks. Obviously I'm going to make a couple of mistakes in my first article but thank you I have fixed one that I noticed..
The news tasks section in the news reporter forum is hardly ever used so we have to come up with our own ideas for news reports. I think we need to hire lots more news reporters and defiantly more editors. I'm pretty sure only one person in my department is able to edit other peoples articles and i'm sure it is frustrating for a lot of people.

Anyways apologises for my errors in the report and if I pass my news trial I hope I can help make the news department succeed again!



I agree there is a lack of personalisation in news reports and the news sections need to be used more. I'm going to do a news report on a fellow Habbo and I'm also currently planning a room review.

I think there should be a section in the forum available for everybody called 'News suggestions', where users can suggest an article to be written or even submit there own that can be posted!

Anyway the snapshot where the posts are distorted isn't our fault and I assumed it was just my browser. That seems like a problem with the site @xxmattgxx

You have nothing to be sorry for, and you are perfectly correct in terms that you are on trial and these things easily happen. As with most things in life its a learning process and you pick things up as you go along and blossom into an amazing reporter etc with help and guidance, which you should be getting- hopefully you've had a feedback PM etc?

I think a lot of the time reporting news is about investigation and finding things out for yourself, rather than having it all given to you on a plate 100% of the time, going out and looking for things is part of the fun haha! it also then helps your articles to be more unique and allows us to report on a variety of things.


Keep on at it, I admire your determination and willingness to try and improve things and I wish you the best of luck during your trial! (and I look forwards to reading your room review!)

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Show Hide

o,t; I agree with you. The news department is far from the best out there and has been like that ever since I joint Habbox (2 years in 3 weeks woo). I think they should just move to the forum or get more ideas to improve it (i dont even know if there is anything you can do now)!@!@!

- - - Updated - - -



talking of errors hahaaa

It's actually correct. Feedback for THIS year, Action plan for the new year

[BigtimeRyan]

I would absolutely hate it if news was moved to the forum! It defeats the whole point of it. Not everybody's going to want to go to the forum to read news reports and it's a lot nicer and easier to edit from the main site.

Yes the news department misses a lot of reports but we only have a couple of people in our department it's very difficult..

[Aiden]

I would absolutely hate it if news was moved to the forum! It defeats the whole point of it. Not everybody's going to want to go to the forum to read news reports and it's a lot nicer and easier to edit from the main site.

Yes the news department misses a lot of reports but we only have a couple of people in our department it's very difficult..

Honestly how many people do you think even read these news reports? It could be loads but I highly doubt it.