Category: OOC

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Admin Stuff Blog Bruises community HNZ OOC

Listen, we need to talk…

Two and a half years ago I left the site – but I stayed connected with Cyndi and Donna, lest they ever needed any help. From time to time they did, and often I heard snippets of their woes about the site – many of these were familiar, and some were far less so.

One thing which I heard again and again that I just didn’t understand was the problem with Skype. Skype, as far as I knew, had been a wonderful way for members to get to know each other more. While it had certainly taken away much of the on-board OOC discussion, that didn’t seem like the worst price to pay.

It took my return to the board, merely six months ago, to fully recognize the problem.

Skype is killing HNZ.

That’s not fair. Skype isn’t doing anything, really. I should rephrase that.

You’re killing HNZ.

At least, the HNZ that we all know and care for is dying a slow and painful death because of how Skype has been used.
The HNZ I know and love is welcoming, and passionate, and diverse! It’s a place where very different people get along because of a common love for writing and a common love for Potter – and more than get along! They collaborate and create beautiful, interesting, engaging works of art together!
That’s the HNZ I love, and I suspect it’s the one you love, too.
How has Skype been used to kill that?
It’s been used to ostracize people. It’s been used to spread lies, and rumours, and sad half-truths.
It’s been used to bully people. To harass, to gang up on, to be children toward, fellow members of the site.
It’s been used in every way possible to evade our board rules and our Netiquette guide.
This is not okay. This is not the HNZ I know.
Skype is being used to get away with things that one would never get away with on the board – and it’s letting some people act like children while others are being abused, hurt, and chased off the site.
I’m sure we can all agree that it’s the people who are being hurt who we’d much rather keep around than the people doing the hurting.

Something’s got to change.

Let’s start here:

  • Block the Bullies
    If you’re in a Skype chat with somebody who’s treating you the above ways. Block them, then talk to us. We can’t punish people for things off the board that we can’t investigate, but you don’t have to endure the abuse.
  • Check Your Facts
    If you hear something that doesn’t make sense, from a person who doesn’t make sense to know/tell you that – talk to a member of the staff or the person who it’s about.
    We’ve had people think the staff has a vendetta against them just because one user told them so, like they knew, when it absolutely wasn’t true – and it created deep tensions until we discovered the problem! Talk to people, and don’t trust nonsense.
  • Offenders Be Warned
    If one name comes up very often as problematic off-site, we’re going to have a chat with that person and their time on the board might come to an abrupt end. Assume that Netiquette applies off site from now on.
    We’re not going to be talking people out of leaving because of your abuse anymore. Instead, we’ll be forcing you off so the board can be legitimately enjoyed again.
  • Site Talk on the Site
    We think it’s awesome that so many people have met in real life, know each other personally, are friends beyond HNZ – but maybe talk to those people only about not-HNZ stuff on Skype.
    Try to keep as much HNZ talk on HNZ as you can. Need to plot? PM. Want to talk to a bunch of people? Spam or shouty (seriously, just treat it like a group chat convo where you know if somebody is a bully they will be dealt with because we have the records).

We can’t resolve this alone. We need all of you to cooperate, especially those of you who aren’t part of the problem but know what we’re talking about.

I know many of you noticed that this year’s birthday celebrations didn’t include a site-wide Skype chat. Not surprisingly, this is why. The staff have no interest in organizing something that is being used to push people further and further away from the board and its community. That’s not okay, and we’re not endorsing it any more in any way – and we’re going to steer clear of Skype and the poison that comes with it until this changes. HNZ should be an escape from this kind of behaviour that many of us have experienced in real life, not a community that repeats those behaviours on our own.

HNZ is a lot better than this.
We’re all a lot better than this.
Let’s do better together.

-Nick

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Categories
Admin Stuff busy Future Life OOC Positivity

Explanation & Hopeful Expectation

It’s kind of crazy to realize that I’ve been on HNZ for seven years… and an admin for six of those.
Seven years is about a third of my life, it’s almost all of my adolescence and my adult life.
In that time, I’ve changed a lot – and the site has too. I joined the site entering secondary school, fairly quickly became an admin, and remained on the site through my undergraduate degree into my current schooling.
HNZ has been an insane blessing in my life. Being on the site provided me rich opportunities to hone skills that would have remained in their infancy were it not for being thrust into a position like I had on HNZ. Where many users have seen the site improve their English language skills, I received the gifts of learning how to work with CSS, JavaScript, mySQL, PHP and my HTML improved drastically. Where creative writing was the focus of many, my ability to communicate with others well was where most of my growth occurred (which is not to say my creative writing didn’t also improve… because it most certainly did… seriously). All of this just to say, my experience on HNZ has been somewhat unique to most people’s. HNZ has been a pretty different thing for me. Like you, HNZ for me has certainly been an exercise in creativity, but often not on the scale of my character(s) – where I never really succeeded in maintaining any – but instead on what could most benefit the site and its growth, and how best to implement such changes. It’s also been an exercise in commitment, and frustration, and realizing that sometimes I really mess up. I’ve been caused to grow in a myriad of ways because of my role on HNZ over these six years, it’s been the only HNZ I’ve really ever known, and I’ve loved every moment of it.

