Fingo7's Staff Sand Pit

Crit Volunteer Force

Why we need it:

• Over the past couple of years or so the site has been growing at an unbelievable rate, I cannot believe the massive spike in content production, which has not faltered much at all. Both criticism staff teams, and the rest of the wiki's experienced community, are obviously struggling and will soon start struggling to keep up with the amount of content being released as it increases.

• More and more pages are being deleted without ever getting decent critique, simply because the site is growing far faster than the experienced critical community (by this I mean users capable of providing critique that is up-to-standard) can keep up. A lack of up-to-standard critique and an increase in both below-standard critique and content will ultimately result in a natural lowering of site standards.

• The point of a voluntary criticism force is to try and lessen the severity of the rise in content by adding larger amounts of consistent manpower to the wiki's quality control. By getting more users on board with more motivation, we will be able to cope far easier, and have a good way to find decent candidates for Junior Staff.

What it will be:

• The Criticism Volunteer Force will be almost like Site Criticism junior staff, but its membership will be far more open-ended. It will consist of any users on the wiki who have applied and given examples of up-to-standard critique they are capable of producing.

• There will be no staff-related responsibilities or expectations involved, and the expected workload will be far lower (about 1 review a week or higher, nothing else). Their only job will be to write reviews on the site and prioritise articles that are lacking decent reviews.

• This is different from junior staff in that the expectations, requirements, responsibilities, and workload, will be lower and more open to all. Pretty much anyone with a good grasp of site standards that can produce a decent review will be able to get involved.

• In return for what they do they will get brownie-points and experience, just like everyone in the criticism teams really.

How it will be organised:

• The members of the Volunteer Force will report to any Site/Forum Crit members interested in taking an organising role directly about once or twice per month. In order to ensure quality control they will be asked to provide around 3 examples of critique per report.

• The force will be collectively be directed by the Site Criticism Team, which will make all the decisions regarding how it is run etc.. Certain staff may take a more active role if they are interested.

I plan to put up an open recruitment thread on the forum, which I hope will be made sticky if this is successful enough, and in order to get some publicity I would like this to have an announcement on the main site page. All of this might take some further discussion with the rest of staff of course. There was talk about a joint chatroom for the criticism teams, so if that comes into fruition, volunteers should have access to that.