ATTN: FFRevolution

[hi19hi19]

Originally Posted by TC_Halogen

I don't even believe that you think this is a serious discussion, and it's quite easy for me to come to that conclusion given that the posts within the scope of this thread are nonsensical, juvenile, and to be quite frank, hypocritical.

So much this.
I have to say, as the guy who talks nonstop about increasing transparency, it's really frustrating when my attempts to make serious points about the staff are derailed with irrelevant and contradictory posts from the person who started the discussion in the first place.


My thanks to Fission and Charu for keeping it on-topic and serious, at least. Maybe we should discuss it somewhere else where we won't be interrupted by shitposting or sodium chloride.

Oh wait, that wouldn't be very transparent, would it?

See now why FFR staff doesn't communicate much publicly? It's because of threads like this.

[choof]

why doesn't ffr just hold a live stream where they take questions from people and answer them as honestly as they possibly can

[MinaciousGrace]

ffr is run better than 50% of world governments

not saying its a shining beacon of hope in an otherwise morbid universe but i mean its a flash game from 2004 that's been orphaned repeatedly and there needs to be some management of expectations

[s1rnight]

Originally Posted by hi19hi19

My thanks to Fission and Charu for keeping it on-topic and serious, at least.

what's your opinion on making ffr open-source? i think it would be a pretty good one, imo

[Fission]

Originally Posted by MrPopadopalis25

I have no idea how viable this would be, but if the staff knew what they wanted as a finished product and created a step-by-step game plan of what exactly needs to be coded and implemented and in what order then could there be a job posting board of some sort

I have some ideas of my own. I can detail them in this thread as to what exactly they are in technical terms, if that would be appropriate. I'm not so sure it is right now, because first things first.

Originally Posted by MrPopadopalis25

where calls for help on specific tasks could be posted and people could contribute without having to actually sign on as a full fledged staff member?

Using Github for issue tracking solves this problem for the most part. The repository owners can post open issues and close them as pull requests are made to complete them.

Originally Posted by MrPopadopalis25

Credits and event tokens as rewards probably wouldn't be enough, but if there was cash up for grabs then maybe people from outside of FFR's pool of capable contributors might be interested?

I'm not sure that a paid bounty is even needed at this point in time to get contributors. Just open sourcing it should be enough I think (it looks good on developer resumes to show github activity!). If it isn't then this idea could be discussed at a later date.

[Deadlyx39]

On a completely serious note a bit unrelated to the issue of staff transparency or new staff...


Is it even possible that we can spread FFR at all? I doubt we could run ads and I also doubt anybody here is popular on YouTube/Twitch or something else, but if FFR were to be spread to new people, I think this could help a lot as the community would be implemented with new life, rather than the one or two new people every 5 months.

[xVaLoRx]

Originally Posted by Deadlyx39

I also doubt anybody here is popular on YouTube/Twitch or something else

staiain

[Kawaii025]

Random question... Is there a thread or post somewhere that lists the staff/admins and what their positions are in relation to the site?

[gold stinger]

There used to be site credits which is located at the bottom of the website, but it is long since outdated as titles have been re-branded and positions have been added/deleted.

Most that shows up down there anymore is the site admins, global mods, and everyone who has submitted a song or chart to FFR.

[tosh]

Originally Posted by Deadlyx39

I also doubt anybody here is popular on YouTube/Twitch or something else

Operation Get Chauster Back Into FFR/SM

[noname219]

Originally Posted by Kawaii025

Random question... Is there a thread or post somewhere that lists the staff/admins and what their positions are in relation to the site?

http://ffr.wikia.com/wiki/Staff#Staff

This shall now be the most requested page for the next 24 hours.

[_Zenith_]

Originally Posted by tosh

Operation Get Chauster Back Into FFR/SM

Is he still playing pro league? iirc he at least told someone about FFR

[Fission]

Originally Posted by MrPopadopalis25

Ah, that sounds exactly like what I was envisioning, only better. I'm assuming a posting on github would get way more traffic than hosting the requests on FFR and spreading them around by word of mouth would too. Would there be any yellow tape involved with using github though (ie. fees and the like)?

No, it's a completely free service. It only costs if you use it to host private repositories.

In regards to attracting developers who are on GitHub outside of FFR, that's definitely not my area of expertise. GitHub uses "stars" which allows a repository to be more likely to be discovered via searches. Beyond that though, I'm not really sure since advertising isn't my strong suit.

[DossarLX ODI]

What Fission is describing gives more of the big picture aspect. If the code base to work off of isn't efficient to start, it's like trying to put band-aids on someone repeatedly, but eventually that person turns into a mummy and that band-aid doesn't do much. Eventually the new functionality won't fare well when infrastructure and design is the real problem.

