Management Structure - Changes

[OldBloke]

Gents

TeaLeaf and I have looked at our current structure for managing the community and we have identified a problem that recent events have highlighted.
Under the present structure, a Section Head (SH) is appointed to take the lead on a game we decide to officially support. In addition to running their game sections, the SHs are also empowered to make decisions regarding the running of the wider community. Because of this, we have to make SH appointments carefully; if the ‘right’ person isn't available to lead on a new game (or takeover from a retiring SH) then the game doesn't get the support it should.

To ensure that we continue to offer the greatest support to the maximum number of games, we will be making the following changes:

1. 'Section Head' will be renamed as 'Section Admin'. A Section Admin will still run their own section inline with the community's rules, guidelines and standards but will no longer make decisions on the running of the community as a whole.

2. A new tier named 'Community Admin' will be created comprising no less than three members from the Community. These people, with the addition of TeaLeaf and OldBloke, creates a minimum group of five people working together to see that our standards are maintained, our reputation is upheld and that we are serving the needs of the community.

3. 'Community Leader' will change to 'Head Admin' with both TeaLeaf and OldBloke remaining as such.

The adoption of the term 'Admin' in the new structure is deliberate and is there to remind us that we are gamers and that gaming is fun.

More info to follow.

[Penfold]

Thanks for the heads-up. Do you have a start date in mind?

[Armitage]

I'm a bit confused what has brought this on.

[TeaLeaf]

It's fairly simple Arm.  At the moment we tie Section head responsibilities together with responsibility to run the commmunity as a whole.  This means that when we support a game we take a long time to find (if we find at all) a suitable person to be appointed Section Head so that we can adopt a game.  There is a finite pool of good enough people and this ultimately leads to problems when we look to adopt another game as it means that we might want to adopt a game, but might not be able to find someone who is (a) interested in the game, (b) has the time to manage the new section and (c) is of sufficient standing to be involved with running the community.

By separating the functions and responsiblities we hope to free up the community to support games more easily as the section head only has to look after their game.  There are some structural issues too, in that we might reach a size where we become bogged down in a committee of Section Heads, but the main reason is simply to allow us to react more quickly to new games as they come out.

I think that summarises it reasonably, probably in too little detail, but in essence I hope the above explains well enough.  It allows the community to keep doing what it has always done, but in an easier way.

TL.

[OldBloke]

Thanks for the heads-up. Do you have a start date in mind?

It starts

[OldBloke]

All

The new structure has been announced to the community and a thread has been created to allow any debate. Please feel free to use this thread if you have any questions that you want to keep in the SH/SA arena.

It will take a few days to get everything aligned with the new structure but you will be kept informed.

A further change that will be implemented shortly is that all proposed gaming awards/badges will be announced in a dedicated thread within this section where they can be commented upon by the other Senior Admins before being ratified. It is felt that a period of three days is sufficient for any concerns to be aired. This is how we used to make the 'Charlie' awards and it served us well then and will serve us well in the future.

[Armitage]

so now we just baby sit the servers

[OldBloke]

so now we just baby sit the servers

The Section Admin runs their gaming section. They promote it within the community. They appoint admins. They determine the best configuration for the server. They adjudicate on matters of guest/member/admin discipline. They propose candidates for awards. Etc. etc.

Doesn't really sound like a baby-sitting job to me.

[Armitage]

It's fine if you don't want to hear the opinion of the Game / Head / Section Admins (or what every we're called) any more on how things should be organized. I mean you never took any notice anyway.

[OldBloke]

It's fine if you don't want to hear the opinion of the Game / Head / Section Admins (or what every we're called) any more on how things should be organized. I mean you never took any notice anyway.

That couldn't be a more inaccurate statement.

[TeaLeaf]

The whole purpose of this section is precisely to allow Game/Head/Section Admins to air their opinions on things, so I am not sure why you think that is at risk Armitage.  The change is simply one to allow us to more quickly support new games where we feel we want to do so, nowhere did it say your opinion was not wanted.  I did explain this above in my post of 6th May and you seemed fine with the response, so I'm not sure why the implementation post caused confusion.

[Armitage]

Is this all to support more games.

Well if you stopped playing wow for 1 minute, you would release that we don't have players to fill the ones we have. We need less games not more, games that bring new blood to us.


