Author: Nicolas

Admin..ing Solo

So, as most of you should know, Livvy (Cecily Zdablooptybloop) has been absent since about the 20^th of January. That means that I have been administrating HNZ on my own for over two weeks at this point, and Livvy intends to be gone likely until things resettle for her at the end of February or beginning of March.

I knew, when she told me how long she’d likely be gone, that this would be tough and her being away would be uber suckage – but I don’t think I truly realized how different things would be. I knew, for instance, that I would have to process all sales receipts on my own, and fill in for everything else Livvy does on HNZ so frequently. Those things in themselves make it quite difficult for me to play both our roles on HNZ – but I hadn’t realized (although I did within the first week of her absence) just how much I relied on Livvy for things other than handling her sections of the site. For instance, I loved running ideas by her, discussing things I had just thought up and would likely mull over on my own for another month before putting them in to action (yes, that’s something we do fairly often), or bouncing random ideas off her, commenting on certain member’s behaviour and discussing how best to deal with certain situations. She was also normally the one to keep me up to date on what was happening in character on the board (as, generally, I’m so involved with running the actual board, and the technical side of things, that I am quite clueless). We really do have quite the partner dynamic to running the board and that simply disappeared as soon as she left.

All of a sudden not only were all the routine tasks on my shoulders, but all the special plans we had for the coming months fell solely on me as well, and I was suddenly no longer able to bounce ideas off of somebody constantly. It was likely this last bit that has been the toughest for me. I can do sales receipts, I can even figure out how we would deal with most applications on my own – but I can’t bounce ideas off of myself. I can’t get Livvy’s perspective on things just from my own mind (of course, she and I agree ninety nine and a quarter percent of the time (yes, a fraction with a percent. Love me, math people. 😉 ) ) and I certainly hate implementing things that I’m not sure she’ll support upon her return.

Assuming I ignore the relationship in running the board that I cannot have when Livvy is gone, the tasks themselves simply pile up and make it impossible for me to do very much of what I’d like to do on HNZ. There are the normal tasks that have always and will always exist:

Member group changes (Normally split between us)
Applications for everything (about ten a week) Discussed by both of us
Warnings/Member Disputes (Discussed between us and sometimes Global Moderators – member is contacted by either Livvy or myself, we split this)
Answering FAQs(Normally split between us)
Posting announcements (Normally split between us)
Sales Receipts (Normally Livvy)
Updating Site Documentation as things change (Normally me, sometimes pawned off on Livvy)
Replying to suggestions. (Normally me, sometimes pawned off on Livvy)

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, what I can think of right now, with regard to standard site operation.

Then, there’s the awesome timing of Livvy’s hiatus (through no fault of her own, obviously). She left and sorting was still happening. No big deal, I normally handle most of sorting. I took it on myself to even deal with every transfer application on my own to not pester her as she prepared to leave – despite that being something we traditionally do together. The real kicker is that this is to be a TriWizard Tournament year on HNZ. A lot of the planning was still only rough outlines, no formal posts had been written yet, and it had been Livvy and my intentions to run it together. That, obviously, has not panned out. I have been running it largely on my own and I hope it should go well.

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The TriWizard tournament is a substantial amount of extra work: from planning, to posting, to organizing, to prodding champions to get off their bum-bums to telling the SUPER HELPFUL ( ^_^ ) volunteers how they’re supposed to do what they need to do. =D

I also believe HNZ’s TWT is cursed. The last time we did this Alicia had to leave and we sort of strategically killed the plot line at task two. Now this time, Livvy has had to leave us for a month and we have no intention of it dying… unless the champions don’t start posting (Can you tell I’m bitter about TWT activity? No? Not obvious yet? Hmmm. I’ll work on that.)