But my life continues to change – I find myself juggling school, an internship, a social life, continued online commitments, family, reading, and some things have dropped… admittedly, HNZ has been one of those things. I’ve been on the receiving end of an admin’s life taking over (the mantra of HNZ from time immemorial being “real life comes first”) and it’s not great to have a dead weight admin around. Knowing this, I’ve had countless conversations with Cyndi over the past year about what my stepping down from being an admin on the site looks like, and over the last semester the necessity of those conversations became even more apparent to me.

Remaining on the site apart from being an admin has never really been something I’ve considered because I can imagine trying to be an active part of the community on the board and just being an awful member… telling staff how to do their jobs, backseat moderating, not applying for the things I’d need to apply for. It wouldn’t be a smooth transition, it’d be pretty rough; I think I’d be banned in a week flat. So I came to realize that I just need to wrap up my character and take a clean move away from the board. My series of blog posts a few months ago were my way of sorting through what HNZ is and has been to me, and I hope the trio of them meant something to you, too. As I’ve made this slow conscious move away from the board, I’ve also remained cognizant that there are certain things for which I’ll need to be available for Cyndi and Donna. If something goes awfully awry: the hosting is still on my shared host, I still own the domains, and I still care about HNZ enough that I’m more than happy to help and fix problems at a moment’s notice (they have my mobile number) and even help make some larger projects a reality (need to keep my skills up to snuff!).

I also have a number of people from HNZ on Skype, and so I know that not checking into the board very regularly or having an official role on the board does not mean that I won’t still talk to the people who I’ve come to know, respect, and enjoy the company of over the last many years. I expect many a harassing Skype messages, saucey emails, drunken rants – I look forward to it. I also continue to volunteer as the support administrator for ZetaBoards & zIFBoards, and will be a continued presence on the Support Board where I’m always a PM or a support ticket away.

I also look forward to what I know is in HNZ’s future with Donna & Cyndi at the helm, free of my imposition. Cyndi having been the indomitable force behind renewing Quidditch on the site (unquestionably the highlight of the last couple of years on the board) and often having had a handful of long-term plans she’d like to see happen (if only the site would get behind them enough to make them happen! *cough*Ministry Elections*cough*) I know that the site is in amazing hands and there will be a wealth of really exciting roleplaying opportunities to come (after all, HNZ is a roleplaying site first and foremost – which is something I confess to forgetting perhaps once too often). Likewise, Donna has a great love for roleplaying and HNZ and even as she continues to learn a lot of the admin-ing basics I know that in very short time she’ll be an incredible force propelling the site forward, too. These ladies, with all the Global Moderators supporting them and the rest of the site participating and enjoying themselves, really do have me wordlessly excited for popping in and hearing what’s been going on, and seeing a place that I’ve known as my home in cyberspace for so many seasons of my life continue to grow and flourish beyond what I could have imagined.

It’s a new year, HNZ – and a new season for us all.
I’ll miss all the bi-weekly madness, spam silliness, shouty shouting, countless Kaitlyn characters, sorting confusion, April fools jokes, Werewolf incredulity, and of course all the creativity and laughter and love that the site has to offer.
In short, I’ll miss you.
I trust that I’ll always be a welcome visitor and, should it ever be reasonable or possible, find a home with HNZ on the Internet again.

As ever: all the best,

Nick

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Categories
Admin Stuff Future HNZ OOC

What goes into implementing a suggestion?

Suggestions are something I care very deeply about, but I know that from a user’s perspective it can seem like they’re not very often considered, or the answer is “no” far too often than it’s “yes”.

Lately, James has taken to making suggestions fairly frequently; which is great. I like having ideas thrown around, and implemented one of his suggestions, pointed out that another suggestion has been an ongoing discussion on HNZ for a while now, and had to say ‘no’ to at least one major idea. I don’t like saying no without explaining myself, but I also decided to seize the opportunity to explain what goes into a ‘no’ response most of the time. You can read my original post here, but I know that not everybody reads every suggestion topic or reply and that specific topic will be buried soon enough: so why not immortalize the process in a blog post?!

