MGSA Going forward

DaveRussellSA

We are in the process of transitioning the way that Make Games SA is run and with this come a few challenges and asks for help. The moving out of IESA MGSA becomes a purely community focused endevour and with this in mind we need to start looking at how things are right now and what changes we would like to see happen. I have put this post under general as i need feedback and right now very few people visit the Meta category. Once we have the ball rolling i will move it back

Moderators
Right now we only have two moderators on the forum @Lexaquilla and myself. This is not a good way of ensuring that people are treated fairly and that things are managed correctly. The proposal is to make the following people moderators based on the people who were nominated for the AGM.

Leon van Niekerk
Julian Pritchard
Evan Greenwood
Jonathan Hau-Yoon
Ahmed Elgoni
Megan Hughes
Dave Russell

The logic is that these people are already identified as leaders within the community and would have the communities best interests at heart. It also gives us a situation of where we have more people who can collaborate on tought decisions on how to handle situations on the forum.

Web site features and update
At this point in time the forums are working well although from an administration and features point of view there are some limitations. We have had some volunteers to assist with continued development of website as well as some funding assistance. We are trying to identify what features are most needed and which changes we need to action first. There is a thread for this already here - makegamessa.com/discussion/3248/mgsa-website#latest

General rules and FAQ for the forum
I am also in the process of creating a post with the general forum rules. This will be the first thing people can read to get a grounding of what the forums are about and some of the guidelines on how we conduct ourselves.

It would be good to get your thoughts.

Thanks

Dave

dammit

Thanks for this info, @daverussellSA

On the side of moderators, I personally believe that these should not be the people who post the most often. I also believe that I wouldn't be suited to this role as I tend to react quickly and make rash decisions, which may end up with unnecessary tension. Thanks though :3

DaveRussellSA

@dammit Thanks for the heads up :) We need a minimum of 5 people for moderators in the end and this list is just a starting point if there are other people who you feel would be better please PM me so i can update the list. I do think that just your self awareness makes you well suited :)

Tuism

Thanks for taking the initiative @DaveRussellSA :D

So we need people who are most often here but post least often...

LURKERS! ASSEMBLE!

I think as soon as possible, we should start a de-stickying process rather than add yet more stickies. We should make use of the existing menu structure up top ("Home Discussions") and add in custom pages to house important information to point people to. We are facing a scourge of stickies such that it's making the landing quite uncomfortable.

Of course not all things belong up top, but I do think stuff like forum rules/FAQ and such definitely do. Perhaps that list of companies thing too.

DaveRussellSA

Completely agree the one of the roles of the guidelines post will be to redirect people to important threads so we can de sticky them

francoisvn

Cool. Some thoughts so far:

1. I like the sentiment that the moderators can/should be people that post less, but I think it's also critical that the moderators are able to quickly react to situations as they crop up, so some balance is important here. For example, just being able to quickly remove spam is quite important IMHO.

2. I have to echo what already been said about stickies: at the moment there are too many of them. There's also the case that some threads seem to be stickied only under their categories and not in general (like the upcoming minijam). Unfortunately, it's not possible to add static pages without the website upgrade, but I like the intermediate solution of having a stickied "General Rules and FAQ" thread at the top with links to other content. Possibly having it locked (so only moderators can post there) also makes sense.

3. While I'd personally be happy with the nominations being the initial moderators, I'm also a bit unsure about this. If it's a working solution for the immediate future that makes a lot of sense. How will moderators be determined going forward?

Nandrew

I declined my committee nomination but I'm willing to contribute as part of a broad moderator pool here. Seems less intense ;)

I am fond of increased numbers and getting a strong core of conflict-conscious managers keeping an eye on each other as well as the broader community :p

DaveRussellSA

@francoisvn completely agree with all three points. I am working on a single Guidelines and FAQ post and will hopefully have it up in the next day as a start will close it so only moderators can edit it and then will clean up the stickies. I do think we are in serious need of an upgrade of the forum as well. On your last point I think with the initial group will need to have an ever watchful eye on people to spot potential moderators, additionally we should provide a mechanism for people to be nominated as a moderator.

@nandrew awesome!

EvanGreenwood

Can I suggest Etiene from Fuzzy Logic as a moderator. He was nominated for the committee, and it'd be useful to have someone from George as a moderator (I think?).

I'd ideally not want an all male cast for the moderators :/

DaveRussellSA

EvanGreenwood said:

Can I suggest Etiene from Fuzzy Logic as a moderator. He was nominated for the committee, and it'd be useful to have someone from George as a moderator (I think?).

I'd ideally not want an all male cast for the moderators :/

Awesome and i agree we need some diversity in out moderators.

Tuism

While I'll not claim to be a diffuser of bombs, I'd like to assist in spam deletion and other such less conflict driven moderation tasks, if you'll have me :)

Karuji

I've been thinking about community in general and the what the notion of a moderator means to the community at large.

I think the placement of what the community view as leaders into the roles of moderators is good since that would be representational of the communities interests.

However the moderation team should have a kind of consistent voice and be able to deal with stressful situations. As was pointed out prior not all people would do well in such situations, but I would feel remised to exclude people from being able to help guide the community simply because of that.

I believe that we need to strive towards diversity. Since if we do not actively try and change things we maintain a status quo that actively favours those that are already privileged.

This would have to do with the MGSA/IESA structure and the determination of policy. So it might just be waiting to see what @DaveRussellSA has been hard at work on. But I thought I should mention the need to have voices who advocate for transformation, but are not part of the moderation team have a good bit of weight with regards to our direction as a community.

tbulford

DaveRussellSA said:

General rules and FAQ for the forum
I am also in the process of creating a post with the general forum rules. This will be the first thing people can read to get a grounding of what the forums are about and some of the guidelines on how we conduct ourselves.

A strong set of guidelines is key to making the community operate better. This can diffuse a lot of the tension that comes from moderation where the person been moderated feels they being picked on or personally attacked. Is there a specific thread for the rules yet?

DaveRussellSA

First draft is here - http://makegamessa.com/discussion/4108/forum-guidelines-faq

Ravin

I'd like to become a lurker, I'm a tame troll.