Needless to say, I have been getting tonnes of help and support from our awesome Global Moderators. They’re all super busy right now, too, but they’ve stepped it up quite a bit for me, and for Livvy. We’re working on keeping things as active as we can and up to date as we can. I think, without the global moderating team, I would have collapsed by now. I wub dem guys. ^_^ (They’re even letting me bounce ideas off them once in a while! They’re not as good as Livvy … (no offence, guys) but still – it’s nice enough =D )

With Livvy gone, though, I have noticed some other things about the site:

Some members are mean no matter what. Ignore them. Don’t let them get to you. If you do, you’ll hate HNZ and not want to do anything at all.
I was very close to just going on my own break at one point because of member comments and gossip in the past week
No matter how much you do, people don’t have to thank you for it if they don’t want to.
True story.
No matter how fast you work, people want you to work faster.
Also a true story. I’ve been clearing out applications about once a week. It’s the most I can do, seeings how I’m running most aspects of the site for now. However this is still not quick enough for some members. I still get PMs ‘reminding’ me to process things that I know about, and I still get very frustrated by that. 😉
Nice people should be glomped. All. The. Time. If you don’t, they’ll forget you wubbles them. They forget soo0o0o quickly. =(
Unfortunately, I have learned this in the past week. I fear I have hurt somebody’s feelings, not by my words (though they passed it off as by my words, I think… my words were simply the unrefined truth about something on the site), but by my lack of words. Words which I had assumed to be understood.

I am, obviously, quite anxious for Livvy’s return and have quite a bit of February left to go before that will be a reality.
Any support from the members of HNZ in this time would be greatly appreciated. I’ve kept it up for over two weeks now, and I’m wearing down a bit. I can keep it up, but I need to know that

The site is behind me

and

The site is patient with me

and

I’m not going to hear mean things about me through the grape vine when everything I’m doing on HNZ is for the members. I get very little out of being an admin, and I think it’s the site that truly profits. I guess that’s just one man’s opinion, though.

Thanks for reading this, guys, and be sure to keep Livvy in your thoughts/prayers over the coming weeks – she needs it. As much as it sucks that she’s gone, her absence is necessary for her and the easier this time is, the quicker she comes back. ^_^ So ya – keep her in your thoughts. =)

~Nick

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Blog General Discussions HNZ Names Rants Shakespeare Spam

That which we call a rose…

Post author By Nicolas
Post date February 6, 2010

General Discussions VIII was closed today and a new topic was opened: Spam Again… Again!” This change, even in topic title style, has sparked considerable discussion and I feel I should share my entire thoughts on the topic. Give the history of the topic we’re using, my reasoning behind the change, and my own thoughts on all the feedback I’m getting so it’s all out there once and for all.

General Discussions has, for the past eleven months, been Hogwarts New Zealand’s general/random chatter topic. Where members can go to get to know each other, talk about anything and everything, and just truly enjoy each other’s company. Now, prior to March of 2009 HNZ still had topics that were, in fact, exactly the same as “General Discussions”. These topics, however, had been called “Spam”. This “Spam” topic had first been started by Bellatrix Green with a first post that included “Pee in to the wind!” It was, truly, a topic to do pretty much anything and everything. This topic was started in 2007, my first year on HNZ, and was the first topic in the board to reach 50 pages. It was then deleted and Spam 2 began. This, too, reached a certain number of pages before being deleted. This pattern continued up to Spam 7, with Spam 6 being revived and a Spam 6 part 2 having been begun at one point.

Then the titles for these topics started to get even more creative, with such titles as “§pam for the Ages“, “Spam, Egg, Bacon and SPAM“, and even things as random as “Exploding Penguin“. It simply became a fun tradition on HNZ. Starting ‘spam’ topics once they reached a set number of pages, making a fun name for it, and having the same awesome chats with the same (and new) awesome people. The memories were, and are, all priceless and they really do deserve the mention they receive from members who were around for such events.

However, during Spam Light, I started to notice a trend of true spam; that is to say, a trend of pointless and annoying posts about nothing. Breaking board rules was becoming the normal. I recall going away for a time, coming back, and finding the topic a mess. So, after dealing with said mess I was tired of ‘spam’ (in the true sense) and thusly was tired of general chat topics which opened the doors to ‘spam’. I discussed this with Livvy, who felt similarly, and Spam Light was closed until we decided what to do next.

We decided that the best course of action, however poorly received was to open a topic with a new name, but the same meaning at heart. We felt that “spam”, as a title, was confusing newer members – telling them that it was okay to literally spam the topic named spam. So we opened General Discussions. This topic had firmly laid out rules, and a very obvious threat attached to it: if spam appeared, the topic would be gone for good. We still wanted the atmosphere and the heart of the original ‘spams’, but didn’t want to run the risk of confusing new members. This seemed, to us, a logical alternative.

