Well...I was sitting here. Eating dinner. And my mind began to wander to thinking about how I'm gonna go about getting stuff for my group set up on the furcadia end when it's done on this site and I was struck with inspiration. Those of you play Furcadia know about those welcomer beekin guys. They can be pretty dang helpful sometimes and as I result I came up with the idea of welcomer beekin like people here on RPR. They would be the official welcomers of new people to the site. Of course everyone can pop in and say welcome to RPR and what not but the welcomers would be the ones who answer questions about the site on a basic to intermediate level thus leaving the heavy duty stuff for site moderators and the like and essentially making things a tad easier for them as well so they can focus on developing updates new widgets and so forth for the site. The welcomers would also have an understanding of the sites rules itself. Basic their the first line of defense against the simple questions and such that would normally befall Kim.
The thought had crossed my mind as well, but it's not something I'm going to do for a long while yet, if ever. We're blessed with a very active and friendly community, so there's really no need to make it anyone's "official" responsibility to say hi and welcome people. Furcadia is a big, sprawling game with lots of hidden nooks and crannies, a huge number of ways to play, and for many, an enormous learning curve. The Beekin Welcomers are a necessary part of getting many new players up to speed on how to play. They receive special training to that effect and go to meetings about what's new so they can answer questions.
On the other hand, the RPR is pretty straight forward. There's no dragonspeak or map editors to learn. You don't have to figure out what the difference between the Imaginarium and Allegria Island is. You can definitely get more comfortable with the general layout over time, but I don't see anyone really needing special training or a special designation to be able to answer questions. If we actually do get to the point where we need trained helpers, what that would actually suggest to me is that I need to work harder to make the UI dead-simple, and add more little prompts and wizards to set things up for people.
To clarify; forum moderators don't program anything. They don't do any design work. The only thing they do is make sure rules are being followed on the forums. Setting up a second group whose job was also to know the rules is excessive.
On the other hand, the RPR is pretty straight forward. There's no dragonspeak or map editors to learn. You don't have to figure out what the difference between the Imaginarium and Allegria Island is. You can definitely get more comfortable with the general layout over time, but I don't see anyone really needing special training or a special designation to be able to answer questions. If we actually do get to the point where we need trained helpers, what that would actually suggest to me is that I need to work harder to make the UI dead-simple, and add more little prompts and wizards to set things up for people.
Lance2011 wrote:
...thus leaving the heavy duty stuff for site moderators and the like and essentially making things a tad easier for them as well so they can focus on developing updates new widgets and so forth for the site.
To clarify; forum moderators don't program anything. They don't do any design work. The only thing they do is make sure rules are being followed on the forums. Setting up a second group whose job was also to know the rules is excessive.
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