NewsLetter Feedback

[Silver Emerald]

Also, what happened to the Forum Games section? I stopped writing it to see how Silver would do, and I saw improvement from July to August. Now this month it's as lackluster as the poor PvP Events section.

Real life got the best of us and we rushed.

There's not really any excuse, just a promise to set better deadlines and make future editions shine more brightly.

[Solaris]

Congratulations to Vineroz and TheonlyrealBeef on being hired for Tournament Organizer, but apparently aren't worthy of NL

Congrats to Jenkar, which has neither been announced or position granted... o.O

Administrator Comment

This post along with the responses were moved from the December 2016 Newsletter post to Newsletter Feedback

[Hyroen]

There definitely was a mention of Jenkar in the CIotM but I think it was removed.

Great work NLWs.

[Solaris]

Great work NLWs.

I think I'm going to have to disagree here, unfortunately. When there's factual inconsistencies (and things that haven't been announced are put in place of things that should absolutely be there) paired along with grammatical and spelling mistakes (congartulations) and generally unfufilling wording, (also not to mention formatting errors on the Featured Community Member Interview), on content that has a whole month to be completed, I simply cannot agree that it is great work. I mean no foul towards the NLWs themselves, but I believe there has been, and could be, better work done on the Newsletter.

[Hyroen]

There are definitely ways to give constructive criticism. Not sure if the previous was an example.

NLWs have the daunting formatting task of compiling all submissions together and considering now is a period of exams and assignments for many students, availability to work on this might decrease.

There's always room for improvement in any section, and when it comes to NLs, what needs to be corrected can be mentioned. It falls on no one to be the editor aside from NLWs. Our NLWs are relatively new, and a part time job always gets less practice than a full time job, so it's important to consider experience as well.

I will insist that overall the job was well done, but it's been made clear that there were errors and hopefully these are mitigated in 2017. If a refined product needs an extra staff member on the team, Council may consider it.

[ddevans96]

Our NLWs are relatively new...

Demonstrably false, in Discord's case. Ignoring the newsletter following her first month, that's 14 newsletters. Silver was hired roughly 5.5 months ago, and again ignoring an early period, let's say 45 days, that's 5 newsletters.

Opinion: the majority of previous newsletter writers, both official and unofficial, produced higher quality work (and I don't consider this to be good quality, based on Solaris' list of issues) in five attempts, let alone fourteen. Hopefully now that these issues are being spoken, they can be improved.

[antiaverage]

Newsletter is a creative piece of volunteer work. Please keep critiques with that in mind. I'm thankful for this newsletter. If anyone would like to contribute editing skills to improve certain aspects of quality, there is room for you. Otherwise, bashing the work of volunteers is not constructive. Constructive criticism is welcome, but that's not what I'm hearing. It sounds more like personal attacks and that's not okay on these forums. I'm going to move this conversation to Newsletter Feedback. Let's try and play a bit more nicely and help lift each other up to better things.

[ddevans96]

Constructive criticism is welcome, but that's not what I'm hearing. It sounds more like personal attacks and that's not okay on these forums.

Solaris gave a list of issues with this newsletter that could use improvement, I am very curious how that isn't constructive. While my post had nothing constructive to the issue at hand, it wasn't mean to - it was meant to reinforce Solaris's points, because they were dismissed by Hyroen's statement.

[Aves]

Constructive criticism does more than point out problems-- it offers suggestions for improvement. Merely identifying the problem is a very important step, but it shouldn't be the only one. Rather than "X was bad," which is criticism, "X was bad, and could be improved by Y." The latter places less emphasis on the problem and more on how to address it. There are problems, and perhaps they do have obvious solutions-- but they could've been pointed out or addressed in a better way.

On a blunt side-note, it doesn't help that Solaris and Discord have had a history of petty squabbles, and in that context his post could be viewed in a passive-aggressive light/continuation of that.

[ddevans96]

Constructive criticism does more than point out problems-- it offers suggestions for improvement. Merely identifying the problem is a very important step, but it shouldn't be the only one. Rather than "X was bad," which is criticism, "X was bad, and could be improved by Y." The latter places less emphasis on the problem and more on how to address it. There are problems, and perhaps they do have obvious solutions-- but they could've been pointed out or addressed in a better way.

