Posi-Blawg: A little bit of a positive rant

I try to blog monthly now, though for a while I was attempting once a day (long, long ago), and I recently noticed that, by the time I'm ready to blog again - something has come up that really irks me, warrants a rant, and may come off negative-sounding. I tend to try to put a positive spin on things (like in the Cliques Blog, where I asserted that HNZ obviously has groups of close friends, but the site as a whole is one community). So, never having been one to always like to focus on the negative, I have taken it upon myself to rant, or at least list things off, about how awesome HNZ is, and perhaps even my life in general. ^_^

It is with this sentiment and explanation that I hereby begin... THE Posi-Blawg:

• People are appreciative & understanding:
  It kind of sucks how one person, or a few people, ruin so much greatness - but that's what the people on HNZ are: great. For as many people that really grind my gears there are ten who see my point of view and try to help me in whatever situation I'm in. Sometimes after blog rants (as it is often after people read them that they become most understanding and appreciative - just human nature, I suppose) I get messages from people stating how much they appreciate me, the work I do on HNZ, the staff, the site itself, etc. These messages often come from people who I never would have thought to care that much at all, and they tend to make me smile. Without those kinds of messages, I think I would have left HNZ a long time ago - so you all are truly that awesomely amazing. There are very few people I can honestly say I've met on HNZ and disliked, and those people are gone for the most part. (I suppose if you can't stand an admin, you don't tend to linger on the board long.)
  People are also always willing to help out. Sometimes it takes being approached, sure, but I think I'd rather be approached about helping than volunteer sometimes, too. It lets people know that you value their assistance and likely makes them feel special. Whenever help is truly needed around the board, however, I know I can always ask somebody and if they're able to, they will help - because they know if somebody wasn't necessary I wouldn't ask, and they care about HNZ that much. There are two pages of slaves to the Nicktator members who I figure would all be willing to help out with HNZ things if I asked them. I think that's amazing.
• Everybody on HNZ is there for the same sort of reasons
  We all like Harry Potter, and eventually we all become acquainted with/like roleplaying. There have been very few members who don't, and they don't last long. So how is this positive? Easy. There aren't huge feuds and wars and flaming and such. Things are, for the most part, pretty civil and enjoyable. I think being on a board where at least two common interests are shared between members aids in this process a lot.
• I'm always learning, improving, and there's always something to do.
  If nothing else, HNZ keeps me busy, and has caused me to learn about a lot of things that I could have otherwise cared less about. Through HNZ I have learned HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript/a lot of jQuery. It is through this knowledge that HNZ's InvisionFree skin was converted to a ZetaBoards theme, that many of HNZ's minor codes have appeared, and that the custom webpages (from webpages defining seasonal temperatures to ones for submitting applications) have all appeared. This knowledge has benefited me off of HNZ, too, and now I am much less of an interwebz n00b because of it.
  Aside from that there are all sorts of things which I regularly get ideas for on HNZ, most of which I forget, and so many ways I plan to/hope to improve the board. I think it's great that I get to experience putting little tweaks in to a board here and there, knowing members will take them/accept them as I fiddle with things (unfortunately, live testing has become a habit of mine), and give me feedback as I require it. This is especially true as I see so many boards where admin have good ideas and no chances to implement them as their board dies - or the board thrives, there is a lack of ideas, and then the board dies - or the worse of all possible situations, the ideas presented cause the board to wither away. In that regard, I'm eternally grateful for HNZ and its community.
• People are super-talented on HNZ
  I notice this more and more as time goes on, likely because people are just getting better and better, but whether it be graphics, writing, both, or something else entirely - HNZ has some awesomely talented people who, very thankfully, share their talents with us all and I've oft' smiled because of it. talented people.
• People are nice... and welcoming.
  It's quite amazing how nice, helpful, and welcoming HNZ is considering its size (and how cliquey some people like to pretend it is... sorry... I had to slip a negative comment in here somewhere. ;) Too much positivity is just uncharacteristic). I've visited at least one forum, roughly ten times the size of HNZ in members and over 10 times its size for activity - and I posted a welcome topic. That topic got a grand total of 0 replied until I complained about it being ignored in their feedback forum several days later. On HNZ, I've heard countless times from newer members that they felt overwhelmingly welcomed and knew we were willing to help them with anything. Normally new members get their first welcome to the board on the day they introduce themselves, and soon enough they'll have five or more 'welcomes' to add. We can always improve, of course, but I think we're doing great.

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As you can tell from the above, most of the reasons I can be positive, and most of the reasons HNZ is awesome, for me, are because of you guys. You're all overly amazing and awesome and st00f. Without you HNZ wouldn't be around, and I certainly wouldn't enjoy it at all without all of the above positive aspects of the board, and our community.

I know this blawg wasn't as amusing, perhaps, as others - but I think it was necessary.

So, thank you all, and see you on the board!

