Feb 10, 17 / Pis 13, 01 16:59 UTC

Re: Proposal - Weekly Q&A session with Igor Ashurbeyli  

Yeah, okay. It's good enough for me!

Feb 10, 17 / Pis 13, 01 17:20 UTC

The Proposal has been sent.

Since the online document may eventually be changed, here is a PDF version of what has been sent:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByzbHcAxmCyvSWNnemEwZllpUUE

Feb 10, 17 / Pis 13, 01 19:28 UTC

The staff has answered:

Hello,

Thank you for sending in this proposal.

There are a few issues with it that we would like for you to address:

  1. Contributors are listed by alias, please update to legal names.

  2. The use of 'we' and personal views are not appropriate in submission of a project proposal. It should be as neutral and professional as possible.

  3. There was no contact with the C.A. team to ensure that the additional workload would be possible to cover with current staff levels in regards to moderating the responses and compiling questions.

  4. How much additional work would this entail?

  5. How many additional moderators would have to monitor the thread based on current forum engagement levels?

  6. Who would do administrative tasks behind the scenes of compiling questions, sending for answers, follow up and posting of answers. As well as the 'transparency' tasks that you listed in the proposal?

  7. How long of a timeline would there be for the translations?

  8. How many languages would the translations be put in? The top ten or twenty or free for all as the translators want to complete the translations?

We suggest you review the project proposal guidelines as well so ensure no information is overlooked:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EWEFS6lwou54TkKvgipIWsCKD_VFIvua6J_rsQ9Ut5E/edit?usp=sharing

Regards, The Admin Team

I'm only going to answer those I know:

  • 1, 2: just need rework on our side.
  • 3, 4, 5: Well, I have no idea how to measure this... Depends so much on citizen's activity.
  • 6: In my mind, that's a task for C.A as well.

7: There would be no deadline for the translations to be done.

8: There would be no limitation, it would be up to the decision of the translators.

Feb 10, 17 / Pis 13, 01 19:56 UTC

I agree with Vador in regards to 1 & 2. That just needs some re-work and research to protect identities on the forums. As to 3-5, that really depends on the current volunteer status, and how many more C.A. admins may be needed to help that level out.

Translations team should be able to handle the workload for Q&A within a reasonable timeframe. And they could determine the top languages that it should be translated into, based on current inquiry from those sites. And if someone requested a copy in a different language not posted, then addressed at that time.

We're getting more and more Asgardians that are wanting to help out, and I imagine if the request went out for help...we'd get it.

Feb 11, 17 / Pis 14, 01 03:31 UTC

  1. Alias is by name on forum, exists in citizen DB. Contributory input irrelevant, submission is by certified Asgardian. Although most if not all input is Asgardian. If you would like to waste more time then we can take a poll amongst the few thousand Asgardians that have bothered to contribute to the forums to assure this is something definitely they would like.
  2. The use of 'we' and personal views are easily edited out or replaced with more factual content in project proposal. If the current staff are unwilling to take this on, then they can obtain more from the community, limited to the scope of this project.
  3. The "extra work" can be offset by utilising community effort and as a result the additional workload to existing staffs could be reduced to the fabrication of relevant moderation accounts and selection of suitable candidates. I would suggest the "staff" already involved with this affair may speed this process up significantly.
  4. This depends on the number of input and the quality of moderators. It can be lessened by deployment of things like a cron script processing the ngnix logs intermittently with awk which should be extremely lightweight and producing lists of posts likely to of been asked before or elsewhere. I instinctively say one person could do this, but for realistic coverage, 24/7, it'd likely need at least three, in seperate timezones. Multiples of this will naturally increase coverages. How many would be enough is more your descision, you should know the quality you expect.
  5. The "behind the scenes" tasks - namely compiling poll results, compiling questions and reducing overal bulk of forum submission by way of removing duplicate and unrequired data etc should be a community effort and within itself provides for "transparencies" of the entire affair. The actual sending can take place in the form of a forum post, which I assume is accessible to Dr Ashurebyli. Should Dr Asurebyli be unable to use the forum himself for some reason, any translational efforts required to facilitate can take part as a community effort and the community can amongst themselves define a pool of delegates that he can easily filter from the glob of email he likely recieves.
  6. Timeline for the translations I have no honest clue, I've not attempted ot seek metrics on the current community efforts. Once we've found people prepared to translate into their native tongues this will be more rapid. If you have specific languages to focus on this will help ensure they are delivered in the shortest possible timeframe.
  7. The translations would be in as many as would be useful, minus the number that our community efforts cannot complete. I would suggest 10 is more than reasonable target, twenty might not be outside of possibility - I'd hope for all of them eventually.
  Updated  on Feb 11, 17 / Pis 14, 01 03:39 UTC, Total number of edits: 2 times
Reason: Formatting fail, typo

Feb 11, 17 / Pis 14, 01 03:41 UTC

With regards to my alias specifically, It'd possibly make more sense to scrub it from the document. Referencing the forum link that evidences it's design and conception allows for checking the community input should that be mandated.

Feb 11, 17 / Pis 14, 01 12:50 UTC

I've compiled my previous post and my new feelings regarding those questions.