COD4 was going along nicely, being busy most nights and was bringing new members to the community. Then L4D came along, which is great. But the game is not suited to bring new players to us. The server size is too small. so all it did was give us one full 8 player server.
 
 
I know COD4 is long in the tooth, maybe we should have replaced it rather than take a large chunk of it's players away.
 
Whitey and I have been talking up ARMA2 at the moment. Great game, but we don't have the players  and i can see it goig no where
 
may be the problem is at the top. Ninja had some new idea's worth discussing and basically get told " this is TL & OB club, If you don't like it **** off"
 
 
You seem to think we have something special here and I think we did in the days of PCS, but now were just a collection of ailing servers.

[OldBloke]

Nice to see you making some constructive comments but there's no need for the personal attacks.

Is this all to support more games.

No. It's about having the flexibility within the management structure to appoint a Section Admin to lead on a game without us having to worry if he/she is also suitable to make decisions on the running of the wider community. Here's an example:

You decide that ArmaII has all the qualities that we look for in a game and want to give up running the CoD4 section to lead on it. Under the old structure we would have had to find a replacement Section Head to take your place on CoD4. That replacement would have needed the qualities to run the section *and* the community. I'm sure you could name a few people you'd be happy take over the lead on CoD4 but would they also be suitable to make the wider community decisions? We've recognised that the chances of finding the former are much greater so we've made this change.

COD4 was going along nicely, being busy most nights and was bringing new members to the community. Then L4D came along, which is great. But the game is not suited to bring new players to us. The server size is too small. so all it did was give us one full 8 player server.

Some game just fly. I thought that L4D was going to be a 5 minute wonder but it's still very popular. BB tried very hard to get a server configured to allow the public on but that was also easy for us to connect to. He didn't manage it at the time but we will revisit this as there has been a couple of updates since that might make it work.
 

Whitey and I have been talking up ARMA2 at the moment. Great game, but we don't have the players  and i can see it goig no where

So you had an idea. Tried it. Looked at the result. Welcome to our world.
 

may be the problem is at the top. Ninja had some new idea's worth discussing and basically get told " this is TL & OB club, If you don't like it **** off"

You can have elected this and elected that but at the end of the day the issues are the same and so is the reality - over time this community will find its own level. We are struggling to cater for all our members requirements and it's inevitable that more changes will have to be made sooner rather than later. That debate will continue to be had here by the people who (believe it or not) care passionately about this community.

Why shouldn't we cater to a wider audience that perhaps join us for the "fun" first and then the serious second? Why can't we do both? Why can't the paid members decide?

This is already happening on both the CSS and CoD4 pblic servers.  
 

You seem to think we have something special here and I think we did in the days of PCS, but now were just a collection of ailing servers.

As I said in my reply to NF - where is the community failing you? Define the problem and we'll search for an answer.

[Benny]

Wow, it's been nearly 2 months since we last had a row...

I don't see the changes as that intrusive, looks ok to me and I'm not sure where the storm is coming from. It appears to make sense but I'll re-read it later and see if I can find something to pick out.

From the other thread there was one idea that I liked. The thought of a gaming committee seems pretty good. Not sure how best to do it but I like the idea of it.

One thing I would say is that you will always get the Old Boys tag bandied around as inevitably those that have been here for a long time are the ones that put in all the work and effort. There are exceptions but generally, the longer you've been here, the more attuned to the way the community you become IMO.

As part of the wider games discussion I can happily post my thoughts on CoD and CS and our other incarnations, but it won't add value here. I'll have some time later and will post up a new thread.

[TeaLeaf]

Apologies for the wall of text incoming, but I do feel the need to address each point here.

Is this all to support more games.

No, it is to help grow the community membership so that the server population of our supported games increases.  We're not aiming to suddenly provide 50 different game servers with 1 dMw member on each one, we're aiming to increase the number of people playing on the game servers that we do support.  

Well if you stopped playing wow for 1 minute, you would release that we don't have players to fill the ones we have. We need less games not more, games that bring new blood to us.

Let's be careful not to start getting into personal comments please.  I'm well aware of the population on the different servers, I do talk to other dMw members and yes I even visit some of our servers.  As you brought up the topic of Wow though, it is interesting to note that over 25% of our current supporting members are Wow players including a majority who would otherwise never  have come across the dMw community and cross-fertilised into the other games we play.  

