News Update: Sports Page

[Nixt]

Equally what you have to do is remember that our News Articles are designed to appeal to the wider Habbo community and not necessarily your average reader of a daily Newspaper (except maybe The Sun).

In addition I am sure Martin would be more than happy for you to PM him with any issues you have with articles and he can then address them.

[Martin]

When writing articles, we have to remember that our userbase varies a lot. The majority of our readers are quite young, and it's sometimes best to put them in more of an informal tone, rather than going straight out for a newspaper column. I know even Habbo news can be a little mature sometimes, and we feel that summarising it, whilst adding out own spin to it makes it more personalised and allows the reader to interact more.

This has proved to be worthwhile in the past, with some articles a few months ago reaching 100+ comments. Quality will always dip up and down, but I think it's a bit unfair to generalise this and make such comments- when reporters work extremely hard to improve.

If you do have problems with articles, I always love to hear about them, and dropping me a PM usually does the trick. Just like you would report a bad infraction, reporting a 'bad News article' will get it sorted for you.

As I mentioned before, we're always trying to improve quality, and this is something which will be a lot easier on V6. We have some very big structural changes coming and these should improve the look of articles anyway.


I think the topic of this thread has taken a slightly different direction now, but It's all good, as feedback is always good.


Sports news will be given a chance. Yes, there are many, many topics that could be wrote about, but this is down to what reporters want to write, and what we think may interest some people. It would be impossible to cover everything. This section would be particularly useful in big sporting events mostly, events where there's lots of televised viewing etc, such as major tournaments/olympics etc.

I don't think we can really always determine whether a section will be worthwhile or not until it's actually given a while. As Garion said, most of our visitors to the site are primarily from Habbo, and as I understand- not many forum members actually use the site much. The Forum is quite mature in my view, and this doesn't always mean that the visitors to our site will be, and it's important that the content is varied, and not too cloned.


Looking back at older articles on the site, and looking at other sites, in comparison I don't think it's that bad at the moment, but I can see that improvements need to be made.

A recent site poll sort of confirmed this:

Show Hide

Whilst polls like this can't always be taken as true fact, quite a few people voted there, and 70% of people saying articles look good or better is not too bad. Personally I would like to see the figure at 85%+ but this is again something which we can work on. Articles back from april/may etc were doing really well and as I mentioned earlier, comments were hitting very high numbers. There will always be dips, but we're going to work super hard now to get things back on form.

[Alex3213]

When writing articles, we have to remember that our userbase varies a lot. The majority of our readers are quite young, and it's sometimes best to put them in more of an informal tone, rather than going straight out for a newspaper column. I know even Habbo news can be a little mature sometimes, and we feel that summarising it, whilst adding out own spin to it makes it more personalised and allows the reader to interact more.

This has proved to be worthwhile in the past, with some articles a few months ago reaching 100+ comments. Quality will always dip up and down, but I think it's a bit unfair to generalise this and make such comments- when reporters work extremely hard to improve.

If you do have problems with articles, I always love to hear about them, and dropping me a PM usually does the trick. Just like you would report a bad infraction, reporting a 'bad News article' will get it sorted for you.

As I mentioned before, we're always trying to improve quality, and this is something which will be a lot easier on V6. We have some very big structural changes coming and these should improve the look of articles anyway.


I think the topic of this thread has taken a slightly different direction now, but It's all good, as feedback is always good.


Sports news will be given a chance. Yes, there are many, many topics that could be wrote about, but this is down to what reporters want to write, and what we think may interest some people. It would be impossible to cover everything. This section would be particularly useful in big sporting events mostly, events where there's lots of televised viewing etc, such as major tournaments/olympics etc.

I don't think we can really always determine whether a section will be worthwhile or not until it's actually given a while. As Garion said, most of our visitors to the site are primarily from Habbo, and as I understand- not many forum members actually use the site much. The Forum is quite mature in my view, and this doesn't always mean that the visitors to our site will be, and it's important that the content is varied, and not too cloned.


Looking back at older articles on the site, and looking at other sites, in comparison I don't think it's that bad at the moment, but I can see that improvements need to be made.

A recent site poll sort of confirmed this:

Show Hide

Whilst polls like this can't always be taken as true fact, quite a few people voted there, and 70% of people saying articles look good or better is not too bad. Personally I would like to see the figure at 85%+ but this is again something which we can work on. Articles back from april/may etc were doing really well and as I mentioned earlier, comments were hitting very high numbers. There will always be dips, but we're going to work super hard now to get things back on form.

This is exactly why my style of writing is far more opinionated. Although we can't really have a target audience due to the range aging from around 11 to 20 in some cases, more people do read the articles at a far younger age. Another reason for this is because we obviously want our writing to be different to Habbo's (or BBC's, Sky's etc)- writing the same facts in a different word order just makes us write the obvious. However, when we change the articles so that an opinion and reason is formed, even if it is bias as you say, it makes it unique. What I plan to do in the upcoming weeks for Habbo articles is take comments from Habbox Forum and then quote them so then it's not just myself or the News Reporter giving the opinion but from a wide range of people.

