Have I missed something?

[Kardan]

Not really, most of the things I was working on wiki/site-wise were exactly the same: it's a factual manner of writing. Yeah, doing guides and a history page are more different but at the end of the day they still pretty much have the same set of skills, whereas News is COMPLETELY different. I've had a lot of experience writing both but I'm not going to bore everyone with the differences unless you're terribly interested.

More staff is a good thing......... this merge has actually decreased staff though. Sam, for example, was staff in two departments, Jan in two, I don't know about the others but I'm sure there were more, so it's worked like this..

Content had 1 staff (I believe)
News had about 10 (ish, lets just use this as an example)
Graphics had about 5 (same thing)

so that's a total of 16 right?

But by merging them, Sam who was Content AND news means there are now only 15 total staff, Jan takes away another, and so on. And by having one manager managing both News and Content that means that the workload will probably be smaller than if someone was working in two departments - because it usually works out that someone is expected to spend 'x' amount of hours in Content and 'y' amount of hours in News, whereas now you're expected to do 'z' amount of hours in the Writer department of Content - and it doesn't necessarily follow that x+y=z. I'd actually argue that x+y almost definitely DOESN'T = z as you can't expect someone to put in the amount of work that two departments would traditionally ask of you.

It also doesn't take into account those people who might be outraged or annoyed by the decision and will subsequently leave.

Also, saying it'll be better... learning wiki writing skills will not make your news better. TRUST ME. I've been through that so many times. Once again a boring story.

You're doing the Maths wrong. There's still the same amount of staff.

You could be right in saying that workload is decreased, but in my eyes, news barely did any work, I can browse through the articles right now, and the only one that put in a considerable amount of work was Samanfa, everyone else probably does 1 article every 2 weeks or something? If news gets their workload decreased, there won't be any news.

So basically, you're saying that you would prefer the content team to have one singular person, and keep 10 (using your example) people doing one article between them every X weeks. It makes sense to merge them, especially considering there is SO much content that needs doing.

In my eyes, the only people that will get less work done is whoever has been promoted to manager (since they need to manage), and the singular content staff. But the decrease in one content staff's time is easily outweighed by the new work being done by the 10+ news staff.

[Samantha]

Not really, most of the things I was working on wiki/site-wise were exactly the same: it's a factual manner of writing. Yeah, doing guides and a history page are more different but at the end of the day they still pretty much have the same set of skills, whereas News is COMPLETELY different. I've had a lot of experience writing both but I'm not going to bore everyone with the differences unless you're terribly interested.

More staff is a good thing......... this merge has actually decreased staff though. Sam, for example, was staff in two departments, Jan in two, I don't know about the others but I'm sure there were more, so it's worked like this..

Content had 1 staff (I believe)
News had about 10 (ish, lets just use this as an example)
Graphics had about 5 (same thing)

so that's a total of 16 right?

But by merging them, Sam who was Content AND news means there are now only 15 total staff, Jan takes away another, and so on. And by having one manager managing both News and Content that means that the workload will probably be smaller than if someone was working in two departments - because it usually works out that someone is expected to spend 'x' amount of hours in Content and 'y' amount of hours in News, whereas now you're expected to do 'z' amount of hours in the Writer department of Content - and it doesn't necessarily follow that x+y=z. I'd actually argue that x+y almost definitely DOESN'T = z as you can't expect someone to put in the amount of work that two departments would traditionally ask of you.

It also doesn't take into account those people who might be outraged or annoyed by the decision and will subsequently leave.

Also, saying it'll be better... learning wiki writing skills will not make your news better. TRUST ME. I've been through that so many times. Once again a boring story.

You sound so like me, I remember saying that we're losing 2 members of staff due to merging and really, they might have lost more than that when some people are doing more than is expected of them and sometimes due to not doing one side of the department they're getting warned, and could face dismissal etc. if you get what I mean. I agree with you - I also asked @Inkwell; about it as before I was picked as Rare Values Manager, I was also expected to do all the news senior work whilst @runeaddict99; was away, of course I had Jan, but she's had her own things to sort, and on top of that all the Rare Values work alongside Luke - yes, I can do it, but that's only due to me being in both of the departments before, you're right in saying that Laura as sometimes you can't expect a person to know both writing styles, or get better with experience likewise you can't expect them to do the minimum of both departments. As the minimums have been jumbled together so it's even more than before and even more than I was expected to do whilst in Content too.