We already know that we want more players on our servers and that games will die a natural death over time, so doing nothing is not an option.  The change in structure allowed the community to bring out a new game server far more quickly than we might have done under the old structure.  The change made zero difference to members.  The hope is that if we offer a server then we will get noticed by some people and our name will slowly be recognised as a decent place to play the game.  It's a numbers game, the more people who come across dMw in one form or another the more people will become involved in our community, our forums and our game servers.

COD4 was going along nicely, being busy most nights and was bringing new members to the community. Then L4D came along, which is great. But the game is not suited to bring new players to us. The server size is too small. so all it did was give us one full 8 player server.  
I know COD4 is long in the tooth, maybe we should have replaced it rather than take a large chunk of it's players away.

Part of the Section Head role is to promote, support and develop the game they are responsible for and so you are the right person to raise this in the SH forum for discussion.  As COD4 is your game you are in the right place to make such a call and we'd like to hear your comments & ideas for what we need to do for COD4.  We try out new games, as our members will be doing this either with or without us, to see if the next 'CS' or 'COD4' is out there and we need to remember that if we do not provide a dMw flavoured game server for the latest game of interest then our members will go and find a non-dMw server to try that game on.  The system announced should allow us to provide more 'trial' game servers so that our members (who will be buying and trying the game anyway) can try it on our own public server - and a side effect of that is that we get the community's name in front of more people in the hope that a small percentage make the connection from the game server into our community.

Whitey and I have been talking up ARMA2 at the moment. Great game, but we don't have the players  and i can see it goig no where

I have heard good things about this game too and for sure we will not be able to provide the critical mass of players for it by stealing players from other dMw-supported games.  We need to attract new players somehow and that's precisely what this structural change allows us to do.  Iirc, new game servers was something we discussed and supported at the last Admin meeting at the LAN and it has been posted here in advance of action happening.
 

may be the problem is at the top. Ninja had some new idea's worth discussing and basically get told " this is TL & OB club, If you don't like it **** off"

I'm sure OB would admit it was a poor choice of words, but then you would also have to agree that NF's post went more than a little OT and had a number of serious errors in its OT statements.    OB was trying to point out that nobody forces people to play here.  We can't please all the people all of the time, but damn we try hard to make sure we please as many people as much of the time as we can.

Apart from that by all means elaborate and be specific about what you think the problem is, just making a general statement "maybe the problem is at the top" succeeds in slinging some mud, but does not specify what you actually think the problem is.  Hypothetically, I'm sure if I made a statement that said 'I think the COD4 section is run poorly' then you'd be angry with me and want to know what precisely I meant.  Hopefully that helps explain my point.

As a SH you are part of 'the top'; did you mean to include Game Admins too, or was it a general sleight aimed at just OB & me?  Specifics will help support your position, so let's avoid general mud-slinging please.  

You seem to think we have something special here and I think we did in the days of PCS, but now were just a collection of ailing servers.

Which brings us back to why we are making a change to allow us to attract new blood, to help grow our player base and to achieve the critical mass needed on each game server - as a Section Head that's part of your role too.

We're not aiming to water down dMw or to spread us more thinly.  Put simply, if we do not open new game servers and attract new blood to the community then we will slowly atrophy and die a slow death.  Doing nothing is not an option.  Where we find a game that is worth supporting and has player interest then we can consider formally adopting it.  If not then we stop the trial of the game server.  Where a game no longer has support then with the feedback of the SH and other admins then we can cease support for a game - we're not here to simply 'collect' unpopulated game servers.

Final thought.

We're a not for profit community run by volunteers and the aim is to enjoy our gaming experiences together.  The people who actually contribute the time and effort to help keep our community going do so for the love of the community, so it saddens me greatly when you feel it is appropriate to make such a rude comment in a public thread in full knowledge that this issue is being discussed here in the admin forum.  

Dan. You got fooled by the name of the thread. It's not a debate, this is for peopel to agree with OBs' new plan and if you don't,

I'm not trying to stifle comment, that's what this thread is for, but there is no need to be so rude or to fan some forum flames in a public thread.  It's not what we expect of a senior member.

TL.