I think the Sports is actually an alright idea. With a few new seasons coming up we can just take the bits which we find "important" and write them on a wider scale. I'm looking forward to writing about the U.S. Open and I know that others are ready to write about other Sports too. You don't know until you try, even if you say that you have, we've got to remember that Habbo produce far less articles nowadays and it's unlikely to go "dead". The Entertainment was "dead" when it began, now there are normally a couple of articles everyday. Habbo is obviously the first priority because that's what the fansite is about, Habbo but a variation of topics isn't going to harm anyone and I can only see positive things for this new section.

[AgnesIO]

It is good to see all of you are happy to improve the news reports.

Just in reply to one of the points, I used to read the news reports when I was younger and I always prefered ones that were more formal, maiking them seem more mature.. although this might be just me, as I am a fairly academic person, therefore meaning I tend to prefer reading intelligent stories etc, that's sticks to the facts.

As I said, I think adding an opinion in will probably "force" the young readers to believe whatever the reporters opinion is. Afterall younger users tend to look up to habbox staff (well love hx staff haha).

I will reply in better detail, with a few ideas on how to improve, later when I am not on my phone

[Alex3213]

It is good to see all of you are happy to improve the news reports.

Just in reply to one of the points, I used to read the news reports when I was younger and I always prefered ones that were more formal, maiking them seem more mature.. although this might be just me, as I am a fairly academic person, therefore meaning I tend to prefer reading intelligent stories etc, that's sticks to the facts.

As I said, I think adding an opinion in will probably "force" the young readers to believe whatever the reporters opinion is. Afterall younger users tend to look up to habbox staff (well love hx staff haha).

I will reply in better detail, with a few ideas on how to improve, later when I am not on my phone

You get +rep for this post because you make a very valid point. I think if I do what I said I was going to do (opinions from Habboxforum) it would still show the opinions but would also inform the reader that there are two different sides to the story.

[Mrs.McCall]

I think perhaps the way I worded things was harsher than what was intended. In my opinion the quality can always improve, that was the same when I was manager and every News Manager before but I do feel that, at the moment, (which is no doubt factor to the larger team) the quality isn't on par of what it has been in previous years. I think that there should really be more focus on that. But that's a managerial decision that perhaps I shouldn't really discuss since I no longer know how the department is ran.

People have mentioned the Entertainment section and I can see how that's a case in point and it's great to see that being more beefed up. In regards to what I said about sports going dead and there's "nothing more embarassing" I understand that these kind of things need to be tried for the sake of development but I always find a better and more successful strategy is to introduce new sections slowly to build more buzz.

I also think that it would've been a smarter move to wait for a bigger sports event to kick start the category but, hey, it's done now so I wish you the best of luck and I hope it's a success.

In terms of opinion based reports this is something that the News department has been plagued with since I was even a trialist. The issue you've got is that people feel that News reports are often a re-hash of information because there isn't an substance there. I understand that and the difficult News has, is they can't show bias and that means that the uniqueness comes in style and that's something very difficult to adapt to when you're a new reporter. New reporters haven't had chance to adopt a style or a unique take so that can result in reports lacking any "oomph" which is a shame but given more time, an more opportunity for a style to adapt, I think the reports will improve.

Everyone knows my first love on Habbox will always be News and I am sorry if anyone was offended by what I originally wrote. I do think there's vast room for improvement and perhaps News Management could help reporters with their style and wording a bit more and I do stand by my opinion that a Sports section could prove difficult to implement but I have been proven wrong a billion times before and I really hope I am. Good luck with it

[Inseriousity.]

Out of all the news managers I've had, I'd say martin was probably one of the best although yum999 will always have a special place ofc for giving me the first chance so I think if there was ever a manager who could make something work, martin would be the man for the job.

For the Sports category, I agree but that's because I have no interest in it myself. However, as pointed out by Mathew, there are sooooooo many sporting events going on that I don't think there'll be a lack of things to report on. Also pointed out by Mathew, the BBC/Habbo already do news we cover so it's a hard department to generate any interest in. I think nowadays there's a general pussyfooting around certain things, managers walking on eggshells and avoiding decisions just because it 'didn't work in the past'. Maybe these things just need a new perspective. If it works, hooray. If it doesn't, those eggshells are going to hit us in the face but at least we had the guts to give it a go!

I notice you used the word 'plagued' and that has negative connotations for me. Are you not a fan of the opinionated articles? Personally, I prefer them. The bias in articles is normally what makes them more interesting especially if it's really obvious, which is why I have a love-hate relationship with the Daily Mail

It's good to see feedback for the news department, they always moan about never having any so I think other people with a say should give their opinions too

[Mrs.McCall]

Ohh no I am a fan of opinion but I know it is frowned upon or at least we were always told we weren't allowed to give opinion.

[Mrs.McCall]

In fact you know what, I completely retract what I've said. I was too quick to judge, you're right and everything considered why the hell not?

Nothing says that a new section on the website won't work. What's the harm in trying!

[Meanies]

If people wanted to read sporting news, surely they'd go to a professional site like the bbc or whatever other sites there are, rather than habbox which will draw information from their articles anyway. might as well just have a feed from one of them