Like I said though, I don't really have an opinion on whether the merge is good or bad, you just have to see how it pans out.

---------- Post added 22-04-2013 at 02:57 PM ----------

You're doing the Maths wrong. There's still the same amount of staff.

You could be right in saying that workload is decreased, but in my eyes, news barely did any work, I can browse through the articles right now, and the only one that put in a considerable amount of work was Samanfa, everyone else probably does 1 article every 2 weeks or something? If news gets their workload decreased, there won't be any news.

So basically, you're saying that you would prefer the content team to have one singular person, and keep 10 (using your example) people doing one article between them every X weeks. It makes sense to merge them, especially considering there is SO much content that needs doing.

In my eyes, the only people that will get less work done is whoever has been promoted to manager (since they need to manage), and the singular content staff. But the decrease in one content staff's time is easily outweighed by the new work being done by the 10+ news staff.

The workload hasn't decreased, it's increased.

[lawrawrrr]

You're doing the Maths wrong. There's still the same amount of staff.

You could be right in saying that workload is decreased, but in my eyes, news barely did any work, I can browse through the articles right now, and the only one that put in a considerable amount of work was Samanfa, everyone else probably does 1 article every 2 weeks or something? If news gets their workload decreased, there won't be any news.

So basically, you're saying that you would prefer the content team to have one singular person, and keep 10 (using your example) people doing one article between them every X weeks. It makes sense to merge them, especially considering there is SO much content that needs doing.

In my eyes, the only people that will get less work done is whoever has been promoted to manager (since they need to manage), and the singular content staff. But the decrease in one content staff's time is easily outweighed by the new work being done by the 10+ news staff.

No I'm not - the staff count HAS decreased because people working in two departments are now only working in one. Please feel free to point out exactly where I'm going wrong but I don't see it...

News did barely any work? The problem there is that until VERY recently (congrats @Inkwell there were very few staff. As for "If news gets their workload decreased, there won't be any news".... that's exactly my problem. News reporters who, apparently as you say do barely anything (not my opinion here, just saying), they'll be dedicating that little time they spend between the old News and Content departments - therefore less news will be written!!

And I never said that; it would be better if the Content department had more staff, but due to a lot of reasons; for example, disillusionment with the department, being fed up of being lied to, motivation by higher-up staff... people leave, don't come back and don't bother to apply. That was the case since I was staff anyway. To be honest, if someone said "come work on this new site, it's coming out soon!!!" and some people joined a time later and then left and STILL no new site appeared months down the line, is that motivation for you to join said department? No.

It doesn't make sense because it doesn't follow that good news writers will be good at content and vice versa.

The 10+ news staff you say? The ones you just said do no work and clearly haven't been motivated by their manager if they're outputting what you've said? If the managers are the same people what makes you think they'll put in any more work than they do? So effectively it's the same output. Except a few people are being overworked for the sake of 'streamlining' aka not having the patience to train a new manager or anything. It's kind of what I expected in a little way though, the entirety of Habbox is losing a lot of it's coherency and a lot of people are disillusioned with staff and the departments.

But yeah it doesn't matter too much about Sam seeing as she was in both departments anyway.


***note here - anything mean to anyone in this post, i didn't mean, i was either using you as an example or as a metaphor or going off kardan's notes (such as the news output) which i actually have no idea about - if you have a problem with anything I've written please feel free to correct me or defend yourself but i didn't mean to offend anyone***

[Kardan]

No I'm not - the staff count HAS decreased because people working in two departments are now only working in one. Please feel free to point out exactly where I'm going wrong but I don't see it...

News did barely any work? The problem there is that until VERY recently (congrats @Inkwell there were very few staff. As for "If news gets their workload decreased, there won't be any news".... that's exactly my problem. News reporters who, apparently as you say do barely anything (not my opinion here, just saying), they'll be dedicating that little time they spend between the old News and Content departments - therefore less news will be written!!

And I never said that; it would be better if the Content department had more staff, but due to a lot of reasons; for example, disillusionment with the department, being fed up of being lied to, motivation by higher-up staff... people leave, don't come back and don't bother to apply. That was the case since I was staff anyway. To be honest, if someone said "come work on this new site, it's coming out soon!!!" and some people joined a time later and then left and STILL no new site appeared months down the line, is that motivation for you to join said department? No.

It doesn't make sense because it doesn't follow that good news writers will be good at content and vice versa.

