This got really long and doesn't really cover everything I have in mind. The short version: We're going to get off our butts and make the Phoenyx the first-class service it ought to be. Chats resume May 1st. The long version: First, an introduction, as some of you are new to volunteering on the Phoenyx. Karen and I (being the co-owners of the Phoenyx, which is a not-for-profit, devoid-of-income hobby of ours; it's Karen's baby, she does the coding and overall direction, I handle the hardware, OS, network and games) view the Phoenyx as a service to players and lurkers. You, the gamemasters, are volunteers helping to provide this service. That is, you aren't our customer, you're part of the inner-circle that makes the Phoenyx work, and you are our most valuable asset. In light of this, we've been working toward building a "community"... a feeling of belonging to a group and some "brand loyalty" among our users. In addition to gamemasters, we need other volunteers to help manage and improve the Phoenyx. We're having trouble recruiting and keeping them though. Our gamemasters already have a job to do, but we need at least your input on things. Lately, I'm starting to feel like Karen and I are having stagnation problems here... things aren't developing fast enough and we're not handling the work-load well. The Phoenyx just isn't becoming what we want it to become. Not only that, it's difficult to even let it "coast" because there's a lot of work involved just to keep the status quo. Awhile back, we were doing weekly organizational chats... Karen started calling them Town Meetings, I think. They were useful in determining our vision, what we wanted out of the Phoenyx and where it was headed. But in the end they stopped being productive. One of the reasons we quit having weekly chats was because they were producing lots of ideas that couldn't be used until we were ready for technical implementation... and Karen's schedule has been such that she's not finding as much time to work on the code as she used to. (There're a lot of factors, not the least of which was becoming a mother and homemaker... the amount of free time we get in front of the computers has decreased, especially since she used to code on Firehawk from work when things were slow.) I'm thinking we need to resume a regular chat (maybe not weekly, but regularly), focusing not on things that require the new software but on things we can work with now. My primary concern right now is with the game application process, and recruiting and training volunteers. For some time now I've been wanting to revamp the application process... it doesn't present the right info to the applicant and doesn't ask for the right info any more, as our evaluation process has evolved but the application hasn't. That's where I'd like to start. I also think there's a lot of community issues we can address without the technical advancements we're looking for in the new software. I think we can move into those after we address applications. (I also think we can use the Wiki (http://www.phoenyx.net/twiki/) for a lot of the things we discussed before, like "home pages" for each game category.) I suppose tonight is too short a notice for a chat. Next Wednesday is Karen and my 10th wedding anniversary, so no chat then, eh? So I'm going to shoot for May 1st, 8 CDT. I'll find a European-friendly time to schedule a regular chat as well. One of us might be in chat tonight after 8 CDT, though Nathan's 9 o'clock bedtime complicates that. Drop by just to chat if you like, or we can even talk business. Meera, are you still with us as administrative assistant? (I'm building an area on the Wiki for the chat logs and such , which will make it very simple for you to manage the information.) You can find out about our MOO chat server here... http://www.phoenyx.net/chat/ The Volunteers home page on the Wiki is here... http://www.phoenyx.net/cgi-bin/twiki/bin/view/Volunteers/WebHome -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On 17 Apr 2002, at 15:53, Carl D Cravens wrote: > Chats resume May 1st. ... > Meera, are you still with us as administrative assistant? As that is my birthday, I will be unavailable that day. Otherwise, you know how I feel. I'm pleased and proud to be part of the Phoenyx service, and whatever effort I can honestly offer (with limited time but fairly active imagination) is yours. \\ Mb \\ mabarry@xpert.net -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): The Glitter and the Glamour Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
> > Meera, are you still with us as administrative assistant?
>
>As that is my birthday, I will be unavailable that day.
Yay, mine too!
>Lately, I'm starting to feel like Karen and I are having stagnation
>problems here... things aren't developing fast enough and we're not
>handling the work-load well. The Phoenyx just isn't becoming what we want
>it to become. Not only that, it's difficult to even let it "coast"
>because there's a lot of work involved just to keep the status quo.
Have you set specific goals for what you want to do or be?
Have you got reachable sub-targets for those goals?
Can you define what *you* want the Phoenyx to be?
I confess I haven't contributed much (my Phoenyx PBEM expired)
but I am sure I could be of some use in the future. What I ask
myself is where can I fit in to your picture?
--Thom
PS I still have two other PBEMs going strong, I could migrate those
to the Phoenyx if "traffic" is one of your targets or goals...