  1. Contributors are listed by alias, please update to legal names: @EyeR: You've misunderstood. They're talking about the legal name of contributors for the Proposal itself. I used my nickname.
  2. The use of 'we' and personal views are not appropriate in submission of a project proposal. It should be as neutral and professional as possible.: I don't understand what you imply, they simply ask us not to use "I" or "we". Which is really odd by the way, I wonder how non-native people can be expected with such a proper written English. I feel this request to be rather unfair. We're not writting a thesis for god sake.
  3. There was no contact with the C.A. team to ensure that the additional workload would be possible to cover with current staff levels in regards to moderating the responses and compiling questions.: Using dedicated members of the community is an idea. But promoting people and allowing them to filter questions and to edit the main post by adding questions mean they'd be trustworthy. I don't see a simple solution to this yet, and I believe C.A must give us a feedback on this matter.
  4. How much additional work would this entail?: There are several thing to be taken into account: Watching the thread for new questions. Answering questions that C.A can answer (those that don't need to go to Officials, like "I didn't received my certificate", and such). Edit citizen posts to indicate whether the question has been added to the poll or moved in the blacklist. Add questions to the poll. Add questions to the blacklist and explain why. I guess all those actions are what we could call "additional work".
  5. How many additional moderators would have to monitor the thread based on current forum engagement levels?: It depends how many active citizens take part of this, I agree with @EyeR it would depend upon the quality you want to achieve. I don't believe we must add any additional moderator for this. Worst case scenario they won't be able to deal with all the questions, and those who couldn't be taken care of in time would be reported to the next session.
  6. Who would do administrative tasks behind the scenes of compiling questions, sending for answers, follow up and posting of answers. As well as the 'transparency' tasks that you listed in the proposal?: It's the job of C.A. If they want to take more volonteers in for this specific task, it's up to them.
  7. How long of a timeline would there be for the translations?: There would be no deadline of any sort. Once the official answers are out, then translation can begin. It will be translated based on whether there are volonteers to translate, or not.
  8. How many languages would the translations be put in? The top ten or twenty or free for all as the translators want to complete the translations?: There would be no limitation of any sort. The only obvious requirement is English.

@Eyer Also, there is some mismatch between your numbers and mine, I think you missed the 3rd question. That's why I put the original Staff feedback question so it's easier to review their questions and our answers.

  Last edited by:  Ambroise Dhenain (Translator, Asgardian)  on Feb 11, 17 / Pis 14, 01 12:52 UTC, Total number of edits: 2 times

Feb 11, 17 / Pis 14, 01 17:51 UTC

Maybe I did miss number three - my bad.

  1. No misunderstanding - The alias you've used is the same as here. By virtue of this it's referencable should they desire, they can find out more about you. Quite why this would adjust the merits of the proposal is a mystery and a highly concerning detail. Anyone else's name is largely irrelevant.
  2. I personally implied little, specifically mentioning the "problematic" features can be removed or adjusted in the proposal, Personally like yourself I didn't see anything particularly wrong with the submission and with the fact that English likely isn't the primary language for 90%+ also think it's an odd requirement, and something that will lend unjust bias against those with lesser grasp.
  3. "Promotion" is really the wrong word, it'd only be to the scope of the purpose and as such represent a chore. You'd start sensibly with the likes of yourself and Leomarquie who are already "known" and have interest in this precise facet. I assume you'd be willing to tend such an area. Moving invalid posts will be a minor activity - especially after a few runs the majority of the work will be removing repeats etc. This can be minimised in effort by using tools, it's easier to take the input logs and use them, but it's possible otherwise to make it a more effective process. Between you, you should be able to get a post count up - it's quite possible to automate this also. Things like collation of all the replies to a thread into a single concise question can be by the larger community working in concert. Then between you this could be compiled into an "official question list" ordered by popularity and if required the larger community can begin on translational work to make this into the required language - similar for response. After a couple of rounds of this it should start becomming clear who would be sensible to delegate further. Ofc, further delegation occurs via current in-place procedures, just candidates are nominated by existing "staff" and thusly should be assured to be looked at rapidly.
  4. Not as much work as it sounds, answering things that can be otherwise answered or redirected to a more appropriate venue can be largely a community afffair, with the mods just taking care of the actual removal/redirection when they have spare time.
  5. Additional moderator wasn't an essential, just if needs must - then needs must. It's not an impossible thing to encompass. As for dealing with all the questions, one maybe two hours work at best for a single person - a community effort could have it done in mins.
  6. I disagree, the community can take the bulk of this workload, The least we ask of "official" resources, the more chance there is of acceptance. Volunteers for this should not be difficult to locate.
  Updated  on Feb 11, 17 / Pis 14, 01 17:52 UTC, Total number of edits: 1 time
Reason: formatting fail

Feb 13, 17 / Pis 16, 01 12:06 UTC

Well, you want the community to help. But I believe that's not possible with the current tools at our disposal. If we had a dedicated tool, then why not. But we'll be using the forum, and therefore people must be granted extra permissions to edit posts and such. With the current status of the forum, I believe the extra work from this proposal will fall into the hands of C.A.

Feb 13, 17 / Pis 16, 01 14:27 UTC

Naw, you don't need to edit existing posts, you can simply make another. Anyone can do that. It'd be tidier refactoring existant, ideally the original should be retained in it's original form, there should be no requirement to edit it - the entire premise is slightly shady - but the end result is about the same as if you copy and paste the relevant parts from all the posts in a thread of all the "me too" and other slightly different variations of a question into a single concise question, or have to spin through the entire subforum picking out all the relevent parts to that question and compile into a single post. Ofc, one is easier.

All mod or higher privs are required for really is removing content that didn't want to be there anyway, and removal of the lot for archiving as the window expires. Sure once there's colaborational tools on the go then collectively the effort of compiling the mess into a tangible submission will be significantly more cohesive, but it's possible to work iwth what we've got to a lesser or greater extent.

  Updated  on Feb 13, 17 / Pis 16, 01 15:08 UTC, Total number of edits: 1 time
Reason: Additional data