Why not, indeed. So that’s what this is!
Boiled down, when we consider a suggestion we ask three main questions:

  • How hard is it to do?
    This can be the most difficult question for people outside of the staff team to answer, so I don’t want it to be something that dissuades people from making suggestions. Sometimes you’ll think something is quite hard but it’s simple enough, and other times you’ll imagine something to be quite simple (because the concept is simple) but it’ll be very involved to implement.
    This is also never the sole determining factor in a decision. I don’t shy away from difficult projects, but each question is considered in relationship to all the others. Our first consideration is simply getting a sense for how big of an undertaking something might be. What would it take to do it, assuming we do?
    I will say, though, that it can be incredibly frustrating when users assume things about whatever they’re suggesting and how simple it really should be to just do, without having any sense for things behind the curtain, as it were.
    So suggest freely, please! But also please remember that this isn’t something you can gauge, and trust us to be able to determine what a suggestion will take to make a reality.
  • How useful is it? To how many people?
    Plenty of ideas are neat and creative, but maybe not particularly useful. Sometimes neat things are done just for the sake of something cool being around even if nobody will ever really need it and it won’t make anybody’s life easier on the site. Once again, this will never be the sole determining factor in if we act on an idea but already you can see how these questions interact with each other. If the suggestion would be a colossal task to implement, but isn’t going to change anything tangible on the board, it doesn’t seem like a great idea to pour time and energy into something like that.
  • What impact will it have on site activity?
    We care about HNZ and its general health and activity, so when we make changes we need to be mindful of how it will influence the activity on the board: both positively and perhaps negatively. Sometimes a major change is suggested that we know may upset some users, and so trying to gauge what the risk of such a change is and if it’s worth doing despite that risk is important. Alternatively, some changes may promote increased activity and still others might be a net-neutral change.
    Obviously this factor, too, is never the sole determining factor in the fate of a suggestion – but it is weighed against the others. Perhaps a suggestion would slightly increase activity (great!) but would be a lot of hard work for the staff to make happen – we might feel that the staff time could be better spent doing something else that might encourage user participation on the site even more.

In my original post on this matter, I provided a few tangible case-studies for applying these criteria.
First, the Quidditch System was a fairly large amount of work (and, truth be told, work is still ongoing!) and while it’s highly useful, it’s only useful to set of users with active student characters on house Quidditch teams. At this point, it would seem adding it isn’t worth the effort. But Quidditch was always very popular on the site and spurred plenty of discussion and followup RPs – this knowledge allowed us to determine that it would be worthwhile because it’d let us have Quidditch played more easily and so more often.

Even small suggestions like being able to clear more than one notification at once work well with these questions: It’s not much work, it’s pretty handy, and it won’t really impact site activity either way – so why not implement it?

These questions are by no means a law, and there’s plenty of wiggle room for considering what people just want, or what might be an interesting project for us to work on (or a new opportunity for the site to grow, even if it’s risky), but it’s been a helpful guide and I think knowing about it will help people better understand where we come from when we approach suggestion topics.

Keep your ideas coming – even if they’re not all adopted, the ones that are make it all worthwhile!

~Nick

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Categories
Changes HNZ Life OOC Rants

Starting a New Era: College Life

Not many know that I’m actually going to college now. Not much of a surprise but whatever. After two years of trying to find a permanent home to settle down and start college, somehow I got in last year and went to classes online. This year is different. I fought to get In-State Tuition because I feel like this is my home now. I’ve never lived in this part of the county, but Cohutta is amazing on so many levels. Small, quiet, but lots of bugs out in the country. Can’t expect more in the south though. Anyway I am going to classes in 16 days. I’m counting down in my head because I’m excited. My classes are as followed:

  • Calculus and Analytical Geometry I
  • Principles of Programming I
  • English I
  • Fundamentals of Speech
  • American Government

I am a Sophomore and it is hilarious that according to this college, I’ve taken English II before English I. I needed English I for my major. Anyway, that is what I have, and I go to school all weekdays. I begged for five classes, and that was what I wanted. What can I say, I really wanted it. This will bring about some changes to my life though. One thing, never been in a campus classroom before so that will be an exciting change.

Changes for HNZ though? I might not be on for like 24 hours a day. Probably a similar schedule for what I had when I was working a full time job, or a part-time one. All of the pages of Accio! that I do will be closing earlier, which was why it was in the BWU several times. Bringing out a new set of pages so keep a look out on that! But with that in mind, anyone that is not pictured at all, won’t be. Not even the seventh years. I used to spend a good two to three hours looking for pictures and the full name for those that did not post pictures. Not anymore. I just wish that some people would take like a couple minutes out of their lives to post a picture for their student and answer to the PM if there was one. It makes the pages really worth while! It makes them bigger and fuller! But I guess it isn’t that big, which is why there isn’t going to be IC Superlatives for a while. That itself takes sooo long to do. It isn’t worth counting the votes if only 4 OOC people voted.

I might not be able to do lessons for my students anymore, especially my third years. Less to grade I suppose but eh. I liked it. I want to focus on school, but I am going to have fun in the meantime. It might take some time, I’m sure that this will be easy to balance out after a couple of weeks. I am superb at time management. When I want to be that is.

Sigh. I’ll just wrap this up then.
~ Kaitlyn

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Admin Stuff Blog HNZ OOC Rants

Try to enjoy the journey (Or “A Roleplay is not a Fanfiction”)

Anybody who was part of a conversation in Shouty tonight likely spied a seemingly random outburst on my behalf – raging against something which many probably see as a non-issue.

Excerpts from my glorious rantings included such gems as:

Neville also didn’t fit the Gryffindor image. Lesson: Stop ‘yer cryin’. Sorting hat did it right. Make it work. Develop a character. Dare to have your plans be dynamic.