Immediately the community reacted. Admin were the bad guys who wanted to destroy HNZ and its OOC Community. Of course we did not, but that was how we were received. Members, generally, didn’t see the point of the name change and disapproved of it. They felt that the new topic format had to be entirely formal and serious, and that we had taken away a part of what the experience of HNZ was to them. Others simply viewed this “General Discussions” idea as “Spam with a fancy name” and so General Discussions, the first, by its end, had turned out just as poorly as Spam Light. It was closed for a time, and General Discussions II was opened with even more defined guidelines, a netiquette guide to accompany it, and the hopes of things turning out differently.

They did, very fortunately. There were the odd members who tried to spam the topic, but they were dealt on an individual basis and the topics continued. GD III, GD IV, GD V, GD VI, GD VII and GD VIII – which brought us in to 2010. 2010. The new year. A new decade (some think) and new years always mean new, fresh, starts. New chances. New goals. New everything. So, today, on February the sixth of that new year, and almost a whole year since the original falling out in Spam Light, I decided it was time to give GD VIII its rest and open a new topic. That new topic, I felt, could be brought back to its ‘Spam’ origins, if not just for the nostalgia of old members but also for the enjoyment of new members and maybe even a little bit as an experiment on my end of things, to see if continuing “General Discussions” for eight instalments was wise or necessary. (In addition to this reformatting of the topic title, I also recovered many older Spam/GD topics to be viewed by members of HNZ at their leisure here)

As I stated above, this was met with mixed reviews. Older members seemed to appreciate the change back, the fond memories of their earlier days on the site, the ability to access some of those long lost topics, and hope for newer members of the board to have similar experiences as they did in the series of general chat topics to come. Newer members, however, have seemed to disapprove of the topic title change immensely. Stating they “Miss General Discussions” and other such statements. Of course, both the topic and the people are still precisely the same – but the title has changed and therefore nothing is the same any longer.

In this situation, it is clearly impossible to please both parties – and both options have a positive and a negative. I feel that opening up the older topics for viewing, and giving members another shot at the fun times of being able to start their own general chat topic as one dies, choose their own title, and give the first post of the new (soon to be eight hundred page) topic their own spice, is worth the possible trouble of a few members trying to legitimately spam. Of course, that is the sad truth: with this change of style back, members will be more likely to attempt to spam. With three global moderators (who are all amazing), I felt like that was a manageable consequence/risk, but it definitely is a downside to the change.

I can understand new member’s and their comfort being in “General Discussions” and not anything “Spam” related, however does it make that much of a difference? Need I fight another war and taking all the beatings people wish to give me through their words over a name change once more? Does the name change the type of topic it is? The type of conversations it holds, or the type of people who are in it? I would argue not. The only thing this name change does is offer sentimental value to older users, and allow for more opportunities and involvement of members in the creation of future random chatter-type topics. I didn’t expect this kind of adverse reaction when I created the new topic. Not at all.

So does it change that much? The name? I don’t think so. It changes a bit – but the essence of the topic itself is still the same, is it not?

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.
Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Shakespeare got it right, there, I think. But it seems HNZ disagrees.

~Nick
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HNZ Life school weekly updates

My Life Today (with a side of HNZ)

Post author By Nicolas
Post date November 23, 2009

So after missing two days of school, and being off of school for five days – I think it’s safe to say that I was out of practise in various subjects and very ill prepared for the day that awaited me today.
I knew I’d missed two tests last week, and was prepared to write them today. Biology went by quickly (we never do much there) and soon enough I was on my way to literature – when I learned that I had another test! I was entirely unaware of a third test for the day. Fortunately my teacher was kind enough and allowed me the period to study before I came back to class and wrote the test, which was fill-in-the-blank on the most minute details of Heart of Darkness. Any questions I didn’t know the answer to I simply put the stupidest answer I could think of for (that’s always the best way to go – humour).
Then I had law, where we learned (via a group’s presentation) about Socrates and the Socratic method. In a few days I’ll have to present on Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Then Chemistry came, where I was supposed to have my first test – and the teacher was away, so it looks like that test will be pushed back to tomorrow.
At lunch I had to sign up for grad photos (this year is going by so0o0o0o quickly =( ) then after lunch I had a math test – which was death. Given the last week for me, I was more than ill-prepared for that test and I simply hope I passed it. That would be nice. At this point my goal for math is to get the credit, then be done with the whole damned thing. >_<;
Following math comes English, where we watched some Hamlet, and Business Leadership where I didn’t do much.