A general guideline that can allows be followed is to be a part of the resolution and not the problem. I implemented some automation in the batch judgment process and created spreadsheets for keeping track of queue'd files, and Silvuh has also been diligently updating the batch, tagging files, and engaging in discussions about how the batch should move forward. Even if I was able to judge four sets, that would still leave 75% of judgments not finished and I can't just yell at judges for not being able to judge a batch.

hi19hi19 sparked the batch automation and queue'd file spreadsheet ideas, and Fission provided some great suggestions towards my project in batch automation. What's more important here is diving into what the most important problems are from a 10,000 foot view, and then there can be incremental changes.

[dAnceguy117]

Originally Posted by yo man im awesome

These threads die often, especially when administration doesn't actually say anything, because it ends up being the same people yelling the same things at each other, with nothing new being gained. Typically it's only when administration actually steps into the thread and lets us in on what's going on that things get resolved.

Which also leads back to transparency.

Transparency on the part of an organization or a project team is generally a positive, no doubt. Even in that regard, though, I think it's a good idea for community members to keep their expectations in check.

Some interesting discussion has taken place in this thread. However, the thread:
- has only been open for a handful of hours
- has been plagued by non-content posts
- was created by a user who has presented ideas on the level of:

Originally Posted by _Zenith_

Recycling staff wouldn't be a bad idea

If you've ever worked on a group project, then I bet you can see why the above quote doesn't merit a speedy response.

Effective communication is facilitated not by just one party, but rather by everyone involved. I think making a separate thread with a clear list of suggestions and talking points in the opening post would be sensible.

[21992]

You know I wouldn't say the FFR staff is completely stagnant, but it takes so much inertia for them to do anything! I want to see FFR thrive and personally all I can ask for is if the staff were more prone to suggestions, and to act. To not hold back on projects. Because to be completely honest the FFR event staff isn't so eventful :/ . Being a team of say more than 5 people, I would expect at least a daily challenges thing that Halogen did a while back. Step up your game! (you see what I did there?)

[Zageron]

Okay, hello.

Let me preface with saying I was at work, during an extremely busy day, while this was happening. I requested that no staff member reply on behalf of the staff, so that I could get everything in order and post something that could be considered unanimous. ymia, apologies if my doing this gave you, or anyone else, the impression that we were simply ignoring it. Down to business.

Zenith.

Firstly, noname219 greatly appreciates your praise toward the wiki, and always appreciates any additions people would like to make!

While I appreciate your concern for how the FFR "staff" works, this thread has not addressed anything that concerns me as exceedingly detrimental at the moment. The FFR team is gargantuan. There are four separate team working content: Judgement (14), Difficulty (3), Event (8), Development (9), and a team of moderators (16). There are a multitude of extra individuals who contribute regularly, and of course keeping the spaghetti website off of the floor takes a bit out of my day every once in a while.

For development and content, hi19hi19 put it nicely, things are happening behind the scenes which we just can't share yet. Every member of the development team is very busy with their own lives, and cannot afford to submit more than a few hours of their day to FFR. This is already far more than can be expected of a person working a full time job, but we generally managed to pull it off a few times per week. We are working, as you saw with PrawnSkunk and Trumpet's massive contribution that came out in the last week, the tier point update in the weeks previous, and the surprisingly consistent weekly song releases with videos to go along with them.

On the development side, progress is just fine for what time we can put into it.
On the staff side, we have worked on improving organization and communication for a very long time. People mentioned the improvements in judgement. I will mention the addition of difficulty re-scaling, and that an actual team was implemented for hosting and running events.

@MrPopadopalis25, I will re-index the site tonight.

Originally Posted by hi19hi19

Cycling new staff constantly is just as disruptive as having lazy staff. With this in mind it's obvious that striking a balance between finding staff with the free time to no-life work on the site out of pure passion versus replacing people too quickly is difficult.

I really can't emphasize this enough. We, in no way, need more moderation or content management staff (re Fission). The people who are on the teams know how the system works, and when there is work to be done it gets done. Yes, there was a large lapse in activity over October-December. This was due partially to the burnout from the Tournament, and then the December extravaganza, along with numerous members of staff getting new (more than) full time jobs.

Tidbit: There are 3 members of staff who has not logged in in the past 10 days (two have reasons, one is an account that isn't use and hasn't logged in since 2008), a few who haven't logged in since yesterday, and every single other person has logged in today.

I cannot just fire staff members as I haven't hired anyone. They put their time into the site, they use their personal time to help out, and we aren't in a position of such high demand or production that we can so strictly enforce constant activity and contribution. Perhaps when the site ramps up, our stance on this will change, but in the mean time how could I kick someone who does their job, as often as possible, off of a team that they tried very hard to get on to and have, in some cases, dedicated large portions of their lives to.


Lastly...
I received a number of conversations pertaining to your opinions of some members of staff. I do not appreciate what you had to say, and would like to warn you to watch what you say about other in public areas. If you aren't happy with the amount of communication going on, please contact staff directly via PMs, Skype, or ask them to PM you on their profiles.