The point is the sorting hat gets it right. A roleplayer would put Neville in Hufflepuff and say he has his brave moments but is mostly a Hufflepuff.

My point is that roleplayers are dumb. They plan a whole character’s life and have a tantrum if their character’s life is interrupted in its idealistic perfection at all by actually interacting with other characters or responding to situations

and

It defeats the purpose of an interactive RPG if we all define our character’s paths and have them go down them in a straight shot without room for deviation or error.

I’d like to preface the following by stating that it’s not directed at anybody in particular. The conversation in shouty definitely brought it back to mind, but this has been something that has bothered me for some time (as you’ll see in my rant to follow).

My point is a simple one, and I think it ties tightly back in to what Amanda posted nearly a year ago in her post Open Says Me – the fun of roleplaying (to me, at least) is the insane things that just happen. How two people in the real world, with very different lives, writing styles, and ideas, come together in collaboration to create something epic – each controlling a character and writing in half of a story, all the while actively enjoying and reacting to the half that they have no power over. Influencing their own half of the story. Veering off course wildly – perhaps never to return.

Ever since Sorting on HNZ began people have gamed the form. I’m no fool: I know it’s done, and it frustrates me. Not because we suddenly have 1000000 stereotypical Slytherins demanding Slytherin or death to all (though, don’t get me wrong, that’s absolutely dumb) – but because it steals some of the excitement away from the sorting process and the actual roleplay. You, as a roleplayer, have developed a character with certain hopes and dreams you have – but you’re a roleplayer in a text-based, play by post, RPG. You’re not an author of a fanfiction. You, perhaps unfortunately (though, in my view, quite fortunately), have merely 50% of the control. Sometimes less. You can shape your character. You can mould your character. You can put your character in the right place at the right time. You can’t determine their fate in every respect. Because you need to work with other people. When we refuse to do that, or we game the system, we rob not only others of a proper and full experience – but I think we rob ourselves of some of the excitement of roleplaying, as well.

Fanfictions are great. Novellas, and literature: can’t get enough of it. But HNZ isn’t for those things. HNZ is for coming together as a community and crafting something brilliant and unique. Bringing our own ideas to the table and compromising with other people to see what new and exciting things will come out of it.

My case-in-point for this argument is a topic I had when HNZ was perhaps the most fun it ever has been for me. It’s a roleplay which, while I cringe to link to it now after so many years, still makes it in every reminiscing sufficiently veteraned members of the site makes. Countless lists of favourite roleplays include this thread. A Brotherhood Sized Bet. If you haven’t read it: do.

That thread, an icon of HNZ’s past and of what is great about roleplaying, happened almost entirely spontaneously. My entering it, unplanned. What happened to my character: grossly unexpected. I had no idea. And I had to react to it as I read the post. No preparation, no planning ahead, no avoiding the topic lest it should change something key about my character, no shutting down the roleplay as soon as I didn’t like where it was heading.

We all have plans and goals for our characters. That’s natural and to be expected. But, as in life, it’s the journey that our characters go on that counts. Fast tracking and pre-planning everything, while ensuring it happens, steals something gravely important about the experience that HNZ offers from you. Something that definitely should never be stolen away. I miss it severely and I don’t want to see others never having experienced it at all.

“Make it work. Develop a character. Dare to have your plans be dynamic.” I think that’s a fair summary of what it is that needs to be done. Developing a character should be an active process, ongoing and changing as roleplays happen and partners in the roleplay throw in unexpected, amazing, surprises – like life offers to us each and every day. Have plans be organic, not static – make the roleplay interesting, not scripted and entirely two dimensional. Boring. When somebody offers you something in a roleplay that didn’t quite fit the master plan, or the sorting hat puts your blood supremacist sadist in Hufflepuff: make it work. It’s an opportunity to have a lot of fun, not a sentence to death and destruction for your character (though that could be fun too, couldn’t it?).

Hoping you’ll soon find your characters entirely out of control, developing whole new lives of their own, and surprising and surpassing even your wildest thoughts and plans for them,

~Nick

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Categories
busy Changes Future Life OOC Plans

The Great Move

I am starting to get more and more nervous now. Why is that? Well, most of the people that have known me has the girl from Georgia (Oh yeah, from the same place our Kait aka Kiera Potter, small world?) Though after I started working at Wal-Mart, I quickly learned that it is a physical job, but love it none the less, and people actually talked to me. It was nice, yes. I originally got the job to start saving up for Michigan, and helping out mom because she is being garnished for a surgery I went through three years ago. While helping her out and earning so little money, saving up was just not going to be happening within the next two years. However I figured, hey, get the garnishment stopped, I’d be able to save easier, right? But, then something came along to where I may not have to worry about it.

