Cleaning this motherfucking site up

[Zack]

Alright, I have seen what has happened both before and after my break, and this partially stems from me not maintaining the site before, and then the staff not working as efficiently as it should have.

The following changes will be made either tonight (12/20) or tomorrow, so don't be surprised when the board seems empty.

So, I now have an archives board, which I will be moving nearly ALL the threads to. We've got too much cluttered bullshit, and we aren't making any progress because we never fucking finish what we start. And don't take this as me getting mad at you all, I'm to blame as well, but I really think we need to take a more active approach to this project, or we're going to get tired of going nowhere and give up.

I will be remaking archived threads if I find those important to work on at the moment, or I will just move them back out of the archives.

Because we are basically reformatting the site (with a backup copy of all our previous work), I have some new guidelines which all must follow:

1 - No NEW Pokemon threads, either remakes or new altogether. We've had a buttfucking load of those threads and none were ever finalized or discussed after a week, with the exception of a few.

1.1 - You may request a thread be revived, but that request must be made in the Request Thread. You will also use this to REQUEST making a Pokemon thread, but altogether NEW Pokemon must have a description of their concept and typing, as well as the reasoning for those.

1.2 - Any new threads made that weren't requested will get deleted automatically. Staff, I'm looking to you for assistance here.

2 - We will not be making threads with the same purpose. Any thread copies will get deleted automatically.

3 - Stay on topic in the threads. I realize that sometimes a tangent comes along, but do not continue discussing this tangent amongst the others to the point where we aren't discussing the topic at hand.

4 - I trust the staff to use their staff powers in a responsible manner. No editing of posts unless the content was extremely out of place or offensive.

4.1 - Posts in Random Shit are open to editing, only because that's pretty much a troll area as well. Just don't go overboard with it. Have fun in there, its the free area

5 - Pretty much any thread moved to archives will have to be requested to be returned in the request thread in each board.

5.1 - We'll have a discussion board as to what parts of the game in that section of the development we should move forward to working on, and decide as a team what is important enough to go on to.

5.2 - I will be looking for staff members to take roles as the "head" of certain boards to maintain order. If you request a board to cover, I need to trust that you will be on at least 2-3 times a week to check up on it and make sure it doesn't go to shit, though dropping in the site more often is always nice.

5.2.1 - Should you be unable to continue your obligation in your job, just let me know so I can be sure to pay more attention to that board and get a new "cover" for that board as soon as possible.

6 - We're going to start using ITklown's suggestion of deadlines. Once we decide what topics to work on, we'll set a date to work our best at to complete. Some topics will not be "complete" as it may be a lot of work, but we won't be opening more topics and get overwhelmed with the amount of them. I can't really do anything about us missing a deadline, since the only punishment I can really give is a ban, which I don't want to do to people unless they are fucking retarded. I just hope we can all work as hard as possible to attempt to make progress in a timely manner.

6.1 - I had thought of deadlines before ITklown suggested it, but I didn't want you all to feel like I was forcing you to cram something into your daily routine since, in the grand scheme of things, this project isn't as important as many other things in your life, which I completely understand (we can look at my month-long break as an example). But since one of the members suggested it, I think deadlines are good to go, so long as you aren't working here and neglecting things in your personal life.

I'm not locking this thread, because I'm eager to hear comments and suggestions. I'm not done with my proposed changes as of now, I just want this site moved in a more positive direction.

[casmat]

Yeah, that's fine ITklown, steal my thunder...

Anyways, I propose that we have people volunteer to be assigned deadlines in certain categories.
Ex: Someone who can sprite well would volunteer to be assigned a sprite to be finished by a given deadline.

This would be like saying that the person is a spriter, but that person actually having some responsibility with that title.

Now of course we would have to hope that people who volunteer to be given assignments know what they are doing. Maybe we would require an example, or maybe they would be given one of the more simple assignments of that kind so they could prove themselves.

Now, for assignements to be assigned, I'm guessing we'd have to choose assignors. These people would be like the manager of the spriters, mappers, etc.
Ex: The spriter's manager would give the spriters a spriting assignment.

Of course a system where said spriters, mappers, etc. can refuse assignments should be allowed. This should only be allowed only to some extent, though, until they are no longer considered spriters on the project (although they may rejoin at any time).

Just as well, people would be allowed to take personal breaks at any time for any reason. Of course after some extent of time they would be considered AFK.

Now you may ask how these assignments will be chosen. I think that they should be created by suggestions by... well, anyone. The suggestions would be made out to the managers, who would decide whether the suggestion makes a valid assignment and chooses a deadline for said assignment. This is why it would be important to choose a mature manager who can tell the difference between the important and the unimportant.

