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Setting Submissions Process

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I've seen that when people get frustrated with the site, they're often frustrated because of the Setting Submissions process. I'm really interested in making this part of the site a more positive experience for creative SARPers who have graciously put their time and effort into expansion articles to Star Army's setting and lore.

So I've put together a plan to fix things:

Step 1: We're going to completely rewrite the rules for submission reviewers, with clear, thorough guides on how we expect them to conduct themselves. A key part of this will be positivity.

Step 2: Search for more active and positive moderators and aggressively streamline the overall process to make it faster with less frustrating wait times. Create forms for the submissions so articles and posts always have everything they need to succeed. You've already seen the start of this now that the forum asks for submission URLs and WIP URLs along with the post.

Step 3: Opening submission of new factions again - a date will be set soon. This is a very requested feature.

If you have specific suggestions I want to hear them.

EXAMPLE: Reviewers always should fix typos instead of posting about them in the thread.
 
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Sounds great.

Raz, you're in.

Legix, you're in.

Frost, you're in.

Ether, you're in.

Zack, you're in.

Your objective as a group is to clear the setting submissions forum by Monday. Try to focus on submissions that haven't been responded to yet, not the huge cluster ones other mods have already started reviewing. Those should come last. Anything that people are asking me about should be handed by Kyle or Nashoba or Ametheliana since they're staff. Try not to call in staff unless you have to, as passing the buck isn't solving issues.
 
I do agree that some people here have had quite a history of being disrespectful. Maybe they're going to be less disrespectful as moderators, though?
 
Unfortunately adding moderators didn't actually make the settings submissions process actually go any faster it seems.
 
1: Bad mods, there are too many cooks in the kitchen. Worse yet there are people who don't run plots so they don't have any 'skin in the game' so to speak. NTSE should be adjusted to just be GMs and FMs at the very least.

2: Organization, the NTSE is a mess. There are items that have been there for nearly a month without a review. Others are just sorta waiting in limbo or waiting on the submitter to respond. There needs to be a 'working on it' subforum that items can be moved into while they are being worked on but not 'actively reviewed'. This will reduce the clutter in the NTSE which will reduce 'alert fatigue' on new submissions.

3: Review Promptness, while there are valid reasons for not wanting certain mods to do certain reviews... having a mod 'claim' a submission and then not do a review on it for an extended period of time slows everything down. If you're going to claim something you should start with a review.

4: Organization again, Another thing to consider would be folders for each individual review mod that they could move articles into that they are actively working on. Again this will reduce clutter in the NTSE forum and give better insight into what articles still need attention

5: Zero Inbox, Related to organization. The NTSE should be using a zero inbox approach to submission reviews. Once things are posted and waiting for approval, they should be moved out of the submission forum once they are being reviewed. The organization suggestions above will help with this, but its likely you won't see good results until a zero inbox style is adopted.
 
I've never heard of zero inbox, can you elaborate?
 
OOps, maybe its called Inbox Zero? I've never looked up the term, but it means 'never have anything in your email inbox'.

Anytime you open your mail client, you should immediately address everything in your inbox. Respond to it, file it in a folder, delete it, whatever. The goal is to have nothing in your inbox ever.

or: The Inbox is not there to store your emails.

If you leave things in there, even if you have them sorted by read/unread you tend to miss things. The NTSE is definitely in one of those situations right now. At a glance, I can't tell you which threads need responding and which threads are being responded to. In order to figure that out I'd have to go through and read each thread in there.
 
Why not fixing this with a forum thread tag? A one-word marker that denotes it's being handled? Currently we have on hold, pending, and one other, if I recall. We could change those up.

Inbox Zero is something to consider.
 
First: I mean that seems like it makes sense... for a business. But NTSE moderators are volunteers doing this on their own free time. Also, not having a tag is no excuse for interrupting another moderator's moderation like you've been doing by putting down reviews in most of the threads Frost is reviewing.

