Administrative Breakdown

[Manestream]

Hello everypony, it is good to see you all again. I would like to take a moment to talk to you all about something I have noticed over the last few days:

Over the course of this past week and a half as the boards were being transferred, I had the opportunity to see many bronies in action, volunteering themselves to help move the site, and taking action without even being asked. I must say, the talent and leadership in this group is amazing, from the ponies giving directions to the ones making those directions happen. Bronies have come to me and thanked me for the work I have put in, and honestly, I think that thanks should be turned right back around and given to all of you. Your willingness to band together and buckle down as a community to save our RP, site logs, and be a positive part of the reconstruction process has given me the inspiration to continue, and the peace of mind that I made the right decision to start a new board. With help from everypony, we did better than that. We saved our board, and the community that rides upon it.

And I am really impressed, and moved.

Throughout this process, I have done quite a bit of thinking on my experience as staff on the Equestria boards, and considering what I could do to improve the user experience of our home. While there are many, many ideas and topics, one area of concern i'd like to address now is the roles of our staff. At the previous location, we had hand picked some very talented bronies, and more or less told them to "have at it", with whatever guidelines we could muster as we went along (it was tough- we were busy and our staff really shone through it), but as a result, I think it was unclear what some staffers were intended to, or capable of, or even should be doing, and that resulted in a bit of confusion.

I have put a lot of thought into how I want to arrange the staff here at our new location, and where individuals on our staff would best be suited according to their strengths. I have also re-invented our staff roles and guidelines- or easily put, what each 'position' is really intended to do. I have created a new role, RP Helpstaff. Let's take a look at the new breakdown:

The breakdown will be this:

Admins> Global Moderators> Helpstaff/ RP Helpstaff

Admins: The people who run the back end and the top of the board, essentially the ponies that take care of the issues no other pony can. Admins add features, update styles, plan events, and solve the big problems. Ultimately, any large board or RP changes/decisions will have to go through an administrator. Your administrators are Artax (who primarily runs the back end of the forum) and myself, who you will see around the face of the board more often, posting announcements and answering questions.

Global Moderators: Global Mods will be a bit different than their previous setup. They will be more or less my problem solvers. They are individuals who are proven at diffusing tense situations, are good mediators, and are well spoken. These individuals are expected to cover the entire board, as well as being the primary mediator in the chat. A large portion of this role is to help in fixing forum issues, arranging/deleting/moderating topics, and being available when an issue does arise. Essentially, this role is almost a customer service position; make sure our bronies are happy, and clean up when everyone is happy.

RP Helpstaff: RP Helpstaff are very close to our original helpstaff roles. These are bronies who are good at providing thoughtful feedback, keeping ontop of edits, combing the RP Apps, and encouraging activity and development. They are encouraged to offer suggestions and answers, but should defer to an RP mod if they are unsure. RP Helpstaff will have the ability to approve applications, but not move them to their final locations.

Regular Helpstaff: These individuals are bronies who prove helpful in any area of the board. They may be given specific items to work on, i.e. working with rules, or welcoming new users, working on site events, helping in chat (but not moderating), etc. Each Helpstaff member will be expected to offer basic assistance to any brony that needs it, primarily in guiding bronies to forum resources. If there is a question, a Helpstaff's job is to link the brony in need to the correct forum, and do basic interpretation of the rules. All helpstaff should suggest reference to higher authorities if the question is not answered, or they feel unsure about the question. Bronies who are frequently active on the site, who have also contributed to the development of events, board features, maps, or are just proven overall very helpful may be considered for this group.

If there are any questions, please feel free to comment and your questions or feedback :'3

A current staff breakdown can be found here.