Guides/Answers

[Chippiewill]

Why can't a navigation thing be added? That's a bit silly? Can you replace them? Make Register into Register/Login and Login into Answers?

Turns out I was being an idiot, it is doable. Just V6 has very confusing nuances. Rest assured V7's navigation system isn't anywhere near this confusing.

And why does it have to involve the news system? I'm a bit clueless in these things Is it not possible to just have a text box and an image in that widget that can be edited easily? And then the guide pages in the 'Answers' page would just be like all the other content pages on the site? (Although I think it was @laura; who was saying before how much of a hassle it is to add/edit content pages in V6).

Oh god, do you know how much effort it would be just to set-up a page to edit that? It'd be easier to just write my own functions for news stuff. Also it has to involve the news system, V6 as a page CMS isn't really setup for this kind of work.

And that's a shame, I would teach you but it's so difficult to learn

[Kardan]

Turns out I was being an idiot, it is doable. Just V6 has very confusing nuances. Rest assured V7's navigation system isn't anywhere near this confusing.


Oh god, do you know how much effort it would be just to set-up a page to edit that? It'd be easier to just write my own functions for news stuff. Also it has to involve the news system, V6 as a page CMS isn't really setup for this kind of work.

I don't know how confusing any of it is to be honest... I remember back in what, 2004? Trying to create my own page with HTML, and you just opened up FrontPage and edited it to how you wanted it to look... What happened to those days eh?

Anyways, that's how I imagine the answers thing to go like, would be better than losing answer guides in the news pages (especially since some guides will be needed for a long time, maybe even months - so you'd have to scroll back a long way, and users wouldn't even know it's there), and would be better than 'stickying' guides (since if we have 3 guides that need stickying, there goes any news on the frontpage).

[Meanies]

I actually agree entirely, but content is presently a three man team, I don't see them pulling this off in addition to their other duties. Perhaps a department collab?

I think it would actually be better suited under content due to the guides part of it. Okay content only has 3 people atm and I'm guessing news has a good few more, but if people were interested in joining the new department or however it may be implemented, staff numbers would increase. I agree with whoever it was said that news creating them would mean the guides contain much more text than necessary. Okay content staff do writing too but everything we do requires different amounts of text so it's a more varied style of writing. All people will be interested in is being able to read straight up how to earn the badge. Something like:
Step 1: Go to this room link:
Step 2: Say 'blahblah'
Step 3: Go in the 3rd teleport on the right
Step 4: Stand on the grass patch to teleport
If needs be, add images as illustrations as well as just images to make the page purrty.

Guides can be in their own section on the site and maybe have to categories within this, one for current badges and one for expired badges. Once a badge is no longer available, a member of staff can swap it into the expired category.

"Silly" thing about a collab is that me and sam already work in both news and content though haha

But yeah come join pasta you know you want to ... x

Doesn't Pasta want to do badge stuff on the wiki anyway? He'd probably love to do this as well.

Only thing is I'm not online enough to be able to get things up straight away unless if someone were to post something in the news & rumours forum and if it still needs doing by the time I get online I'd be happy enough to whip up a guide. My idea with the badges for the wiki is that they've all been and gone so they're not needing to be done urgently yano.

[Kardan]

I think it would actually be better suited under content due to the guides part of it. Okay content only has 3 people atm and I'm guessing news has a good few more, but if people were interested in joining the new department or however it may be implemented, staff numbers would increase. I agree with whoever it was said that news creating them would mean the guides contain much more text than necessary. Okay content staff do writing too but everything we do requires different amounts of text so it's a more varied style of writing. All people will be interested in is being able to read straight up how to earn the badge.

This is the issue really.

This is content, so content should do it, and it suits their writing style more.

But because that department is so small, news should have it so it gets done faster, but will they write too much?

Basically, both have advantages/disadvantages.

Ideally, I'd give it to the news and content departments and hope that this new batch of content gets people to join the content team, so they can take it over later.

[Zelda]

I think it would actually be better suited under content due to the guides part of it. Okay content only has 3 people atm and I'm guessing news has a good few more, but if people were interested in joining the new department or however it may be implemented, staff numbers would increase. I agree with whoever it was said that news creating them would mean the guides contain much more text than necessary. Okay content staff do writing too but everything we do requires different amounts of text so it's a more varied style of writing. All people will be interested in is being able to read straight up how to earn the badge. Something like:
Step 1: Go to this room link:
Step 2: Say 'blahblah'
Step 3: Go in the 3rd teleport on the right
Step 4: Stand on the grass patch to teleport
If needs be, add images as illustrations as well as just images to make the page purrty.