Mom got laid off, thus being offered a job in another state. Where? New York, one hour away from Canada, in a big city named Rochester. At first, I thought that it wasn’t going to happen, and whatnot, but now I am sitting in the living room, looking at boxes and I have been told to pack my room. It was like a smack to the face. The worst part, I am scared. Utterly scared that we will end up losing everything again, and then ending up in a worse mess than before, though things seemed legit with the forms and mom’s drug test. There was another option, where I could find rides to Walmart, on crazy hours, and fight like hell to maintain a living on my own. However that is almost impossible too. I don’t have a car of my own, thus I would end up losing the job with winter coming. So, I have to go to New York before I can go to Michigan. I would end up losing my job, yes, but in a big city, mom’s work is wanting to hire me too in something. It would be cool working like 12 dollars an hour where she is making almost double than what she was making here, before the garnishment.

On an added note, I talked mom into helping me save up, because she helped Christian and Sarah get a place of their own, why not me too? So, after we get settled, I start college and have a job, with mom’s extra funds, she is going to help me find my goal. Though first, get a car of my own. Once my credit is up a bit, maybe a lease for one but I don’t want to wait a year. So, Used is my best option. I am New York Bound soon, and then later, who knows how much later but it will happen, I will be in Michigan.

This is being posted mainly to let everyone know, I am going to be in the process of moving across the freaking country, and might not have internet for a while. I have a feeling, this would be a great trip, and a better life for mom and me both. Just some thoughts running through my head right now.

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Categories
Admin Stuff Applications HNZ Life OOC

Applications: What the heck is up and how are they processed?

Introduction
Applications are a very important part of HNZ. They moderate who can say their character is/does what, and helps keep the board from becoming rampant with Mary Sue type characters which would surely annoy most people on HNZ. They have become ingrained in the culture of the site, I believe, and when they cannot be processed as quickly as I would like, or you would like, it becomes a frustrating matter.

Yes, me.
What’s this? Processed as quickly as I would like? Yes, me. I like applications to move quickly as well. I don’t like holding on to them for ages – they clutter things. 😉 Having them around for too long makes me go a little bit crazy.

So what’s the hold up?
Right now, as many have noted, applications seem at a bit of a stand still. This is as frustrating to me as it is to you all, but likely even moreso to me. Why, you ask? Well, you’re waiting on one or two applications. I see all twenty or so currently in queue. The hold up? As you should know, Livvy has been dealing with some large real-life problems and (as says what has effectively become the ancient statement of HNZ) ‘Real life comes first’.

Real Life Comes First
I think it’s humorous that when members are going away and leaving behind work for the Global Moderators or Administrators to catch up, for the sake of the site, we still say ‘Real life comes first’. However, when it is an Admin who needs the time off, nobody seems to be able to have patience. At all. The song of ‘real life comes first’ fades away to a mob of angry villagers, pitchforks in hand, ready to go find the monster.

Trying to Catch Up
Nearly every application, however, does have a response from me. Some are even mid-discussion between Livvy and I. Unfortunately, it seems Livvy’s life has taken her for another whirl and HNZ time has had to be cut. Livvy doesn’t like to hold things up, but she loves administrating HNZ and definitely wants to be a part of the approval process. So, I trust she will catch up in a timely manner. If she knows she won’t be able to catch back up in a timely manner, then she will ask me to process applications until she can catch back up. As much as ‘real life comes first’, there are still ways we can adhere to that without ensuring applications drown.

Mid-Discussion? Wait, so how do applications work – exactly?
I have a feeling, based on some of the results from the recent site poll that not everybody is aware of how applications are processed on HNZ. What we look at for them, and why it is that applications get denied – even when hard work has obviously been put in to them.

Every form that is sent in is given a topic in a hidden forum. There are plenty of these forums for every type of application, with approved and denied archives as well for future referencing. It’s all very helpful, actually. When a new application comes in, Livvy and I read the topic then post our initial reactions. We discuss the application with each other if applicable, and either: Approve it, suggests tweaks to it and approve it when the tweaks are ironed out, or deny it.

So what is it, exactly, that we look for in applications? Here are some of the basic things:

  1. Is it canon?
    If an application, in any way, breaks with our knowledge of the canon Harry Potter universe – it is denied.
  2. Does it make sense?
    We look over applications to ensure that what they say makes sense. If a person applies to be a Death Eater, for instance, but comes from a loving household, doesn’t believe in any sort of blood supremacy, and has no reason to be a Death Eater – then such applications are denied. It may be funny, but if something doesn’t make sense then it could really screw other things up. Making sense is very crucial.
  3. What would the repercussions of this be?
    For many applications, especially plot requests, things effect characters outside of the plot, too. Usually this is in minor ways, but sometimes it can be major. Take, for instance, a plot request where an unspeakable has found a cure for werewolves. It doesn’t go against canon – nothing says there can’t be a cure. It might make perfect sense, too. But the plot would effect everybody on the site and the future of the site as a whole. It would likely negatively influence many other character’s developments as well. If that is the case, that the repercussions of a request would be largely negative and widespread – it is denied.
  4. How common should it be?
    For special ability applications especially this is considered. We only truly meet one metamorphmagi in the Harry Potter novels, through all seven books. This indicates how truly rare the ability is. We receive plenty of requests for this gift, however. So we must consider how common it should be and, if enough have already been approved for the time being, no more are accepted (even if they’re all pretty good) unless the application just blows our minds.
  5. How many other special things does this roleplayer have?
    This is something that must be considered in conjunction with How common should it be?. We don’t want two roleplayers having a character with every possible special ability and nobody else on the site being able to have anything. We want to spread the wealth a little, so this must be considered. Has the person had many applications recently? How many special things does this person already have? Could we approve this for somebody else who does not have as many special approvals?
  6. Is this user in good standing?
    This is also something we must consider. Members who constantly break board rules, are rude to anybody and everybody, etc. shouldn’t be given special allowances. It is a reward, almost, to have special plots approved, have characters with special abilities, etc. So why should a user who doesn’t care about site rules be given plenty of extra awesome things while rule-abiding members might not? It’s just one of the many prices of rule breaking.
  7. Plenty More
    There are several more considerations that are given to applications in that time that Livvy and I review them. It’s not just a quick read and a rash response, thought is given to applications, and the most appropriate response given – even if it’s not something the applicant wants to hear.