Second:
Zack said:
Bad mods, there are too many cooks in the kitchen. Worse yet there are people who don't run plots so they don't have any 'skin in the game' so to speak. NTSE should be adjusted to just be GMs and FMs at the very least.
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I think you're saying this mainly because a lot of NTSE moderators find problems with your submissions and you don't like it, so you want them removed.
 
Honestly, there wasn't a whole ton I could do; everyone had claimed like every submission in like 5 seconds. The ones that weren't immediately claimed were Nepleslian submissions (which I do not and am perfectly fine with not doing on account of potential bias claims), so all I could do was watch the circus. All submissions I handled were timely, but there's not much I can do when the others get claimed and argued about by Zack or Frost or whatever while the only ones left are Nepleslian ones.

Kinda hard to do everything when everyone takes the work/claims it; nothing I can do to do their work for them, even if this is one of the easiest jobs to volunteer for (albeit one of the most if not the most important ones).
 
I've added this to prevent "claim spam" -

To prevent members feeling “ganged up on” only one setting submissions reviewer/moderator should conduct the review at a time. Reviewers must post the checklist at the time the review is started. If a reviewer “claims” a submission they must immediately begin the review in the same post. The reviewer should follow through in a timely manner and finish the review within a week, posting at least every day or two until the submission is approved or rejected, unless the submitter has specifically asked for extra time to work on the submission. If the reviewer doesn't keep up with the review, it should be promptly assigned by the first available staff member to another active reviewer.
 
Wes said:
I've added this to prevent "claim spam" -

To prevent members feeling “ganged up on” only one setting submissions reviewer/moderator should conduct the review at a time. Reviewers must post the checklist at the time the review is started. If a reviewer “claims” a submission they must immediately begin the review in the same post. The reviewer should follow through in a timely manner and finish the review within a week, posting at least every day or two until the submission is approved or rejected, unless the submitter has specifically asked for extra time to work on the submission. If the reviewer doesn't keep up with the review, it should be promptly assigned by the first available staff member to another active reviewer.
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I honestly feel the over-forcing of immediately pushing a checklist is a bad idea and will make things very inhuman between NTSE and submitters. I do agree we need better claim rulings and systematic approach, but NTSE work shouldn't be an instantly forced "here's your checklist thing"; submitting to the setting isn't a mechanical task but one where the content creators show understanding of their content and handle speaking and helping work out things in a personal manner.

But I do not have a suggestion, only my opinion on the matter; if we're forced to provide a checklist to get a claim, then I guess we're forced to provide a checklist.
 
Given the inbox zero ideas, which I also think is a good idea. Here are some of my thoughts about the process.

  • From the time that a submission is posted to the time it is reviewed, should be no more than three days, and ideally be less than one.
  • Reveiws should include a bulleted list of issues. This helps make it clear what needs be changed. The bulleted list is not the checklist. It also may not be the whole of the review.
  • If corrections are needed, then the submitter should respond within two days. Ideally, their response should also include a bulleted response to each issue. Again, the bullets may not be the whole of the response.
  • Once the submitter responds, the NTSE has two days to re-review the updated submission. After two days, any NTSE may review the updated submission.

Also, on a personal note, I prefer green checkmarks and red X's for the checkboxes in the checklist. Just a minor non-functional thing that has been bothering me.
 
Honestly this has been the second worst week period of SARP I've ever experienced to the point that I've been tempted to just log out and walk away again. @Wes I have had nothing but abuse from Zack the last two weeks and now he's being permitted to completely violate the WepLim. I'm done with this. Please remove my moderator banner.
 
Soban said:
Given the inbox zero ideas, which I also think is a good idea. Here are some of my thoughts about the process.

