What's the GM up to these days?
Posted 03-27-08 at 11:09 AM by Taeric
For a while now I've been wanting to post something on what I'm working on to give everyone some insight into what this position entails and how it ties into the rest of the staff. It should also serve to provide a persistent excuse for why I'm often slow in responding to PMs. 
I'll update this as larger projects turn over, when things of interest pop up, and when time dictates. With everything else I have going on, I don't anticipate posting daily and probably not even weekly. I will try to address comments posted, but I'm not making any promises as to how quickly that's going to happen.
All that being said, here's the scoop (items are in no particular order) -
Routine director/moderator level stuff:
That's about all I can think of off the top of my head. Like I wrote above, I will try to update this will some frequency, particularly as larger projects come and go. While I won't always be able to fill you in on all of the small details, I'd like to keep everyone apprised of some of the things that are going on behind the scenes.
I'll update this as larger projects turn over, when things of interest pop up, and when time dictates. With everything else I have going on, I don't anticipate posting daily and probably not even weekly. I will try to address comments posted, but I'm not making any promises as to how quickly that's going to happen.
All that being said, here's the scoop (items are in no particular order) -
Routine director/moderator level stuff:
- Mange the marketplace forums - This mostly entails keeping the Deals and For Sale forums clean as well as checking in on the Wanted, Appraisal, and Freebie forums. This would be a whole lot less work if everyone was in the habit of reading the stickies posted throughout the site. The less time I spend on those forums, the more time I have to spend elsewhere.
- Manage the team folding competition - It's hard to believe we're already on our third year of the team folding competition. It seems like just yesterday that I was convincing admin this was a good idea. My work here involved doing regular score updates (5 per month is ideal, but sometimes only 3 or 4 get done) and keeping up with team rosters (I only read the PMs I get on the team competition when I'm doing updates so nothing gets lost, so please be aware there will nearly always be a delay in getting a response - I do this because unread messages are much easier to keep track of than read ones).
- Log new folders into the database - I do this 2-4 times per week on average, depending on my available time and frustration level. If everyone would read the instructions in the first post (as directed in the thread title), it would make my life a lot easier, which would result in more frequent updates.
- Keep the Intel Overclocking Database up to date - I try to do this every 1-2 week. This is another case where reading the first post would be very helpful. Many of the database entries are missing necessary components such as stress testing results or CPU-Z verifications. Please be sure to include all of the required items.
- Address reported posts - Like everyone else on the director team, I work on keeping on top of posts you all report. This is really a community-wide effort to keep the forums clean, and everyone - members and staff alike - do a great job with it.
- Keep up with the Ticket System - This includes setting up Overclocked accounts, processing applications for various positions, and some other things. I expect that we'll use this system for position nominations in the future as well. It's proven to be much handier than PMs, and it allows us to be much more responsive to requests for things such as getting Overclocked accounts set up (usually the same day).
- Track the "business" sections of the site - By this I mean the tech issues system, the site news forum, and the suggestions forum. Since those forums often get into policy issues (particularly the suggestions forum), I keep close track on those. With the tech issues section, I try to replicate reported bugs and set priorities and personnel to work on things. Occasionally I can fix things myself, but it's mostly a process of figuring out who might be able to best handle what.
- Coordinate day to day policy issues - Along with admin and the CDs, I tackle day to day policy issues. These sometimes are brought up by members and other times by the staff, and this topic covers everything from interpretations of small rules to revamping of entire sections. This really works best when it comes in the forum of "ask before doing"; I get quite a few PM inquiries about if something is acceptable or the best way of doing something. Such questions are always appreciated.
- Look to the future - We always have several things in development at any given time. Not everything we come up with gets implemented for a variety of reasons (e.g. we decide the idea isn't so good after all, the effort necessary to implement an idea is prohibitive, etc.) See below for some of the irons we currently have in the fire.
- TOS rewrite - Over the last month or so, we've been working on revamping sections of the TOS, particularly the "Dos and do nots". We're still fine tuning some of the items, but I think the reworked version is much clearer and more concise.
- Reworked staff structure - As most of you have probably noticed, we've added some new positions to the staff recently. We're also looking at revamping the admin->CD->FD structure as well. Our staff is pretty slim at the moment, and we want to make some changes to the structure before we staff back up. Expect to see more on this soon both in terms of an announcement of a new staff structure and listings of open positions. There's one technical glitch that needs to be worked out before we move forward on this, but hopefully we can find a solution to it soon. The changes will not be earth shattering, but they will hopefully allow us to get more members involved at various levels.
That's about all I can think of off the top of my head. Like I wrote above, I will try to update this will some frequency, particularly as larger projects come and go. While I won't always be able to fill you in on all of the small details, I'd like to keep everyone apprised of some of the things that are going on behind the scenes.
Total Comments 2
Comments
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Sounds like you have a lot on your plate Taeric
If you wouldn't mind, I would like to know more about what "revamping" the structure of OCN entails.Posted 03-28-08 at 03:45 PM by mega_option101
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When most sites start up, there is usually just an admin and a couple of mods and perhaps a super mod keeping track of things. As they grow and develop, the staffing structure evolves to keep up with things. We've gone through several revisions of the staff structure over the years, and it's about time for a new one.
Without going into a whole lot of premature detail, one of our major areas of interest at the moment is having top notch staff-created content. The Editorial positions where introduced with this in mind. Obviously we haven't introduced a lot of those positions yet (one in place, a couple more in the application stage), but there will be an increased focus on such positions. Obviously there is always a need to keep the site well moderated, so we will address those needs as well.
The process at this point is to hash out the remaining details of the structure (we have some working ideas but not a final org chart at this point), come up with a list of positions based on the revised structure, fit our existing staff into the revised structure, post a list of open positions, and fill those positions.
In other news, the artisan program is finally moving forward after delays due to the holidays and a big crunch for me at work. I will be meeting with a focus group of prospective artisans within the week, and we hope to finalize the plans to get the Artisan Section officially going. We have high hopes that this will be beneficial to everyone in the community, and it's something we definitely did not want to just jump into without getting input from a variety of people. Hopefully we can have this going within the month so the artisans among us will have a place to showcase their masterpieces.Posted 04-01-08 at 12:52 PM by Taeric