If I knew how, I would have added to Solaris' list with elaboration. But it's all just proofreading and quality control. I don't know what else to say besides spend more time proofreading, or researching more, or spending more time on it, and none of that seems helpful. Maybe I could recommend showing the finished NL to an active member the day before and having them check for the issues Solaris has, in addition to a general check for consistency, correctness, etc?

On a blunt side-note, it doesn't help that Solaris and Discord have had a history of petty squabbles, and in that context his post could be viewed in a passive-aggressive light/continuation of that.

This is why I responded despite my hiatus - I know that Solaris and Discord have a publicized feud and I wanted to make it clear that this wasn't just an issue Solaris has, it's an issue I see as well. I consider Discord a friend and I have a lot of respect for her (in addition to Silver Emerald), but I have never been above criticizing my friends. I apologize for being harsh about it in this instance.

[Solaris]

There are definitely ways to give constructive criticism. Not sure if the previous was an example.

NLWs have the daunting formatting task of compiling all submissions together and considering now is a period of exams and assignments for many students, availability to work on this might decrease.

There's always room for improvement in any section, and when it comes to NLs, what needs to be corrected can be mentioned. It falls on no one to be the editor aside from NLWs. Our NLWs are relatively new, and a part time job always gets less practice than a full time job, so it's important to consider experience as well.

I will insist that overall the job was well done, but it's been made clear that there were errors and hopefully these are mitigated in 2017. If a refined product needs an extra staff member on the team, Council may consider it.

I've offered criticisms in the past to the Newsletter Writers, via chat private messages, and criticisms were either met with resistance, ignored, or patched once and then continued to happen again in the future.

Formatting is, in my opinion, hardly daunting. There's a premade format in which the Bulletin Board Code for the standard "shell" of the newsletter (tables, image header slots, general header text), and the submissions are then transplanted from a forums personal message, into their pre-defined slot in the Newsletter. Aside from the relative ease of the operation, it is stated in the hiring posts that a Newsletter Writer should be able to use the basic functions of the forums coding features to construct the Newsletter. This was fell a bit short in the now corrected Featured Community Member of the Month Interview, where [/color] tags were left floating, and colors were ran together, making the questions hard to distinguish from the answers.

There's always room for improvement, of course, that's the underlying sentiment of my posts. My problem lies with the fact that I have stated in past editions, privately as to not spark something akin to this, and I have observed, personally, not much improvement. You're right in saying that it falls on no-one to be the editor but the Newsletter Writers, but when the Newsletter Writers are ceasing to edit simple typos/grammar oddities, it detracts from the whole reading experience of the Newsletter. Naturally a job that is only performed once a month will get less practice compared to one like Tournament Organizer that gets 52 weeks a year, however, I don't think my/ddevans' concerns with this can be dismissed on that basis alone. Both of our Newsletter Writers have been in the force for what many would consider a decently long time, and even regardless of experience, I'm not personally of the opinion that experience in being a Newsletter Writer is required in fixing basic spelling/grammatical problems.

I will respect your opinion that the job was well done, however as I'm sure I've demonstrated by now, I am not of the same opinion. As far as an extra Newsletter Writer is concerned, I would be more than content with lending my pen in an effort to better a community project.

[Hyroen]

I should also mention that I know little about the NLW writing process but when NLWs struggle to find contributors to write articles for the month's newsletter, there's a problem, and possibly one that hasn't been discussed before.

I in no way meant to discredit Solaris' points. But I do think that one of the best ways to understand the issues and quality of the products is to understand the process and the position staff is in. If Discord is alone responsible for all articles, that's a problem too.

Newsletters are great when experts in their fields come together to bring together a top-notch product, but when they don't, there's an implicit expectation for NLWs to do so.

I think noting that there has been a consistent level of quality and errors in the Newsletter is important to note, but I don't think it's simply that NLWs are bad and they should feel bad. Let's try to collectively get to the root of the problem and work to propose some solutions.