Now theres another assigning that I though of that should be of equal consideration. It is extremely similar to the first except for the fact that, instead of choosing which spriter, mapper, etc. to do a certain job, the manager would just post each assignment in a thread and the spriter, mappers, etc. would volunteer (just as they had volunteered to be spriters in the first place) to do the individual jobs. This, in turn, would change the way that people are fired from their individual jobs. Instead of waiting until they have refused a certain amount of jobs, it would be that they would be fired after not doing anything for a long period of time (of course not including personal breaks).

You may ask, "What if no one volunteers?" That is the biggest problem. The only thing we can do is ask people to volunteer for the individual jobs, and there is really nothing more to that.

It may look like this would change something that was just a pool of ideas in to something that is more or less work away from work. You have to remember though, my idea is based around volunteer work. You don't volunteer if you don't want to.

[ITklown]

casmat said:

Yeah, that's fine ITklown, steal my thunder...

That's what I do best.

Also, amen to this, khold. The forum was packing up with way too much shit.

I don't have time for a proper reply on this, but if I have time tomorrow, I'll put in my eighty-nine cents.

[rekt]

Snak was the main cause for this problem, I can start moving all this stuff now if you would like.

[Zack]

If anyone with the power to do so, go ahead and move ALL threads to the archives, but be sure to move without leaving the "this thread was moved to", which is a checkmark option when you do something to a thread.

The General board, Staff board, and the other threads in the General category need not be moved, unless I move them.

Do not touch the Programming board, under Gameplay, those two threads are fine.

[Okashi]

I'll do it to help out for once, but I'm dumb and I don't see the archives board >_<

Is it admins only, or something like that?

EDIT: Found it Archives box, right? Moving topics there now.

[Zack]

Many thanks for your help.

I've got a busy night, so I am requesting the Move Changes thread be copied, and on put in the Competitor Mods and the other in the Project Gameplay board.

Other changes I'll initiate tomorrow.

[casmat]

I see Okashi has moved everything, so the first order of business is.... ?

The first order of businees is figuring out what the second order of business should be, am I right?

[CyberMewtwo]

whoa. okie i was like...... "wtf happened to the forum!?!?" >_<

[cock_block]

Okay, I'm not particularly talented at evading points so I'm just going to say it bluntly. I'm not going to be able to frequent this site often (at all) because of shit going on. I'm sorry, really, I am, and normally I don't apologize for absences on a forum because usually I don't care but right now I'm kind of knee-deep in shit for a bunch of personal reasons I'd really rather not discuss, particularly with 13-year-olds present.

With this in mind, I'm suggesting that I get demoted or whatever because, really, I'm not doing my job right now and I don't know when I'll be able to frequent here with the time or energy to treat it seriously which sucks, because this was a really cool project, but life's a bitch sometimes, ain't it?

Obviously I won't vanish entirely but I'll be a bit rarer. So... yeah. See you guys around.

[Zack]

Mother fuck there went my NB Modserver Analyst.

No, but really, I hate to see you go. Get up with me on msn (if you ever get on, but you probably won't be reading this message for a while).

Bleh that sucks



But, the first order of business is deciding what parts of the projects we should revive and work on.

I think the following:

0 - I'm going to post up a job application thread. Those of you interested in applying for a job should be sure to read over everything for that job.
1 - Move the Move Changes to the Gameplay board of the RPG Project, and spend time in a new discussion thread going over the new/editing moves, so we can make sure the stuff seems balanced.
2 - Move 3 (three) of the Pokemon designs to the RPG board. We will only open another Pokemon design thread once one of the 3 are complete.
3 - Possibly move the Competitor Mod category up to be under the RPG category, and make a "Changes" board, since almost all the RPG changes are going to be in the Competitor Mod changes (at least the Pokemon). Maybe not, gimme feedback.
4 - I'll make a video tutorial for you all to see how to make maps in Sphere. This is easier than explaining it in text.


Once these are done

[rekt]

The Analysis section wasn't supposed to be deleted.

Now I have to do all that all over again.

[casmat]

It isn't deleted, it is in the Archives "A forum which I deduce is invisible and restricted to us mods until khold fixes it lol... strangely staff can see it though...

[rekt]

I see no "Archives" Forum.

[Zack]

God damn it I'm going to fix it -_-

[Okashi]

Visible now, thanks for the fix.

[casmat]

Erm.... not sure if you noticed, but you never finished the rest of the job applications threads...

We at least need the Sprite Artists and Programmers threads...

No one has applied yet :/ .... I was kind of expecting CactusMaster to try his hand at Music due to that thread earlier... *hint*

[Zack]

If you could make the rest of the apps, that'd be handy, I'd make them, but I get side tracked with too many things. I'm currently working on a list of the Pokemon appearing in the game (at least those I think should be).

[rekt]

Forgot to post, but I added all of the Mod Server stuff back to the forum.