-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s):
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, thom denholm wrote: > Have you set specific goals for what you want to do or be? Sure. > Have you got reachable sub-targets for those goals? Sure. There's the rub... we don't seem to be able to reach them because we don't have the manpower. That's why I say we've stagnated... not because we don't know where we want to go, but because we seem to be unable to get there. > I confess I haven't contributed much (my Phoenyx PBEM expired) > but I am sure I could be of some use in the future. What I ask > myself is where can I fit in to your picture? Which is why I ask people to come to the chats... that's where we discuss these things. Discussing things on the list has never resulted in the kinds of progress we made in the chats. I need to pull some of that out of the chat logs and get it into the Wiki for people to refer to... that's a fairly new work-in-progress. > PS I still have two other PBEMs going strong, I could migrate those > to the Phoenyx if "traffic" is one of your targets or goals... "Traffic" really isn't a goal. We don't do advertising or anything that requires volume. Our goals involve quality over quantity. (Though we do require a certain quantity of games to meet our goals.) Our primary goal is to provide players and lurkers with quality games to play in and watch. Part of that is to provide a wide enough selection of games that most players can find what they're looking for. So in that sense, we're looking for "traffic" in the form of "more games", but we really need _new_ games. Half the games we take on now days are already full by the time we get them, many of them moving from Yahoo Groups or suc. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
I am sad that your chats are on wednesdays; until the end of may, I have class on wednesday evenings. Otherwise, I probably would be attending, though my homeowner's association also meets that night... -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): lxndr@cox.net Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Lxndr wrote: > I am sad that your chats are on wednesdays; until the end of may, > I have class on wednesday evenings. Otherwise, I probably would be > attending, though my homeowner's association also meets that night... We have fairly busy lives outside the Phoenyx... Wednesday nights are the only night we're guaranteed not to have a church meeting because that's youth night and the pastor never schedules meetings during that. (Mostly because the youth leaders need to be involved in most meetings I'd be involved in.) So Wednesday is pretty much the only night we can guarantee we'll be here on a regular basis. We'll be scheduling Europe-friendly chats as well, which generally fall into our afternoon... around 2 or 3 PM CDT, if I recall correctly. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
Carl D Cravens wrote: >We'll be scheduling Europe-friendly chats as well, which generally fall >into our afternoon... around 2 or 3 PM CDT, if I recall correctly. These are on weekends? -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Kalyr Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Tim Hall wrote: > Carl D Cravens wrote: > > >We'll be scheduling Europe-friendly chats as well, which generally fall > >into our afternoon... around 2 or 3 PM CDT, if I recall correctly. > > These are on weekends? Yeah... I think Boeing would frown on my using company time for chats. I already spend enough of it reading my email. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
Boeing? What site? Carl D Cravens wrote: > On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Tim Hall wrote: > > >>Carl D Cravens wrote: >> >> >>>We'll be scheduling Europe-friendly chats as well, which generally fall >>>into our afternoon... around 2 or 3 PM CDT, if I recall correctly. >> >>These are on weekends? > > > Yeah... I think Boeing would frown on my using company time for chats. I > already spend enough of it reading my email. > > -- -------------------------------------------------------------- > Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner > Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/ > -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): ojai Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Lxndr wrote: > Boeing? What site? So you can report my mis-use of company time? :) Wichita. I'm a systems administrator for HP-UX and our piece of the enterprise trouble-ticket system. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
I started recieving digests, but I'm not set to. Can this be fixed? -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): ojai Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Wed, 17 Apr 2002 mabarry@xpert.net wrote: > As that is my birthday, I will be unavailable that day. Well, congratulations and bummer, in that order. > Otherwise, you know how I feel. I'm pleased and proud to > be part of the Phoenyx service, and whatever effort I can > honestly offer (with limited time but fairly active > imagination) is yours. I appreciate it. You're already familiar with the Wiki, so that gives you a head start. I ran into a limitation, though... the TEXTAREA field has no HTML-defined size limit or ability to set a specific size. So browsers are hard-coded to limit the field to 32-64K... and at least with NS 4.76, it's smaller than our chat logs. You _can_ attach chat logs as attachments, but you won't be able to edit them in Wiki notation that way. There are a couple other things we can do, like breaking the log into parts and possibly using an INCLUDE to bring the parts together seamlessly on the display page, with the "parts pages" hidden in the background. Kind of cumbersome, but it depends on how you want to edit the logs... pure HTML or in Wiki notation. Since they're write-once, there's not a lot of reason to keep them in a format where anybody can edit them on the Wiki. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
