http://www.overclock.net/blogs/taeric/ An overclocking forum devoted to maximizing the performance of graphics cards, CPUs, motherboards, RAM and everything else found inside your computer case. en Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:15:56 GMT vBulletin 1 http://static.overclock.net/images/oc/misc/rss.jpg http://www.overclock.net/blogs/taeric/ http://www.overclock.net/blogs/taeric/1462-taeric-sighting.html Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:20:18 GMT Howdy, all. Contrary to popular opinion, I have no dropped completely off the face of the earth. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a little over a year since I was on OCN about 18 hours a day, but it’s been one heck of a year. I’ve had the best of intentions of becoming involved again (heck, I... Howdy, all. Contrary to popular opinion, I have no dropped completely off the face of the earth. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a little over a year since I was on OCN about 18 hours a day, but it’s been one heck of a year. I’ve had the best of intentions of becoming involved again (heck, I never intended to stop being involved), but life has been busy throwing curve balls my way on a fairly regular basis.

As some of you may know, we had our first baby last September. I had every intention of posting pictures from the hospital. Instead of the expected two day hospital stay, we were there for five days, which resulted in a rapid reworking of priorities. Mom and baby were both healthy when we left the hospital, though, which is what really mattered. For those who have children, you understand how much they change all aspects of your life, particularly when the first one comes around. Parenting the little one was never difficult, but it often exhausted my supply of patience, which was always something I needed a whole lot of to do my job here effectively (along with a healthy dose of common sense).

So now, a year later, our little monster is toddling all over the place and has no idea that dozens of little ghosts and goblins will be coming by our house in a couple of days, which will be all kinds of fun for him. We’re in a new house in a new town after I had to transfer to a different office (the office I was in closed). Much of the last five months have been devoted to that move (both home and work), and we still have a lot to do (at home at least; things are pretty well set at work). On the bright side, we made very nice upgrades both in houses and neighborhoods, and we expect that we will be very happy where we are. At the new house I get about half of our large basement as “mine” as opposed to the third of one room at the old house. I have a pretty sweet setup for my tech toys, and I very much enjoyed watching my guys beat up on the Yankees last night on my new TV.

I have still been folding and have managed to still hang around the top 400 worldwide (unfortunately down in the 390s from my peak around 320). I have shiny new computer gear just waiting for me to have the time and motivation to get it set up, though I really need to get around to soliciting some help to get the most folding out of the gear I have. One unfortunately side effect of me not being regularly involved on OCN is that I’ve had a lot of this gear for way too long without putting it to use. Fortunately, I got good deals on most everything, so the depreciation hasn’t hurt too much. I have been stockpiling retired gear, though, and the depreciation on that gear is going to be painful.

At this point, I really don’t know what the future will hold for my involvement with the site. I’d like to say that some time is going to free up in the near future, but I’ve mistakenly thought that several times in the last year. I do hope that things work out as I have enjoyed my involvement with the site over the years. It is good to see so many familiar members when I do check in (I have only logged in once to congratulate the team on the Chimp Challenge victory, but I do lurk from time to time) along with so many new members. I will definitely be posting some soon as I have time to hopefully get my folding setup reworked and more productive. Maybe I’ll even get around to clearing out some of my old gear.

I hope everyone is doing well and is folding productively! ]]> Taeric http://www.overclock.net/blogs/taeric/1462-taeric-sighting.html http://www.overclock.net/blogs/taeric/560-another-mini-update.html Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:38:34 GMT As most everyone has seen, there are a ton of positions currently advertised for staff positions. It has taken a major effort to get to this point, and there will be a lot of work to sort through and evaluate all of the nominations, tweak the site setup to accommodate the new staff structure, and... As most everyone has seen, there are a ton of positions currently advertised for staff positions. It has taken a major effort to get to this point, and there will be a lot of work to sort through and evaluate all of the nominations, tweak the site setup to accommodate the new staff structure, and get all of the successful nominees promoted and trained. The site will be much better off with the additional manpower, energy, and ideas that the soon-to-be staff members will bring to the table. Our existing staff has been doing an admirable job, but the crew has been way too thin for a long time. Getting the staff back up to a reasonable size will allow the group as a whole as well as individuals to get a lot more accomplished, which should benefit everyone.