Conclusion
In summary: Stop complaining. Don’t be hypocritical. We take necessary time and thought for applications.

That is all. ^_^

~Nicolas

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Categories
Admin Stuff Aurors Blog Future HNZ OOC Plans Positivity

HNZ: My hopes, plans & ideas

So, normally I use HNZ to blog rant about whatever has been annoying me, on or off of the site. I’ve even considered writing a “how to blawg rant” sort of blog rant where I would analyze my own blog rantings to see what made them so humorous to some and offensive to others. This post, however, will be more blog and less rant. Surprising, I know.
So, without further ado, the blog itself:

Contrary to what it seems like, I do have a lot of ideas, hopes, and plans for HNZ. Some of them are a lot larger than others, and some of them are quite unrealistic, but nevertheless I have them and strive toward implementing them.

Some of the ideas you’ve already seen thrown in to action with little to no consultation with the site, some of the ideas I’ve heard as suggestions and am just waiting for the right form to execute them in, others are ongoing as I type and many, many, others are just little inklings of thought in the back of my mind.

So, where does Nick see HNZ going? What big plans and hopes do I have for the site? I’ll share a few with you now. ^_^

Right, so first I’ll start with some of my more minor ideas – easy to implement, but I mostly want feedback on or need the help of members to do.

  • Twitter Profile Field
    The Twitter profile field was added to HNZ, but I’ve been thinking about updating its coding just a little such that if the user has inserted a link to their twitter account it becomes clickable. It’s a small thing, and easy to do, but I’m not sure it’s worth the extra three lines of code on the site.
  • Constant Feedback (Through the proper channels)
    Recently the giant suggestions topic disappeared and in its place came the Suggestions & Feedback forum. This was in an effort to invite users to openly post their own suggestions or feedback about the site, then facilitate discussion on the topic instead of just having one response and things moving on. You’ll notice, however, that the forum is no longer just ‘Suggestions’. It is ‘Feedback’ as well. This means we want to hear what you think, not just grumblings over MSN and whatever spam topic is open. An excellent example of this is Interactive Lessons. Recently a discussion has been opened about them where users were invited to share their ideas and opinions. Now, interactive lessons began several months ago and I’ve heard grumblings about it on and off since then. What stopped those users from posting feedback, constructive criticism, and their own ideas? Nothing on my end, I should hope – but I don’t know.
  • A better understanding that Livvy & I work as a team
    This has become difficult as of late, because often it is only one of us that warns any given user, or one of us that replies stating an application has been denied. Often, when it is the same admin and the same user over time, the user develops animosity toward the one admin and favours the other, somehow thinking that our opinions differ, when this is very seldom true. Hopefully I’ve taken a step toward mending that, where one of us takes all the heat, in the most recent update to the applications system – but we’ll have to wait to see.
  • All (or most all) Applications on Webpages
    Right now we seem to be caught between two systems. The older, ‘copy/paste this form to apply’ system (still used for Hogwarts Staff, Professors, Shopkeepers, and Ministry Officials) and the newer webpage/mostly automated application system (as seen with Purebloods, Plot Requests, Special Abilities etc.).
    The trouble with updating is many-fold. First, making the webpages is time consuming. This is not a large concern of mine, but it is one to consider in conjunction with the others.
    Next, for Professors – applications are only open when we are specifically hiring for a post. Otherwise, the form is moot. How, then, are we to indicate when/if we’re hiring – and would we have to update the form every time we need a new professor?
    The final trouble is the shopkeeper application. Shopkeepers can open their own shop (note: that is currently on hold) or fill a vacant shop. If they are trying to fill a vacant shop, the same trouble as professors pops up.

Of course, I also have some much larger plans than those – many of which are just pipe dreams, but thoughts I’ve had nonetheless.

