Community

The community Management team has created a new initiative to help the community express their feedback and suggestions regarding the forums. With the large number of forums we have we wanted to implement a way for users to get their feedback to the CM team in an effective manner. Community management believes that the best source of information about a community comes from the community itself, and this program is designed with that principle in mind.

Forum leads do not have any moderation powers whatsoever. They do, however, have a direct voice to the WotC Community Management team. They are here to help represent your community. If you have any feedback or suggestions you'd like to see passed along, let them know!


Forum Lead Mission statement:
Forum leads work as advocates for the community, providing WotC with suggestions and ideas regarding their community, while also helping to provide guidance and help to all forum members, new and old.

If you want to know more about the Forum Lead program, or if you have any questions or concerns, please visit the VCL Open Discussion here and let us know.

The leads for this forum are: crystalseas, KillerGM, Tyhm, Cosmic Chaos and Solik

If you have any questions, requests, comments, concerns, post them here and we'll make sure the Community Management team knows about it.

I've made a request for it to be stickied, Horatio, thank you!

I've been approached about the possibility that some posters may have concerns that they are either shy and/or uncomfortable about addressing. I've brought it up in the VCL forums; a poll was suggested. We'll see what they can offer us to help out.

I keep my mailbox pretty cleared out, but I suspect I'll have to do better now.

I'm delighted to hear from anyone who has a concern or who wonders if they should have a concern.

My goal in any group is to help build consensus and my role as a facilitator in many situations has taught me that you can't get consensus if all the points of view are not specifically articulated.

That means, we need to hear your voice.

Pamela and I cannot keep our fingers on the pulse of this forum by mind reading. If you don't say it, we can't hear it. Either post it here or PM one or both of us privately.

As many of you realize, Pamela and I have somewhat different approaches to this forum, and different points of view about what it can and should be.

Neither one of us is "representative" of women gamers. But we are both concerned, and mouthy about our concerns. Which means we'll be a good team because both of us want more women active in this forum and in gaming in general.

And for being mouthy, we're gonna get cute badges that say we're the guides or leads, or whatever the final terminology is. But, we're also going to be the conduit for feedback and suggestions that arise in this forum.

Which means you folks have to generate feedback and suggestions for us to conduct on up to the Community Management team.

I'm looking forward to this forum being a welcoming place for women who've never gamed, women who have just begun to game, and women who've enticed another generation (or two) to join the fun.

I also hope it welcomes those who wonder why on earth some women can't "just do it". We need to hear your voice as well. Anyone who is a regular on these boards is certainly someone who wants D&D to thrive, and Astrid's is an attempt to enlarge the pool of players so that it continues to thrive.

[Although, if you have complaints about how WoTC is going about helping D&D thrive, could you direct them to the 4e Concerns and Criticisms board?]

Anyway, let us hear either publicly or privately how we could improve the experience for women gamers of all experience levels.

Thanks for the good wishes and the advice.

I think it would be harmful to the community if becoming a guide meant that one should post less.

There is a certain style of posting that scrutinizes every word I say and responds in a line-by-line or phrase-by-phrase manner. My becoming a forum guide will not change that posting style for those who already use it.

This discussion is not defined by anyone's list of "shoulds" or "should nots". It is not up to me, Pamela, you, or anyone else to say "This discussion should be about x". It is up to all of us to define the discussion, together.

I realize that there are fearful people who believe that posting makes you a target, and therefore you should be afraid to post, so that you don't get shot at. I'm not one of them. (and those of you who are, feel free to PM me privately). Nor do I believe that I must now hide all my disagreements with others and only voice them in PMs.

I also believe that my positive (let us even say, Pollyanna-ish) viewpoint is best understood when I explain my beliefs and my world view so that people who may be approaching me either publicly or privately know ahead of time who I am.

I believe that becoming a forum guide makes it *more* important that I demystify my position. To suddenly start eavesdropping instead of participating is not my style at all. I'm not a different person just because I'm going to get some little button below my name.

Thanks for the advice about how to edit my post.

I don't believe in hiding my thoughts from any "would be scrutinizer" so that they have a smaller target to aim at.

I do believe that my posting style is my own, and that it would not be useful to my objectives if I stopped stating my underlying assumptions and beliefs. There is no one "right" way to communicate my ideas, and I choose the style and vocabulary based on the audience I'm trying to reach.

Often there are secondary audiences that also read what I'm writing, so I try not to offend them, but I'm also very careful to keep my posts aimed at the primary audience.

I don't know if you feel like you are the primary audience for the discussions in Astrids, but whether you are or aren't, you're welcome to join us.