Now for where HNZ comes in to the picture.
All of our site staff have been quite busy over the past week or two, we’ve been keeping things running on HNZ but the nice little things we try to do (like the weekly updates, for instance) haven’t been working out so well, and so easily.
The weekly update is actually quite time consuming. First we must compile a list of updates, changes, upcoming events. Next we try to write a paragraph (or thereabouts) for each topic and finally we need to code the whole thing to not just be a giant block of text. The most time consuming part of the coding always turns out to be the highlighted roleplays, which very few people like to contribute to, anyway. (By the way -> Shoot Livvy a PM to have your plot highlighted!)
With all that, doing it once a week has become near impossible, it seems. Even a bi-weekly update seems more amiable (with perhaps special updates in between) then the regular once a week. It’s less pressure on site staff, and gives us more time between updates.
Now, that’s just my thoughts, and I haven’t even discussed them with Livvy, or Linda, or Abby – because I’m not even sure we’ll all stay this busy forever. If doing it once a week is possible again in the near future I don’t want to change the system too many times, but at this point the future looks bleak for “Weekly” updates, I fear.

Aside from that Livvy and I have been inundated with applications for tonnes of things, so please bear with us. With my ever-more busy schedule and Livvy’s present sickness we’re sorting things as best we can. We try to reply to all applications within a week, if not much much sooner.

Anyhow, I think that another “Weekly Update” will be posted today, and that may well be where this blog is first linked to. Exciting? A little bit. =) So I better go work on that.

‘Til next blawg,

~Nick

P.S: What are your thoughts on the weekly updates? Comment on the blog post and share your input! ^_^
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Aurors Blog HNZ Introduction Life Plans

A Return to Blogging

Post author By Nicolas
Post date November 21, 2009

I’ve decided to try blogging again, once in a while, but now on HNZ’s blog with the rest of HNZ’s site staff helping out, posting their own little blog entries, and hopefully having a very awesome area for members to check in on the site, and its staff, in one place. Individual blogs on ZetaBoards are great, but sometimes it’s hard to notice new posts and things – with this it will be possible to subscribe to the blog, follow it, and get relevant updates as need be. Which is pretty nifty, I think.

So life over the past week has been insane for me. The week started off well enough, I suppose, but then Tuesday evening, when I got home from school, my mom’s cat (Hobo) wasn’t doing so well. I was concerned about him, but had to go to work. So I set him down on my mom’s bed (he couldn’t walk for some reason) and left for my job. I called home to check up on him several times throughout the night, and when I got home and checked on him myself he was on my mom’s bed, dead. He was 18, and I’d known him my entire life. My mom’s had him longer than she’s had me. It’s tough thinking that he’s not around the house any more and we all miss him immensely.
I had a test on Wednesday, and one on Thursday, but with Hobo’s death I was certain that if I wrote them I’d fail. So I didn’t go to school Wednesday or Thursday, I spent time with my mom instead – which was alright, I suppose.
Thursday night I had a session meeting at my church, the first one since I became an elder, and that went alright. I came home and my mom told me about some family drama (which I don’t feel comfortable sharing at the moment) that I now also have to deal with.
Then Friday came. Friday was a P.D day (no school! Thank God!) but I had to go to school anyway to work on filming a Literature project with my group. That, too, went alright but it took a fair deal of time and I’m sure I could have spent my day some better way.
Today I’m trying to rest, relax, get some sleep maybe. I’m also planning on seeing The Blind Side with my family and a friend this evening, which I hope to be enjoyable.

Tomorrow I might be going to see 2012 with my church youth group, and I have to study for all the tests I’ve missed.

So now for the portion of my blog where I discuss HNZ.
I feel a bit bad for Summer Break being cut a day or two short, but it’ll be closing Monday, most likely, as that is when Semester two begins.
Along with Semester 2 comes Apparition lessons for sixth years, and lots of other exciting things (I hope).
I’ve been tyring to revamp the Ministry a bit, as it has been inactive, mainly by bringing more Aurors in to the picture. Death Eaters on HNZ have always been strong – so now making it easier to become an auror should help balance things a bit.

Other than that, planning for Y9’s Tri-Wizard tournament is underway and a few more surprises are hidden about.
As far as the OOC Community goes, I’m hoping to get voting prepared for the OOC Superlatives and then wait most anxiously for the results. xD

~Nick

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