  • Member Run: Aurors & Death Eaters
    This is something I, personally, would like to see in the future some time. A few trusted members taking on Aurors and Death Eaters, keeping Admin in the loop, and ensuring things stay active and exciting. Livvy and I have tonnes on our plates, we’re trying to organize and encourage DE/Auror activity while still monitoring it/tempering it so it doesn’t get out of hand. In the past, Death Eaters have been self-run, and I think both groups could do so with OOC leaders from the member base. Maybe just not yet.
  • Ministry of Magic: Election(s)?
    This is something that is likely happening, and soon. Possibly starting in Y10, if I can get some things together for it.
    Gellert Coote has been Minister for Magic for at least eight years. That’s a fair length of office term, and it’s time he retired. So who is next to lead the Magical Community of New Zealand and its Ministry in to the future? Well, I’d like that to be up to the residents of New Zealand themselves. I think it’d be a grand way for members to get involved in the site. Create characters to run in the campaign (or, better yet, use existing ones) have speeches, slogans, buttons and banners, make election promises nobody can keep, expose skeletons in each other’s closets… and then… voting day! New Zealand elects its newest leader.
    Of course, some OOC strings would need to be attached too – as having such an important character for the whole site makes things a bit complicated. The roleplayer of that account would need to talk to Admin frequently and keep us in the loop on things – but I think that’s something fun to look forward to that could add so juice to the Ministry-aspect of HNZ. ^_^
  • A New Custom Theme?
    HNZ has been using the same amazing theme made by Athene Perthro for nearly two years now. It’s excellent, I love it, it means “HNZ” to me – but sometimes change is nice. Something fresher and newer could likely entice visitors to join the board and I’m always one to see what new things might work.
    This is something I’ve pursued to some degree previously, but unfortunately it hasn’t come through, so it’s something I keep in my mind. If we were to have a new theme designed for HNZ – or even coded for it (though I could do that myself, really) – it would be a nice way to liven up some aspects of the board (though I always intend to keep Athene’s skin in the theme chooser).
  • Web Hosting for HNZ
    This is one of the larger dreams really that I have for the site. I say dream because of how unlikely it is to happen, but it could be quite awesome if it ever did.
    What would web hosting mean? Well, it would mean that we would be able to integrate some PHP to the forum and host many things ourselves – such as the galleons script which, currently, is being graciously provided and hosted by my friend Scott (Slayer766) on his web host. This would also mean that HNZ could be given a front page of sorts before accessing the forums, which would contain quick links, information, announcements, a login system of sorts etc. which could all be tied directly back to the board with ZetaBoard’s upcoming API.
    Now, why is this unlikely to happen? The simple fact of web hosting costing money. The most basic plan with the company I buy HNZ’s domain from is $72.24(CAD) for a year of hosting. I already pay ~$25(CAD) a year for the domain and my privacy protection on the domain – so that would be nearly $100 a year spent on the site. Not too terribly much, when given that it’s a whole year – but it’s a fair amount when I don’t have a credit card to pay through (so I buy stupid prepaid ones) and my job isn’t that great. Plus, I’m going in to University and will therefore be in debt the rest of my life, the way it’s looking. I also never want to put up a paypal link asking members to donate to HNZ, nor do I want to start a project that costs money without personally having the means to back that project for an extended period of time. It would suck if I paid for a year, then couldn’t pay for the next year and somehow no members came through with donations, and we lost whatever we’d become so used to/dependant on.

That’s about all the plans/hopes/ideas/dreams I think I want to share right now.
I would like to comment that in the past week, maybe two weeks, I have thoroughly enjoyed the air about the community on HNZ. A lot of negativity and animosity seems to have been taken away somehow, and I’m very optimistic for the future. ^_^

Thank you all for making HNZ so awesome, and I welcome you to share any feedback on these hopes/plans/ideas of mine. ^_^

~Nick

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Admin Stuff HNZ OOC PMs

Sending a PM: The importance of your title.

A minor annoyance of mine is this:
People who send me personal messages on the board but title them whatever they’d like, or like they’d title a roleplay – perhaps with nothing to do with the contents of the PM or with very little to do with it, at any rate.

Often, I’d even prefer no subject at all ( a simple   in the PM title field will make the title a single space ) to the subjects some people give me. When I sign on my PM inbox might look like this (as it did today, nearly):

Random PM Titles
Open Full Image in New Window

Only one of those message titles is even helpful to me. One or more of them makes me think the user is annoyed with me (which they were not) and the others… lolwut?

I do two things when I have PMs:

  1. Try to reply in order of importance
  2. Give consideration to the length of time a PM has gone without reply

I am perfectly able to do that second thing just by a glance – but the former? How am I to determine the importance of each PM with random titles? Or how am I to determine if I am in the right mood/mindset to read the PMs (I don’t want to read a PM telling me off (like ‘GRRRR’ could have been, but wasn’t) if I’m already upset)?

I think that PMs are quite different than topics on the board. PM titles should give a glimpse of what is inside of the PM before the user opens it.
That’s my opinion, anyway.

What’s yours?