~Nick

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"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"

Disclaimer: This is Nick venting. If you have no interest in reading Nick venting or you get upset/take offence easily then I advise you stop reading at this point. If you enjoy sarcasm, humour, and Nick at his wit's end: read on, brave knight!

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This is a three part blog rant. Each part will build off of the last mentioned part. We'll start off slow, with the obvious, then work our way up to my deepest frustration. Then I might cool things down a bit with a few funny remarks, positive comments, or hints about the direction which I hope to see HNZ heading near the end. But be warned: this road is rocky before it is smooth (narrow before wide, uphill before downhill, take your pick).

So, as promised, the most obvious point:

I post updates/information on HNZ for my own good health.
It's true and don't let anybody tell you it isn't! Myself and the rest of the site staff really don't want to keep members in the loop at all. In fact, we hate not having to answer a thousand redundant questions because people have read the Weekly Update and global announcements, or read tweets or clicked rule topics. It annoys us and shakes us to the very core of our being when our hard work is actually used. It's quite absurd, really. We simply post endless announcements (in the simplest and shortest terms possible) for our own health. It's to benefit us and solely us. So I encourage ignoring all updates made by myself or others because really - it's irrelevant to you and you should know that by now.
Note: The above was sarcasm.

Next up to bat:
The Halloween Feast
Part of this may be Déjà vu for many of you, especially if you read my first ever blog post on HNZ - but it continues to persist despite my begging, pleasing, and obvious hatred of this: Members are still using the actual image of something to be their character in costume.
Sure, they're witches and wizards and therefore some leeway is allowed with regard to how amazing their costumes should look. However, let's be reasonable.

Nicolas King as a Banana

That is not Nicolas King as a banana! It's a banana! Sheesh! >_<;

My next point of contention with the Halloween Feast is it has largely been left unroleplayed in.
There have been 30 some-odd entries to the costume contest - and at the time of my typing this, nowhere near to even 30 some-odd posts for roleplaying in the feast. That doesn't seem very right to you, does it? HNZ is still and RPG first and foremost, correct? I'm tempted to not consider any costume contest entrants that are not roleplayed in the feast. Something for me to consider, I suppose, as right now it's not really fair to those who are taking the time to have their characters be there.

Finally, the grandest rant of them all:
Site Wide Plots
Since the Dawn of HNZ (or very nearly thereabouts) people have requested, nay, demanded site wide plots. For what reasons, I am still unsure. They take a large amount of planning and dedication and often they do not allow for as great individual development of character as everybody doing, for the most part, their own thing and mid-sized plots involving handfuls of people popping up now and then.

So, Livvy and I and the site staff at the time (so not Kaitlyn), after New Years, made a resolution for HNZ: Larger plots. More focus on roleplays. More awesomeness.
Simple enough, right? Well, I thought so too.
The fact of the matter is, however, that it is now nearly the end of February and we've held up our end of the deal. Despite Livvy's absence, despite Abby's computer problems, despite all the usual busy-ness (and extra busy-ness) of the rest of our site staff... yes, despite all those things we have held up our end of the deal. We have provided, so far, the makings of an excellent TriWizard Tournament which every member of HNZ can take part in in some way, or some form. We have expanded Ministry/Auror and Death Eater plots. It's currently only one large one, with a few key players, but there are more in the works. Sure, you might not be the one pulling the strings of the plot (Members never are in site wide plots) but it's your job to play it up with your characters! Have them react to the plot! Have it effect their lives somehow! What has it done for the most part? Nothing. What have members of HNZ done with it, for the most part? Nothing.

Even regular things that effect only most of the site don't get the attention they should. Case and point? The Halloween Feast.
Why is this? Maybe people aren't reading announcements that are posted? Maybe people are lazy? Maybe people just don't want site-wide plots as much as they think they do? I don't know. Maybe you should tell me.

With all this extra effort on the part of myself and the site staff, I find it amazing that some members still have the absolute audacity to request/suggest "site wide plots". Applications for various things with the field(s) about site improvement often get a classic line about site wide plots. Alright. OK. We got it! We acted on it! We've started to implement it. Small things at first (though, by my calculations, the TriWizard Tournament is not small) and large things later. But what is to be our motivations for those larger things when these things that we have now are completely ignored and/or used very minimally? I don't see any reason to keep on trying with it. People that are still suggesting site wide plots need to open their eyes and try to take part in the ones that are sitting right in front of them. They only work if everybody is in them, and right now - everybody is not in them. Heck, it's the people who I very rarely hear wanting these types of plots taking the most part in them. Does that seem wrong to you?

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Otherwise, I think HNZ is doing quite well. It's active almost all the time. (Yes, during the day it's slow because of school, but it's never really dead. It's not like many boards where a day goes by with only two posts or a week goes by with no member log ins.) It's exciting, and a lot is happening. I enjoy getting the positive feedback I receive, and I also enjoy taking constructive criticism, talking to people about it, and molding HNZ to become better as a result. I really do love HNZ and I think all you members are awesome. I think, however, that a lot of members do need to pay more attention to what does go on - and not complain unless they know what they're talking about. Ignorance is my chief grief with regards to the site right now.