  • From the time that a submission is posted to the time it is reviewed, should be no more than three days, and ideally be less than one.
  • Reveiws should include a bulleted list of issues. This helps make it clear what needs be changed. The bulleted list is not the checklist. It also may not be the whole of the review.
  • If corrections are needed, then the submitter should respond within two days. Ideally, their response should also include a bulleted response to each issue. Again, the bullets may not be the whole of the response.
  • Once the submitter responds, the NTSE has two days to re-review the updated submission. After two days, any NTSE may review the updated submission.

Also, on a personal note, I prefer green checkmarks and red X's for the checkboxes in the checklist. Just a minor non-functional thing that has been bothering me.
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I disagree with the 1st thing; the NTSE is a volunteer job as stated before. Being timely and forcing timeliness are two very different things and would just end up rushing things through submission. Some things aren't easily readover in 3 days time, too; this rule has no leanway for context of articles and submissions.

2nd is fine; I already do this via paragraphing my "topics" out. I think this is a no-brainer that people are already doing/do on the majority.

3rd is yet again subjective; not everyone can respond within two days time. Not every member has the time to stalk the status of their submission nor should they be; they're committed to the site to be trying to submit something, but we shouldn't rush them. If said player decides to take long and then complain, however? I think we should start putting the boot on that behavior; if you're slow in responding, then you shouldn't be angry about your process being slow. Plain and simple.

4th is similar disagreement; just personally, I have other duties that might have me take more than two days to get back around to something. Not to mention that every reply shouldn't require an entire re-review; I didn't have to re-read Zack's planetary/system submission more than once or so, with only small revisions and focuses coming afterward and then a final re-review on submission checklist. And the idea that any NTSE can do it is a very wide rule that could lead to "review sniping" and honestly just promote bad blood. If someone claims it, they need to run it through or hand it off.
 
Zack said:
1: Bad mods, there are too many cooks in the kitchen. Worse yet there are people who don't run plots so they don't have any 'skin in the game' so to speak. NTSE should be adjusted to just be GMs and FMs at the very least.

2: Organization, the NTSE is a mess. There are items that have been there for nearly a month without a review. Others are just sorta waiting in limbo or waiting on the submitter to respond. There needs to be a 'working on it' subforum that items can be moved into while they are being worked on but not 'actively reviewed'. This will reduce the clutter in the NTSE which will reduce 'alert fatigue' on new submissions.

3: Review Promptness, while there are valid reasons for not wanting certain mods to do certain reviews... having a mod 'claim' a submission and then not do a review on it for an extended period of time slows everything down. If you're going to claim something you should start with a review.

4: Organization again, Another thing to consider would be folders for each individual review mod that they could move articles into that they are actively working on. Again this will reduce clutter in the NTSE forum and give better insight into what articles still need attention

5: Zero Inbox, Related to organization. The NTSE should be using a zero inbox approach to submission reviews. Once things are posted and waiting for approval, they should be moved out of the submission forum once they are being reviewed. The organization suggestions above will help with this, but its likely you won't see good results until a zero inbox style is adopted.
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1. Nice try, @Zack, but you're not getting rid of people like myself, @Alex Hart, @Rizzo, and @Yoerik that easily - and remind me again, who's the one who claimed a bunch of submissions and then let them idly sit?

2. That's what happens when someone disrespect NTSE moderators - those moderators don't review that person's submissions. Seems like a natural consequence, in my opinion.

3. Neither one hour nor three hours counts as an "extended period of time," Zack. Stop trying to justify your hijacking of submissions.

4: This is an extremely bad idea due to the challenges and workload that would arise from setting something this complex up.

5: Unnecessary, in my opinion, as a simple "Under Review" tag would work just as well.

Anyways.

I agree with the suggestions @Soban proposed, with the exception of the first one - as some submissions (particularly those with a dozen sub-articles) take longer than three days to fully review. Requiring a "status update" from the reviewer, however, is something that in my opinion would make sense.
 
I know it seems small, but the difference between tagging an item and moving an item to its own folder is immense. I used to try tagging/flagging/etc but up until I started using Inbox Zero I would miss stuff.
 
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