The last week has been crazy with the combination of JamCon, increased younger-age members due to the 096 short film hype, coronavirus keeping people at home, and probably a bunch of other factors, and it is evident more than ever that the forums are getting swamped and we need more reviewers so the Butterflies don't get overwhelmed.
Disclaimer: this is a quick and probably messy post from me to spitball and gauge reactions.
My thoughts:
- Front-page features will be chosen entirely by teams of reviewers. Each reviewer on the team will have their name posted on the front page.
- there will be two SCP/tale/GoI format features per month (so up to six teams can pick features per month)
- reviewer spotlight remains the same
- Each month, we will open an interest-stating thread for SCP wiki members to put their names forward to be considered for 2-week-long reviewer training teams.
- the team members (let's call them… officers. And the leader can be the commander.1) will receive mentoring from a current Butterfly (debating whether only staff members or not).
- officers will practice giving feedback in the forums, focusing on concept threads from newer authors
- officers will be taught some forum management like how to respond (without backseat modding) to a thread that breaks guidelines
- if the officers cannot yet greenlight, they will be given an "official recommendation" privilege related to their commander (think magic summoning circle, but only to be used if they really really think the commander would greenlight the idea)
- officers do not need to be newbies!
- officers will have weekly goals for two categories: activity and quality. Activity can be something simple like "crit at least one thread a day", quality something like "be more familiar with matching authors to helpful resources/guides/example articles". Commanders will discuss these goals weekly.
- teams can have funny/rule of cool names. Commander discretion.
- At the middle/end of the month, commanders and active officers choose the page they would like featured on the front page of the mainsite.
- if any of the officers were absent, their name is not posted to the front page and they do not get to be involved in choosing the feature.
- the monthly mentorship teams get posted in the Site News page for the next month. Maybe accompanied by a "sign off" message at the end of their "flight".
- try to bring in new reviewers for training each month, but officers can do monthly "flights" in succession if desired.
- repeatedly successful officers can be made commanders in later flights, potentially fast-track to staff.
- interest-gathering thread for the month is updated to include some debrief stats from the officers, to serve as testimonials or the like. Things like what they discovered about themselves as a reviewer, an idea that surprised them, or just the general reaction to learning how to handle one of the crucial elements to the site's writing process.
So in implementation this would look like:
Things that will hopefully change:
- shifting forum crit staff roles from just critting to also mentoring
- general bulk "common formula" concept threads will be opportunities for up-and-coming reviewers to practice how to respond to different kinds of material
- keeping the forums tidy is less of a staff-only burden—let the community be responsible for looking out for its population rather than necessitating that staff be the only ones who can state when something needs to be cleaned up
- community warms up to reviewers/being a reviewer more; 2-week rotating flights prevents burnout
- REVIEWERS GET MORE FRONT-PAGE NAME RECOGNITION (pls)
Big, big, big thanks to N_Aepic_Fael does not match any existing user name for already starting a mentorship sort of practice and taylor_itkin does not match any existing user name for discussing teams!!!
Again, it is late and I am tired and I still need to check the site so… if this is too complicated, the big things I need to know first and foremost is how we can make being a reviewer more attractive to the community, and how we can make reviewers feel more appreciated overall.
(account deleted)