It has been brought to my attention that some members see the Forum Supervisor position as ranking higher than the Forum Editor position. Both fall at the same level on our org chart, and both positions have advantages and disadvantages. For example, Forum Supervisors have access to moderation tools and the warning/infraction system. This is really a mixed blessing. It gives them the ability to keep the forum clean and to help give members a gentle (or not so gentle) nudge when they break the rules, but on the flipside of that is that it's only a matter of time until they get their first (likely of many) unhappy PMs in response to threads/posts that have been moderated or warnings/infractions that have been issued. Forum Editors do not have access to those tools, so they avoid the hassles associated with them. On the flipside for them, they have to depend on others to apply those tools as needed. However, they won't have to worry about being badgered about their actions while they're working on the next great FAQ, guide, or other gem of content that they're creating.

The moral of the story is that there are pros and cons of both positions, and for the real gluttons for punishment, there is always the Forum Director positions who get the best/worst of both worlds.

A lot of nominations have been made already. I'd say about 70% have been self-nominations, so anyone who is hesitant to nominate themselves, you'll have plenty of company. A well written self-nomination coupled with a good history on the site is the single best way to get selected to join the staff.

With all of the work that has been going on with the staff restructure, some of my other duties have slid somewhat. If you're waiting on me to do something, please feel free to ding me again. I'm down to 20 unread PMs, and I think I have all of the outstanding non-nomination tickets addressed. ]]> Taeric http://www.overclock.net/blogs/taeric/560-another-mini-update.html http://www.overclock.net/blogs/taeric/514-who-would-make-good-addition-sites.html Sat, 17 May 2008 03:19:04 GMT This has been something I've been wanting to write up for a while, and I decided the informal setting of the blog was probably the most appropriate place for it.

In the coming weeks, we will be posting a lot of open positions, and members will have a chance to nominate members (including self-nominations) to fill those positions. When considering your nominations, keep this info in mind...

We have a very large number of members who could positively contribute to the site as a member of the staff. It's definitely not a job for everyone, though, and it's important for members to know what they're getting into when they nominate themselves or others. Before I paint a horrific picture of what staff life is like, let me say that working on the site is often rewarding in many ways, and those ways differ from person to person. It's often thankless work, though, and you often will only hear from someone when there are problems. A lot of people take for granted the 99.8% of the time when everything goes as smoothly as can be, and then they blow up at the first hint of anything going wrong. You definitely need a very thick skin at times, though thankfully most people understand that you're doing your best to keep things going smoothly.

