Karakatt's Proposal

Mission statement

We strive to bridge the gap between staff and the general user by giving them a voice and making them feel heard.


Proposal

The site needs to bring more attention to complaints, questions, and concerns from the community. While we have The Proposals and Policy Thread, The Complaints Thread, The Questions Desk, and the Research and Resorces Forum, I don’t think there’s enough time and attention given to them. I know they’re not entirely un-used or overrun with questions, but I think giving it more of the light of day than just a sticky could be beneficial. I believe that having a small two-to-three-person sub-team of Community Outreach to answer these questions and to pass threads along would help bridge the gap between staff and users. The ultimate goal for the team is to provide reliable help to the community while maintaining a close relationship with all staff teams and members. There are a few ways we could go about this and I would like to explore all of them at some point.

  • "Town Halls"
    • This was something in the works before ARD left, but now that ARD is gone, it's something Taylor is alone in. Taylor said it was a thing he would be willing to work on with me. They're meant to be monthly meetings for the community to voice concerns to staff members in a replyable, consistent way.
      • We would probably need to take notes on those Town Halls to make sure nothing slips through the cracks. The idea is to get back to things discussed during the Town Hall later.
      • Keep the IRC Chat on mute and voice people who need to speak? It may become overcrowded or painful if we don’t do this. This is definitely something to come back to when the time comes.
    • Sign up google form would be open for the first 15-30 minutes of the town hall. Ideally, we would answer every question unless it is a troll or something that needs to be followed up on by other staff.
  • Editing the forums
    • A little bit harder to achieve, but could be doable. Mostly giving QCC their own forum. It would be laid out in about three subcategories; General Questions, Concerns, and Complaints. It would probably require subthreads in those for FAQs and Required Readings.
      • For each subthread, we would need a required reading as to what the category is about and how to use it. In each required reading, there will be a section about the correct places to go if they have something to report to staff, such as issues with users or rule-breaking posts.
    • The research forums would be under “Questions”.
  • Editing the sidebar
    • I understand that it is a pain, but the few people I’ve talked to have suggested doing this, just like what we have with the rest of the User Resources.
      • With that said, I believe it would fit really well within the grouping lined up in that section and would probably bring more foot traffic to it. This definitely needs to have a spot somewhere on-site to be seen.
  • Editing the front page
    • A lot of sites have a “Got a question? hit us up here, or if you wanna see the latest news? See it here!”
      • People have wondered why there isn’t a reliable place to get announcements from staff about important updates like contest extensions or things that are for the community.
    • I think it would be another great way to get word out about both this sub-team and site announcements without the frustrating word of mouth that has continued through the years.
  • IRC Chat
    • We could own an IRC chat just for this, though we would probably be in site17 most of the time since that's the most often used chat for staff help. But having one for just QCC could be useful to consolidate all of the information that we have in one place. If people pop in for quick questions, we could easily answer in a somewhat private place. Though, this may become redundant to 17.
      • Might just do a pastebin for FAQs and put it in the 17 topic.
  • There would be a need for a skip oper in that chat, which wouldn't be too big of an issue aside from adding more to their plates. Not entirely ideal, but may be required.
  • Something in the guides and forums
    • We've established that it's not entirely visible enough despite stickys and other visibility features, so I suggest adding mentions of these threads.
      • Maybe add a section in the Guide for Newbies “Staff” section? It could be a quick way to introduce new users to the new and improved help desk.
  • An anonymous way to ask questions
    • Not everybody wants to be public with stupid questions, so I suggest maybe a PM system for the people manning the help desk. This could also tie into the above section of an IRC chat, as all someone would have to do is come into the chat, and ask their question or ask to PM someone to help.
    • Maybe talk to Bluesoul about a way to do anonymous things?

Now comes the section about organization and other ways to get information around the sub-team. This is a sub-team of Community Outreach, so we will be one of the most community-facing teams on site. We absolutely need to organize ourselves in a way that makes sense to both people involved, other Community Outreach teams, and other staff or non-staff members alike.

  • We should have a diverse team, while I know a lot from many different teams, I’m not the end-all-be-all and many people will and should know more than me. The goal is to make the team well rounded in our abilities and knowledge.
    • To make up for knowledge from other sides we should have people from MAST, Internet Outreach, Rewrites, Tech, Licensing, and the Critique Teams. We won’t include Anti-Harassment or Disciplinary in our team’s knowledge since if there are issues of that matter, they would need to be passed onto those respective teams anyway. This is not saying that those who are a part of those teams won’t be able to join this sub-team, just that they are not staff teams we are actively looking for beyond representatives.
  • A Discord just for the team and representatives. This would be to help consolidate information from all sides of the table.
    • There would be channels for team information, if one of us is unsure how to answer a question we would post the question there for one of the other members to answer or give us the answer to.
      • It's a learning experience. We want to be a team but still be able to answer questions independently.
    • Ideally we would want representatives from outside of this team to be present for an easy pass off to other teams when needed. Again the goal is to hopefully become independent from those teams, but I understand there will be cases where communication is crucial.
    • I understand that not everybody wants to join another discord, so I also propose a private IRC chat for this team.
  • Team sandbox to post information, such as FAQs or questions that are common for people to ask or need help with.
    • Ultimately it may act as a roster and copy-paste sandbox, but it is definitely necessary for this whole idea to succeed. If the building blocks are not there, how will we get anywhere?
    • We would need a ‘what this team is’ explanation and a to-do list for the team.
      • It's there to give an idea of larger projects or ideas the team needs to work on.
      • It would also be the hub for our notes from Town Halls, just to keep them all in a consistent place.

I know not everything is fully fleshed out, but these are things for this that I want to explore in the near future. I understand not all of these will be used or even considered. The revamp of the complaints, questions, and concerns section is long overdue. It feels like a mess currently, and I don’t see it as viable going forward.

Thank you for your time.