The 10+ news staff you say? The ones you just said do no work and clearly haven't been motivated by their manager if they're outputting what you've said? If the managers are the same people what makes you think they'll put in any more work than they do? So effectively it's the same output. Except a few people are being overworked for the sake of 'streamlining' aka not having the patience to train a new manager or anything. It's kind of what I expected in a little way though, the entirety of Habbox is losing a lot of it's coherency and a lot of people are disillusioned with staff and the departments.

But yeah it doesn't matter too much about Sam seeing as she was in both departments anyway.


***note here - anything mean to anyone in this post, i didn't mean, i was either using you as an example or as a metaphor or going off kardan's notes (such as the news output) which i actually have no idea about - if you have a problem with anything I've written please feel free to correct me or defend yourself but i didn't mean to offend anyone***

Well, if nobody has left, then the staff number is exactly the same Amount of work in hours in each department might change, but the amount of staff members is the same

And quite frankly, it sounds like there's many more problems that you've mentioned other than the merge (which hasn't even been given time to see how it works), so perhaps sorting out these other issues before slating a merge might work?

And you say that the news people might do even less work now that they also have to do content work, and fair enough, that could be true. But it could also be true that they might do some more work, who knows, we'll just have to wait and see

Personally I think it's good for both departments. News reporters don't do enough work, so can now put extra time into content. Content team doesn't have enough people for the workload, now gets extra people. Of course time will tell, but there's no need to slate the merge when it's not been given time to work, and there's many other issues within the department

I do think news is lacking though, lemme get some figures

---------- Post added 22-04-2013 at 03:16 PM ----------

You sound so like me, I remember saying that we're losing 2 members of staff due to merging and really, they might have lost more than that when some people are doing more than is expected of them and sometimes due to not doing one side of the department they're getting warned, and could face dismissal etc. if you get what I mean. I agree with you - I also asked @Inkwell; about it as before I was picked as Rare Values Manager, I was also expected to do all the news senior work whilst @runeaddict99; was away, of course I had Jan, but she's had her own things to sort, and on top of that all the Rare Values work alongside Luke - yes, I can do it, but that's only due to me being in both of the departments before, you're right in saying that Laura as sometimes you can't expect a person to know both writing styles, or get better with experience likewise you can't expect them to do the minimum of both departments. As the minimums have been jumbled together so it's even more than before and even more than I was expected to do whilst in Content too.

Like I said though, I don't really have an opinion on whether the merge is good or bad, you just have to see how it pans out.

---------- Post added 22-04-2013 at 02:57 PM ----------



The workload hasn't decreased, it's increased.

You're right, I used the wrong word. I meant the time spent doing the work for each department has decreased

---------- Post added 22-04-2013 at 03:21 PM ----------

Jeez, how many people are/were even in the news team? Because I only see news reports by the same 3 people... If the news team has 3 people, and the content team had 1 person - what is the issue with a merge? I'm sure the manager can control 4 people. It's not the HxL department that has, what, 54 staff?

[lawrawrrr]

Well, if nobody has left, then the staff number is exactly the same Amount of work in hours in each department might change, but the amount of staff members is the same

not true!!! staff have decreased because there's one department not 3! yeah, it's the same staff but in workman hours it's less.

And quite frankly, it sounds like there's many more problems that you've mentioned other than the merge (which hasn't even been given time to see how it works), so perhaps sorting out these other issues before slating a merge might work?

Actually news was improving before the merge, it's other departments that were decreasing. Also I've never said it won't work I just said it was a bad idea because news/content aren't the same!

And you say that the news people might do even less work now that they also have to do content work, and fair enough, that could be true. But it could also be true that they might do some more work, who knows, we'll just have to wait and see

It's funny how you're so happy to **** them off when they do no work but jump to an optimistic future. I really do hope they do do more work but if people are so disillusioned with news then it's hardly likely they'll do any more work there, yeah they might do more content so it's a win for the content department, not for news - at a time when the latter was flourishing, staff-wise, content have effectively (if my hypothetical situation pans out) stolen all of Jan's hard work to get those people in the departments.

Personally I think it's good for both departments. News reporters don't do enough work, so can now put extra time into content. Content team doesn't have enough people for the workload, now gets extra people. Of course time will tell, but there's no need to slate the merge when it's not been given time to work, and there's many other issues within the department

Like I just said above, the News reporters will be giving time to content but news will get literally nothing back; jesus christ I know they want to shut the department just do it already it's probably less painless than this 'merge' (which we might as well just call 'staff shift'

I'm going to slate the merge if I jolly well want to thank you very much because the very basis from what it's set up on it basically doomed for failure.

