Lessons
Thursday, 22 April 2010 02:29
I get traditional about the weirdest things. Tonight is the second anniversary of a little off-the-cuff idea I had in the middle of the night, in the middle of a bad situation. For the first anniversary, I stayed up all night, just like the night of the idea. I don’t remember why I was up all night for last year, but this year, I freakin’ scheduled it. It’s become a tradition, and I’m funny about my little traditions.
Last year, I spent this night telling you a little story, the Genesis of TCFL. This year is less about silly little trips down memory lane and more about lessons learned. TCFL (specifically the staff) spent its first year learning what worked in theory –when we were building this site- and what needed adjustments to thrive in reality. Our second year has been about learning what “growth” really means.
There’s a running joke amongst the staff regarding gushing about “our baby” and how fast it has grown. I gotta tell you, we weren’t prepared for this. I envisioned our second anniversary bringing us to the point where we have a few hundred registered members, a few dozen "regulars," modest search engine standings, and enough traffic to consider moving up to another hosting plan.
Oh boy, was I wrong. There are 700 of you, roughly a quarter of which are here nearly every day, plus hundreds of lurkers every month. We’re doing well enough in the search engines that Google is our chief supplier of indirect traffic. We’re using up twice the bandwidth we were using a mere eight months ago, and moving up a tier on our hosting plan isn’t something to consider, it’s an urgent necessity. (Don't worry, it's in the works.)
With all this traffic has come some unexpected changes. We expected to slowly transition with the growth of the site, adjusting to the needs of the site and the needs of the staff at an easy measured pace, going with the flow. But TCFL has not grown at the pace we expected. Its needs, and its demands on the time of those who run it, have been less of “flow” to go with, and more of a thundering waterfall. We’ve had a lot of trouble trying to keep up. That was the true lesson of Year Two: Adjust faster or you’ll drown.
So now, as we prepare for Year Three, we’re adjusting… as fast as we can. I guess you’re waiting on me to stop rambling and tell you what I’m plotting for TCFL’s Second Anniversary Season (AS2 for short). Alright, I guess I can do that…
Staff: The Admin team is in a transitional phase right now. We’re going to be moving more into traditional managerial roles and giving more power to the Mods on forum issues, to ease the pressure on the Admins and allow us to focus more of our energy on keeping TCFL in step with its growth.
The Mods are testing a new forum distribution arrangement right now, to see if we can better balance their workloads, so they don’t end up as frazzled as I am. We think a few extra hands might help, too.
What to look for:
* New mods will be invited via PM in the next couple of weeks.
* Mod forum assignments are in flux right now. Will be finalized soon.
* When the staff and their assignments are finalized, the new arrangements will be formally announced here in Mosaic Blue and the Staff page will be updated.
Forums: We’ve noticed that some of your forum needs are not being met. Despite appearances, we are actually paying attention. New forums are under consideration, some for division of information and topic types, and some to provide additional support to certain demographics and topics. The staff is still voting on and discussing our options, so I can’t even tell you for certain how many new forums are coming.
As part of an update to the FAQ and a formal review of our forum rules, we’ll be addressing parent members specifically. I know this has been a tough issue, and everyone views parent members differently. We are definitely going to keep our doors open, but will adjust our policies to better to protect the “safe haven” atmosphere that you all enjoy.
Also in the forums, we’ll be doing a little housecleaning, as a way of delaying the day when we have to start losing chunks of the forum archive. Here’s how it works: Our database has a limited capacity. When we hit that limit, we’ll be forced to set up a “roll over,” wherein old content is deleted as new content is created. We can delay that dreadful day by digging through our archive and deleting posts that can be lost without sacrificing the value of the thread. Old posts that are just one or two words, a series of emotes, or (especially) quoted text with the same are going to be cleaned out of the database.
Don't take it personally if your post count goes down as a result of this work. By deleting those little bits of content, we're preserving TCFL's history a little longer. This isn't about any individual members. This is about leaving the best of TCFL available to everyone as long as possible.
What to look for:
* New Forums and possible adjustments to the order of the Forum Index page
* Addition to FAQ and/or Rules pages discussing our expectations of parent members
* Edits to the Forum Archive, which will be mostly visible in decreases in post counts.
Other Stuff: You know I have a lot more than that up my sleeve, don't you? I’m not going to be able to fill 13 weeks worth of MB entries with just that stuff, so there must be more, right? Trust me, there’s more. Some little things, some big things, but definitely enough to keep me busy for the next 91 days.
Tonight, I’m just telling you what my top priorities are, specifically those related to the forums. But you can’t really complain. You also got a spoiler in the Pub earlier today. If you haven’t seen it… well, I’m not going to tell you where to find it. Part of the fun of the forums is learning something new, right?
~Stacey
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