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Complaint Department / Re: Commmunity involvement
« on: September 25, 2014, 09:35:50 am »Quote
good idea who is willing to do it 24/7? We're looking for one since quite some time
Well, the point I'm trying to make is that if you have the right tools, nobody needs to be on 24/7 anymore.
With the right tools:
- Tasks can be assigned to members and queued so new members always have something to do.
- Reminders and other messages can be (auto-)sent for specific tasks when people aren't responding anymore.
- People can receive, store and respond to alerts and messages on their smartphone, reducing the total amount of effort needed to communicate with the team to 'getting your phone out and swiping to the left'.
- The recruitment leader would get an alert at the precise moment a new member arrives and he can offer help right away.
- The system remembers all the recruits that pass by. If we combine this log with their thoughtprocess and feelings of certain aspects of development, we can improve those aspects.
This way we act in a way to reasonably counter (respectively):
- People that leave because there was nothing to do / nobody responded
- People that leave because they forgot about their project, just need a little motivation or are afraid to ask for help.
- People that leave because they feel communication via PC only is tedious.
- People that leave because they feel lost and awkward because they don't know who they're supposed to talk to.
- People that leave because of feelings, thought or motivations that I haven't mentioned yet.
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numbers are not going to approve a task, people do. It's always been like that in almost any project especially those involving art and graphic.
I believe you misunderstood me (I don't understand otherwise) but with 'data' I meant asking recruits (via a survey of sorts) how they feel about the project, tasks, team etc.
A question could be: "When I entered the chatroom I felt welcome" - Highly Agree - Agree - Neutral - Disagree - Highly Disagree.
If the responses are:
1x HA
2x A
3x N
5x D
2x HD
Then you're apparently doing something wrong. That's what I mean with numbers, not opinions.
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No, the majority of the open projects out there, including opensurce projects are a "dictatorship of workers": who work on a project has the final say. Would be pretty odd if the first one passing by could "force" someone to work (not paid) on what he wants. Aside that I always listen to new ideas, and if they're good enough, technically possible and in line with the project goals I implement them.
I don't understand the first part, but the second part (Aside that I [...] implement them.) is great! However, I still feel we should move away from opinion (Who decides what's good enough?) towards a data driven implementation process. If 5+ people tell you that the communication between teams is bad (and somebody wrote that down), then you simply can't deny that somewhere there's something going wrong. It might be still your opinion that you're doing the best there is, but that isn't actually relevant anymore
This is what I mean with listening to your workers. If you listen to 5+ separate workers and they tell you that communication between teams is bad, and you respectfully tell them that you feel that communication is OK because you have all these examples of when it went well... Well, that's not actually listening and it causes recruits to simply walk away...
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Ok so you're basically saying we should pile up stuff that doesn't meet the project requirements? Maybe you don't know some stuff are easier to re-start from scratch than spending tons of hours fixing something buggy. It takes more time.
Also have you ever trained someone? Maybe you didn't or you should know training is time expensive, difficult and when you finally did it none can guarantee the trainee doesn't leave right away. I do it nevertheless but it should be noted that is not a trivial task.
With this point I purely meant 3D-models, textures etc. You're correct on coding, sorry I wasn't clear.
What I meant was that dev-members should handle contributions in a different way. Rather than criticism (no matter how constructive!!) and asking for (immediate) rework, it's better to accept the image, store it somewhere and ask the original artist (or a new artist) a week later to rework the image / model because you found something wrong with it. This is easily achieved by creating alerts of sort that remind you automatically after a week, so you can bring it up again with the original artist.
That way you change a negative and boring experience (rework rework rework) to a positive, gratifying experience. The new member is happy because he's done something for the team/game he loves and thus willing to repeat that process again. Rework isn't even that bad anymore because the artist had time (it's easier for the artist to spot the flaws) and other work (the work isn't as boring anymore) in between. Eventually you get to the same spot (great work) but via a more effective (albeit longer) route.
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If someone want to join I've never said no, but still the learning curve is steep.Agreed. It's still stated a bit harsh on the PS website though (for example: Several years of tabletop Roleplaying. That's a small pond to fish in!) and the learning curve is indeed steep. But I really feel that a 'good experience' (with the recruitment management process I've described above, or something similar) softens that curve immensely and gives motivation for a recruit to return when he/she hits a rough spot in the production process or in real-life.
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Internal motivation is what we're looking for. People that haven't got any reason to do this yet means they have no love for the project, so what can we offer them? Money? Fame? No sorry, we don't have any of both, if that's what they're looking for I suggest they look somewhere else because with PS they would lose their time.
Internal motivation is why people join. External motivation is why they stay. A fun team, clear communication between members, up-to-date information in the Dev-libraries, diverse tasks etc. Parallels can be drawn with Herzberg's Motivators and Hygiene factorsSource.
* Motivators(Internal Motivation) are things such as achievement and responsibility ("I want to join because I want to add to the game that I love!") and cause the person to feel good (Satisfaction)
* Hygiene(External Motivation) factors are things such as policies and working conditions. They do not cause good feelings, but they prevent bad feelings (Dissatisfaction) from happening.
So no money and fame, but a well-oiled, communicative team that is a pleasure to work with and a nice system that respects new visions and idea's. In fact, every day in real life, people take (large) cuts in salary to work in a new company ONLY because of the positive culture and attitude the new company or his/her new team has towards their ideas. Isn't that an interesting thought?