Forum:Establishing a weekly news system

Hey,

So I thought I'd kick start the new forum-based method of community discussions by proposing something myself, with the hope that others weigh in with some input and maybe contribute some of their own ideas.

To get down to business, one thing I feel that we're lacking with is Community news, and news related to The Sims series in general, with only one delivery method per month which only gives a basic outline of what happened the past month and doesn't serve too much in order to keep users notified of what's going on.

With this in mind, I'd like to propose that a weekly news system, delivered by administrators, is implemented. The system would present Community news in one section, with references to active discussion threads on this forum, any active RfA/RfB nominations and really anything that's happened which is community related while another section could present news from The Sims series that's taken place the past week such as new announcements or something major related to an upcoming release.

There are various ways of presenting it, with a news blog being the most familiar and most approachable method, but as we have the whole page to discuss this, we can decide how we want to present weekly news after we've decided whether or not we even want to do this. Note that this isn't designed as a replacement for the newsletter but rather a supplement.

With this, I think it'll do better to serve users and keep them in the loop with what's going on as well as encourage more input within the community. So what does everyone think? 15:43, November 4, 2012 (UTC)

Discussion
I'd say go for it. I mean, I feel a month for game updates is quite a big gap, even if I don't play the ones featured. Asher Éire I'm a lonely person, so please talk to me... 21:16, November 4, 2012 (UTC)
 * In the past, community news blogs would come out 2-3 times a month, with the Newsletter supplementing it and combining that information into one page. I think more news updates would be a good thing but I don't necessarily know if making it a 'regular' feature (i.e. Every Friday we will release a news update, for instance) would necessarily work. For one, you'd need to make sure you had administrators that were responsible for making the blog and if they were to be absent, then you'd need to make sure someone stepped up to fill their shoes.
 * All told, I think this is a good idea in theory, but I'm worried about how it would work from a practical standpoint. --  LiR speak ~ read 23:49, November 4, 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm cool with taking this approach. I try to run the newsletter as sort of a summary of stuff that has happened just so its not a huge wall of text, and I feel more in-depth news would be nice for supplementing this, along with separate blogs for game releases/announcements and the like. Something like what the CoD wiki does would work best imo, but I'll leave the specifics and such open for discussion.
 * I wonder will keep the community news occupied for every single week? This cannot be handled by an administrator him/herself (or maybe two). Perhaps it's better to keep discussion of what should be published as news each week, so it's not just someone's responsibility.  Nikel  Talk  –  Vote!  13:24, November 5, 2012 (UTC)
 * In response to the claims made about who would be doing it and their activity, obviously it would be a collaborative effort. This might sound a tad impractical but I was thinking we could maybe create a roster containing the admins who wish to help out with this and it goes in a cycle so that one user does it one week, another the next and so on. Again, I'm not holding much confidence in the roster idea but it's just a thought. 17:51, November 5, 2012 (UTC)
 * Having a list of admins willing/able to contribute would be useful, but it shouldn't fall on one person every week to put it together... if the other admins realize that the administrator whose "turn" it is is absent, they should step up and write it themselves. Perhaps a page on-wiki could be used by admins on a weekly basis to volunteer to write it, since they would be opting into writing it rather than it being "their turn". --  LiR speak ~ read 18:02, November 5, 2012 (UTC)
 * A roster sounds good to me.
 * Roster and volunteer seem okay to me.  Nikel  Talk  –  Vote!  03:47, November 7, 2012 (UTC)

Moving on
Seeing as the discussion has dried up (what a surprise ) and the community appears to be in favor of implementing this, as well as a roster of who ideally does this on a weekly basis, I'm dedicating this section for admins who wish to play a role in delivering the weekly news to list their names here. So that this doesn't become long and complicated, I'll leave this be for a few days and we can further discuss this after we're sure of who wants to be involved.


 * Add your name here if you wish to be a part of the "news team" roster.
 * 11:27, November 11, 2012 (UTC)
 *  LiR speak ~ read 04:13, November 12, 2012 (UTC)
 *  Nikel  Talk  –  Vote!  04:26, November 12, 2012 (UTC)
 *  Nikel  Talk  –  Vote!  04:26, November 12, 2012 (UTC)

Moving forward again
Okay so I think this has been left open long enough and we've got 4 users who are basically our weekly news team (I was honestly hoping for a better turnout but I suppose we can add others later). To date, both LiR and myself have created the two news blogs. As far as establishing an actual schedule/roster, do we want to go with the ordering of the above list as of next week (note: I wouldn't be doing it as I did it this week) or does anyone else have any other ideas of how to order things?

One more thing: is there a particular day in which the news should be delivered? I noticed that LiR delivered his on a Saturday while mine was delivered today (Thursday). I'd recommend either midweek or a weekend but that can easily be discussed. 22:04, November 22, 2012 (UTC)
 * Again, I don't necessarily think it should be a 'this week it's 's turn' sort of setup. In those cases, you're banking on one person being able to get on the wiki and feeling ambitious enough to write something. Often that person can meet the obligation but sometimes they can't, and I've noticed in situations where the role is 'assigned', the ball tends to get dropped and not picked up by others.
 * I have a couple ideas. One, we could have each week be 'claimed' by a person on the list a couple days ahead of time... that way they know their responsibility and we know who's doing what when. Another possibility might be to have a roster and to go in order, but to have a backup for each week just in case the first person misses the deadline.
 * As for what day of the week... I don't know which day would work best, but I think it should be consistent from week to week. --  LiR speak ~ read 22:23, November 22, 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if we can consistently publish a blog in a particular day of the week though... There might be some days when we can't be available at that time. :/  Nikel   Talk  –  Vote!  03:52, November 23, 2012 (UTC)
 * Although the point has been made that if admin x can't do it one week then admin y should fill in, I can understand the flaw of having it on one set day. Maybe it would be easier if we designated it to an option of 2 days, like the weekend or something, and aim for consistency on that? 15:19, November 25, 2012 (UTC)

Conclusion
Closed - Although this thread has been dead for two weeks, the news system has been implemented and the blogs seem to come about by themselves on a Thursday/Friday each week, which is fairly consistent. While further development may be beneficial, it's safe to say we've got a solid foundation laid out and I don't think we'll get anything else out of this particular thread. 12:37, December 13, 2012 (UTC)