Some specific things to consider (in no particular order) -

• Staff duties do take time to complete, usually on a daily basis. If that appeals to you and you have time to devote to those responsibilities, by all means sign up. If your primary enjoyment on the site comes from diligently responding to threads and helping members, understand that you will have less time to do that (unless you steal your staff time from other things in your life). I used to practically live in the Intel forums back in the day, but I rarely have the opportunity to even visit there anymore. While I do enjoy my work here, sometimes it's really nice to just ignore all of the official stuff and help some members tackle their computer problems.
• There are no magic numbers to determine who will work out well on the staff. A member will one hundred reps may end up working out much better on the staff than someone with five thousand reps. Post count also does not make or break a potential staff member. When evaluating nominations, we look at both quality and quantity. Anyone who has been on the site for a while and has made a solid contribution over that time will receive due consideration. I fully expect that we will have a mix of senior and moderate tenure members receive staff positions.
• Good nomination write ups go a very long way toward a successful nomination. Yes, we do read each and every nomination that gets submitted. The ol' "Pick me because I'm great!" nomination will not receive much consideration, regardless of who the member is. A well thought out, energetic nomination will score a lot of points with the reviewers, especially on self-nominations. The way I look at it is that if you can't show a bit of enthusiasm while applying for a positions, you're not likely to execute the duties of that position with much energy. In a nutshell, don't be afraid to really tell us why you think you're the right person for a position.
• If you don't see a position that interests you right away or if you don't get selected, don't worry; there will be more opportunities in the future. To date, we've been in the habit of taking on a fairly significant number of staff members all at once and then not selecting any new ones until attrition has significantly thinned down our staff to the point where we're barely keeping up. Hopefully that will be ending with this group of open positions. I hope to keep close tabs on the needs of the staff and the ability of the current staff at the time to handle them and open up specific positions as needed to fill in any identified gaps. Too large of a staff can be just as detrimental as too small of a staff, but hopefully we can find a happy medium and keep our staff size in that range.
• If you see an area of the site that is not getting adequate staff attention be it a forum or something more general, please bring it to my attention. When things are busy as they usually are, it's easy for things to slip through the cracks. It's tough to fix what we don't know is broken, so don't be afraid to speak up if you see something out of place.
• Warnings and infractions for prospective staff members - one of the things we look at when evaluating candidates is their warning and infraction history. We use this to help assess the type of judgment that a person might exhibit as a representative of the site. We all have bad days and slip up from time to time, but a pattern of infractions just a few severe infractions will probably indicate that a person is probably not a good fit for the staff. A random minor infractions over time or infractions well in the past will not be a big detriment. A spotless history, though, certainly won't hurt things at all.

I'm running out of steam, so I'll cut this off before I start to ramble (more than I already have). It's always exciting bringing new people on board as it brings a lot of new ideas and energy into the mix. While it will take a lot of work to get everything going, I think the site will really benefit from everyone's efforts in seeing this process through. ]]> Taeric http://www.overclock.net/blogs/taeric/514-who-would-make-good-addition-sites.html http://www.overclock.net/blogs/taeric/488-quick-gm-update.html Sat, 10 May 2008 02:11:46 GMT It's been a while, so here a quick update. I'm going to bullet point them to keep things moving along...

• I finally caught up on the team scoring updates, at least until I had a team change show up shortly after I posted to the scoring thread. Updates will be back on track with 3-5 per month.
• I posted a new position for Section Editor of the Folding forum. We're accepting appilcations through midnight on Saturday the 10th, so be sure to get in your application before then if you're interested. All of the applications will be processed at the same time, and the successful application will be announced within a few days (I think I said Wedesday, but check the announcement in the Site News forum).
• The new staff structure is just about ready. I hope to have all of the open positions posted within two weeks and new staff in place by July 1 at the latest. Keep an eye out in the Site News forum for more info. There will be a variety of positions available.
• The site will be upgrading to the newest version of the vbulletin software soon. There are some nice new features in upgrade, and it will permit up to go forward with some long overdue projects such as the wiki (there wasn't much point in setting it up under the old version just to have to rebuild it from scratch under the new version).
• The Artisan Section is just about ready to go. We're just waiting on admin's final blessing to move forward with it. Keep an eye out for some amazing work by fellow members available for sale soon!

]]> Taeric http://www.overclock.net/blogs/taeric/488-quick-gm-update.html http://www.overclock.net/blogs/taeric/405-whats-gm-up-these-days.html Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:09:29 GMT 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:

• 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.

Administrative items:

• 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.

Current projects:

• 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.

As many of you know, I also serve in a similar capacity at our sister site, DogForum.org. Although it is a younger and smaller site, there are a lot of good members and discussion over there. It's been very interesting seeing that community grow from scratch (I was the seventh member to sign up over there), and a lot of ideas have come out of that forum that have benefited this one. If you're a dog lover and have not yet checked that site out, I encourage you to do so.

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. ]]> Taeric http://www.overclock.net/blogs/taeric/405-whats-gm-up-these-days.html