Guides can be in their own section on the site and maybe have to categories within this, one for current badges and one for expired badges. Once a badge is no longer available, a member of staff can swap it into the expired category.




Only thing is I'm not online enough to be able to get things up straight away unless if someone were to post something in the news & rumours forum and if it still needs doing by the time I get online I'd be happy enough to whip up a guide. My idea with the badges for the wiki is that they've all been and gone so they're not needing to be done urgently yano.

thing is if we do put it as part of news it won't have a word limit so they can just write very small concise reports as I know that's what people will be wanting, so there will be no problem with that.

I'm assuming a lot more would apply if they could JUST write that sort of thing too, and yea we have about 8 people atm i think.

[Samantha]

This is the issue really.

This is content, so content should do it, and it suits their writing style more.

But because that department is so small, news should have it so it gets done faster, but will they write too much?

Basically, both have advantages/disadvantages.

Ideally, I'd give it to the news and content departments and hope that this new batch of content gets people to join the content team, so they can take it over later.

I don't think news would write too much as @Intersocial; said 2/3 content staff are in news and @runeaddict99; and @Inkwell; have already been in content, plus @.Cymru.; edits the Wiki too, so I don't think it'd be much of a problem although having new people too would help more as well.

[MKR&*42]

But because that department is so small, news should have it so it gets done faster, but will they write too much?

Basically, both have advantages/disadvantages.

Ideally, I'd give it to the news and content departments and hope that this new batch of content gets people to join the content team, so they can take it over later.

Me and Tom have discussed not having any kind of writing in the actual guide, except the guide itself. So there wouldn't be any opinions, any asking readers what their view is etc. It would just be the guide (and a sentence saying what the guide is for obviously).

There wont be a word limit either, so if the guide is only 50 words long that would be fine.

I agree with a separate dept for it, but with the hassle of perms on v6 and trying to set up a new dept in general, it should be news for the timebeing.

[Chippiewill]

What if responsibility is given to content, but temporarily news staff get content perms so they can join in if they want, do this for 2-4 weeks then let any news staff who want to do the guides stuff join the content department as well.

[Meanies]

This is the issue really.

This is content, so content should do it, and it suits their writing style more.

But because that department is so small, news should have it so it gets done faster, but will they write too much?

Basically, both have advantages/disadvantages.

Ideally, I'd give it to the news and content departments and hope that this new batch of content gets people to join the content team, so they can take it over later.

The point to me is that guides are content and not news. The department may be small but if this is to even go ahead, hopefully some of the more active users in the community may be interested in joining the department to work on this section alone, without the requirements of updating the wiki or other pages. In our progress threads in our staff forum we have prefixes such as [Wiki] [Site] and a new one can be added such as [Answers] to differentiate. I just had a look through the last few pages of news articles posted on the site also and the vast majority were by Sam and Intersocial, both of which are in the content dept anyway so it wouldn't be any slower, could be faster also if more members are interested.

[Kardan]

I don't think news would write too much as @Intersocial; said 2/3 content staff are in news and @runeaddict99; and @Inkwell; have already been in content, plus @.Cymru.; edits the Wiki too, so I don't think it'd be much of a problem although having new people too would help more as well.

I guess The only issue I have with letting news handle it, is that content *should* handle it, as that's the whole point of that department. Surely that shows that the content department needs changing (in the fact that it needs more staff). It's like giving the HabboxLive staff to run a big Habbox campaign like HxSS, even though they host events on Habbo, it should be the events team that handle it, since that's their job role

---------- Post added 06-06-2013 at 09:13 PM ----------

The point to me is that guides are content and not news. The department may be small but if this is to even go ahead, hopefully some of the more active users in the community may be interested in joining the department to work on this section alone, without the requirements of updating the wiki or other pages. In our progress threads in our staff forum we have prefixes such as [Wiki] [Site] and a new one can be added such as [Answers] to differentiate. I just had a look through the last few pages of news articles posted on the site also and the vast majority were by Sam and Intersocial, both of which are in the content dept anyway so it wouldn't be any slower, could be faster also if more members are interested.

I agree that content *should* get it, since that's what they are expected to do really It's just the speed that's the issue with it.