~Nick

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Admin Stuff Changes HNZ OOC Positivity

Posi-Blawg: A little bit of a positive rant

I try to blog monthly now, though for a while I was attempting once a day (long, long ago), and I recently noticed that, by the time I’m ready to blog again – something has come up that really irks me, warrants a rant, and may come off negative-sounding. I tend to try to put a positive spin on things (like in the Cliques Blog, where I asserted that HNZ obviously has groups of close friends, but the site as a whole is one community). So, never having been one to always like to focus on the negative, I have taken it upon myself to rant, or at least list things off, about how awesome HNZ is, and perhaps even my life in general. ^_^

It is with this sentiment and explanation that I hereby begin… THE Posi-Blawg:

  • People are appreciative & understanding:
    It kind of sucks how one person, or a few people, ruin so much greatness – but that’s what the people on HNZ are: great. For as many people that really grind my gears there are ten who see my point of view and try to help me in whatever situation I’m in. Sometimes after blog rants (as it is often after people read them that they become most understanding and appreciative – just human nature, I suppose) I get messages from people stating how much they appreciate me, the work I do on HNZ, the staff, the site itself, etc. These messages often come from people who I never would have thought to care that much at all, and they tend to make me smile. Without those kinds of messages, I think I would have left HNZ a long time ago – so you all are truly that awesomely amazing. There are very few people I can honestly say I’ve met on HNZ and disliked, and those people are gone for the most part. (I suppose if you can’t stand an admin, you don’t tend to linger on the board long.)
    People are also always willing to help out. Sometimes it takes being approached, sure, but I think I’d rather be approached about helping than volunteer sometimes, too. It lets people know that you value their assistance and likely makes them feel special. Whenever help is truly needed around the board, however, I know I can always ask somebody and if they’re able to, they will help – because they know if somebody wasn’t necessary I wouldn’t ask, and they care about HNZ that much. There are two pages of slaves to the Nicktator members who I figure would all be willing to help out with HNZ things if I asked them. I think that’s amazing.
  • Everybody on HNZ is there for the same sort of reasons
    We all like Harry Potter, and eventually we all become acquainted with/like roleplaying. There have been very few members who don’t, and they don’t last long. So how is this positive? Easy. There aren’t huge feuds and wars and flaming and such. Things are, for the most part, pretty civil and enjoyable. I think being on a board where at least two common interests are shared between members aids in this process a lot.
  • I’m always learning, improving, and there’s always something to do.
    If nothing else, HNZ keeps me busy, and has caused me to learn about a lot of things that I could have otherwise cared less about. Through HNZ I have learned HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript/a lot of jQuery. It is through this knowledge that HNZ’s InvisionFree skin was converted to a ZetaBoards theme, that many of HNZ’s minor codes have appeared, and that the custom webpages (from webpages defining seasonal temperatures to ones for submitting applications) have all appeared. This knowledge has benefited me off of HNZ, too, and now I am much less of an interwebz n00b because of it.
    Aside from that there are all sorts of things which I regularly get ideas for on HNZ, most of which I forget, and so many ways I plan to/hope to improve the board. I think it’s great that I get to experience putting little tweaks in to a board here and there, knowing members will take them/accept them as I fiddle with things (unfortunately, live testing has become a habit of mine), and give me feedback as I require it. This is especially true as I see so many boards where admin have good ideas and no chances to implement them as their board dies – or the board thrives, there is a lack of ideas, and then the board dies – or the worse of all possible situations, the ideas presented cause the board to wither away. In that regard, I’m eternally grateful for HNZ and its community.
  • People are super-talented on HNZ
    I notice this more and more as time goes on, likely because people are just getting better and better, but whether it be graphics, writing, both, or something else entirely – HNZ has some awesomely talented people who, very thankfully, share their talents with us all and I’ve oft’ smiled because of it. :wub: talented people.
  • People are nice… and welcoming.
    It’s quite amazing how nice, helpful, and welcoming HNZ is considering its size (and how cliquey some people like to pretend it is… sorry… I had to slip a negative comment in here somewhere. 😉 Too much positivity is just uncharacteristic). I’ve visited at least one forum, roughly ten times the size of HNZ in members and over 10 times its size for activity – and I posted a welcome topic. That topic got a grand total of 0 replied until I complained about it being ignored in their feedback forum several days later. On HNZ, I’ve heard countless times from newer members that they felt overwhelmingly welcomed and knew we were willing to help them with anything. Normally new members get their first welcome to the board on the day they introduce themselves, and soon enough they’ll have five or more ‘welcomes’ to add. We can always improve, of course, but I think we’re doing great.
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As you can tell from the above, most of the reasons I can be positive, and most of the reasons HNZ is awesome, for me, are because of you guys. You’re all overly amazing and awesome and st00f. Without you HNZ wouldn’t be around, and I certainly wouldn’t enjoy it at all without all of the above positive aspects of the board, and our community.

I know this blawg wasn’t as amusing, perhaps, as others – but I think it was necessary.

So, thank you all, and see you on the board! (Winky Face!)

~Nick

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