I do think news is lacking though, lemme get some figures

Jeez, how many people are/were even in the news team? Because I only see news reports by the same 3 people... If the news team has 3 people, and the content team had 1 person - what is the issue with a merge? I'm sure the manager can control 4 people. It's not the HxL department that has, what, 54 staff?

BECAUSE ALL THE PEOPLE IN HXL DO THE SAME BLOODY JOB

NEWS AND CONTENT ARE EXTREMELY DIFFERENT STYLES AND THEREFORE REQUIRE PEOPLE WITH DIFFERENT REFINED SKILLS TO MANAGE

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE IT'S ABOUT THE QUALITY AND ACTUAL OUTPUT OF THE WORK

AND YES I WROTE IN CAPITALS BECAUSE I'VE SAID THIS A COUPLE OF TIMES AND IT DOESN'T SEEM TO BE GETTING ACROSS

---


BTW I really appreciate the sarcastic patronising emoticons :p

---------- Post added 22-04-2013 at 03:30 PM ----------

Also it's possible there are more in the News team (which I believe there are) but they're away - it's exam season, it's pretty normal to have a lull in activity and especially a high in staff posting away around this time.

[Samantha]

Well, if nobody has left, then the staff number is exactly the same Amount of work in hours in each department might change, but the amount of staff members is the same

And quite frankly, it sounds like there's many more problems that you've mentioned other than the merge (which hasn't even been given time to see how it works), so perhaps sorting out these other issues before slating a merge might work?

And you say that the news people might do even less work now that they also have to do content work, and fair enough, that could be true. But it could also be true that they might do some more work, who knows, we'll just have to wait and see

Personally I think it's good for both departments. News reporters don't do enough work, so can now put extra time into content. Content team doesn't have enough people for the workload, now gets extra people. Of course time will tell, but there's no need to slate the merge when it's not been given time to work, and there's many other issues within the department

I do think news is lacking though, lemme get some figures

---------- Post added 22-04-2013 at 03:16 PM ----------



You're right, I used the wrong word. I meant the time spent doing the work for each department has decreased

---------- Post added 22-04-2013 at 03:21 PM ----------

Jeez, how many people are/were even in the news team? Because I only see news reports by the same 3 people... If the news team has 3 people, and the content team had 1 person - what is the issue with a merge? I'm sure the manager can control 4 people. It's not the HxL department that has, what, 54 staff?

Actually I do more work now than I did before, but that's just because of the lack of work some others may not do.

Also before the merge we also had a few more people in news and in content there was just me and then Pasta came back about a week prior to the merge.

Looking at the statistics for the amount of news reports done since I resigned on the 31st January this year, they have decreased, but only recently (since the merge began) however, this is probably not the reason why as many have been away.

[Kardan]

not true!!! staff have decreased because there's one department not 3! yeah, it's the same staff but in workman hours it's less.

This was my point, staff numbers are the same, work hours have decreased.

[Samantha]

This was my point, staff numbers are the same, work hours have decreased.

They haven't decreased though have they? As we're required to do over twice as much as before?

[lawrawrrr]

This was my point, staff numbers are the same, work hours have decreased.

Well technically if you think about it there were 16 staff in my original scenario, now there's only 14 or so... go figure



There might have been originally only 14 UNIQUE staff but in total there were 16 staff doing 16 jobs, now there's 14 doing not 16 jobs


And if you keep picking up on this you're being really pedantic because you know exactly what I mean.

[Kardan]

They haven't decreased though have they? As we're required to do over twice as much as before?

Well technically if you think about it there were 16 staff in my original scenario, now there's only 14 or so... go figure



There might have been originally only 14 UNIQUE staff but in total there were 16 staff doing 16 jobs, now there's 14 doing not 16 jobs


And if you keep picking up on this you're being really pedantic because you know exactly what I mean.

You two are contradicting each other here then. Samanfa says before you had to do 1 hour per department, so now everyone needs to do 2 hours (News+content). Laura says that each person only put 1 hour in, and still only needs to put 1 hour in. Which one is correct?

---------- Post added 22-04-2013 at 03:52 PM ----------

And just so we're clear, there's the same amount of staff:



Work hours is different, because it depends if staff are required to do a certain amount of work hours per person, or a certain amount of work hours per job role.