I caught up on a lot of HNZ things today, and will have more to catch up on tomorrow. I think I'm doing fairly well as short handed as I am - but I'm quite anxious for Livvy's return and the site staff being in full force once more (once Abby gets her internet back up and if/when Linda's busy-ness decreases). I thank every member who has offered to help me over the past several weeks, and especially those who have. I also thank all of you who have listened to me vent and just dealt with it (I know I can be super annoying sometimes ).

~Nick
P.S: I hope you find the title to this blog post as poetic as I think it is, given all I've mentioned.


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The Problem of Change

Change in life is inevitable. This is true of any life form, as adaption/reactions to environment are one of the key factors in determining if something is living, or not. How can an organism react or adapt to a stagnant environment? It cannot. It is obvious, therefore, that environments and circumstances change and that living things must change with them.

This is true, also, in the life of a forum and a forum community. Change on a forum, and in a community, is not possible to avoid. In fact, avoiding change often will become the death of a forum and its community. As circumstances change on the board and for the people who make up the site - HNZ must change as well.

Now for the most part change has been, and will always be, extremely welcomed on HNZ. On InvisionFree we changed from the InvisionFree default theme to a theme custom designed by Athene. This, a major change, was accepted for the most part quite easily. (There are always those who complain, but they were fairly quiet in their protest) Next, we had a series of new forums open (Character Development, Plotline Development, Guide to roleplaying). These too, for the most part, were welcomed with enthusiasm and are now an integral part of the forum today. Soon enough a domain was purchased for HNZ by Athene and after much frustration with trying to set it up, the domain simply forwarded and masked to HNZ. While this instance of change was not a complete success, the point of my mentioning it is that the members were entirely supportive and patient while things were fiddled about to get everything operational.

In fall of 2008 HNZ converted to ZetaBoards, with the support of most of the community. Then followed easily six months of transition in to the brand new forum software - trying out the codes that would best suit the board, removing them, about as much as you can imagine. Still, members were patient and supportive. Also in fall of 2008, HNZ was set up to its present domain of http://hogwartsnewzealand.com . This, too, took some time to set up properly but guess what? The site was still supportive and patient - this time it paid off and the board is still using its custom domain name.

The list goes on and on. Of large changes which were worked in to the board and generally accepted with ease. New lessons policies. New forums. Seasons being corrected to match those of New Zealand. Board codes being added. Different styles of updates, competitions, and events being tried over time. Still the board allowed it all.

There have been times when change was considered, opened to site vote, and then shot down. One instance of this that comes to mind, for instance, is the possible use of the ZetaBoards AIO (All in One) code which could have been the money system on the forum, because of its incompatibility with Internet Explorer. That had been my uneasiness with the code at the time, so I understood and respected the site's decision. (Note, too, that that code has since been made Internet Explorer compatible but has not been re-propositioned to HNZ because I do respect the first decision made by the board and there are still other negatives to trying to install it.)

With all this in mind, at how exceedingly open the community of HNZ has always been to change, even if that change didn't work out as well as we'd hoped, one might imagine that changing smaller things on the board would be welcomed evenly more openly/widely, or even just not noticed/commented on at all. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

As some of you have read in my blog "That Which We Call a Rose", the recent change in name from "General Discussions" back to "Spam" in our random chatter-type topics was met with not insignificant opposition. I fear that opposition to such seemingly insignificant change has come up once more.

This evening a goal I have had for several months came in to effect: HNZ is now using only one set of emoticons. For quite a while, HNZ had been using three sets. I managed to reduce this to two. Then, Tony (out of the awesomeness of his heart) made a custom set for HNZ. This were all added to the board, but some of the other sets remained behind. We had three sets again. So, slowly but surely, I phased out emoticons of the other sets. Asking Tony to create replacements for the emotion being represented each time to ensure that nobody would be unable to express a meaning in their post with the selection of emoticons. This afternoon the final two emoticons were replaced: Console and Frantics.

The new emoticons for console () and frantics () are extremely awesome and (dare I say it? yes.) cute, I think. However, they are:

1. No longer animated
and
2. No longer the exact same yellow emoticons

So this is obviously cause for uproar. My opinion is that the site looks more cohesive and professional on one set of emoticons - and these emoticons are special, made by Tony, and therefore unique to HNZ - unlike the generic IPB emoticons found on most forums based off of that system. I knew the change would be noticed, and disapproved of by many. But I also felt the change needed to happen, and that it would be small enough that people would just get over it - no matter how attached they may have been to the old emoticons. I loved the purple glomp. I also loved a few of the Yahoo! emoticons - but they're all gone now, right? It's not like I'm just doing whatever I like - I'm doing what I think best for the site, and when it comes to such small changes as this, I should hope that can be understood.

Here's to hoping people understand and we're able to enjoy Tony's awesome creations together,

~Nick
(Also: Tony gave us an extra emote this time! )
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