Removing UE Made an impact.

http://www.sythe.org/suggestions/1632531-user-education-fresh-start.html

Removing User Education/Community Assistants - It had an Impact!

Hey guys!

A long forgotten part of Sythes history is the work of the old User Education (Which later became the CA) and the benefits that it had for the website. For those that don't know, the User Education section was similar to Sythe Support, where UEs would create guides, as well as assist by answering questions in Help & Requests and throughout the forums. In order to maintain activity, these members were required to follow a checklist, that if they were unable to fulfill, they'd be removed from the team. There'd be one or two Head User Educators who would ensure the team ran smoothly.

Reasons for the UE/CA Removal​

While I am able to completely understand two of the main three reasons why User Education was removed, these being:

• User Educators received a rank, so many User Educators were deemed trustworthy due to this rank and honour, which lead to some User Educators scamming.
• The rank and position offered lead to many users applying for the User Education in an effort to gain some sort of power, which lead to members putting in a lot of effort to apply, then not doing any work once they joined the team. However the reason I completely disagree with is:
• User Education provided little input to the community, as the staff, or in fact anyone, should be able to assist those who need it on there own, without some sort of special rank or assistance.

I'd like to address reason I've highlighted in bold text.

Created Guides played a role...​

One of the most notable parts of applying or being a User Educator/Community Assistant was for guides to be created. In order to join the User Education team, you had to create an application, and that application had to include FIVE guides being created. Once joining the team, in order to complete the checklist, guides would commonly have to be created.

What's the Point?​

My point being here, is these guides were created from scratch by members, and in order to be helpful, would often contain information that was valuable to Sythe.org members and could assist them. This is the first benefit. However one key aspect that was overlooked, was the hundreds, possibly thousands of guests that these guides attracted. I can remember back in 2010 when I was an Educator, seeing between 20-100 guests within the Guides section at all times, reviewing guides that were created by Sythes members. This traffic had two key benefits for Sythe.org:

1. The traffic would have lead to revenue for Sythe.org through adverts being clicked and seen.
2. Bringing traffic to the site leads to new members!

I'm not necessarily saying "Bring back the UE"

What I'm trying to say here, is Sythe had a system that while primarily aimed at assisting the current members of Sythe, was actually able to bring webcrawlers and potential new members to the site. Hundreds of new guides were being created a month as members attempted to join the User Education or fulfilled their duties as User Educators.

I'm not saying we should necessarily bring back User Education. While personally I believe User Education was an important aspect of the Sythe, the top end of Sythes Hierarchy disagree and I accept that. But I'd love to see some input from members as to how we can encourage members to create healthy guides for the community.

 

I have no prior experiences with the user education, therefore, I feel I have less of an input with this suggestion. However, I support anything that would drive more users to the site. Things are a bit slow, I personally would put extra effort to bring more members.

 

I applied for CA while it was around back then. I did enjoy it, and I do believe if UE/CA was brought back to a similar extent, it would prove fruitful.

 

The only way we'll consider bringing anything like that back is if there is no rank or visible recognition for acceptance.

 

Personally, I'm fine with that.

 

There should be a mini-rank like there should be for the CDT since mini-ranks don't indicate trust but they do acknowledge you going above and beyond.

Brendan! You live!

It's worth trying it out again without having the ranks tarnishing UE/CA.

 

Good fight me was not around when it was here unless I missed something in the last month or so, but it does sound like a good idea.

 

There has to be some more education for the ranks, for example the programming ranks don't really mean anything. Just like fun ranks.

Ranks as mini.ranks shouldn't mean trust at all. This is where users should be educated.

I loved EU and CA. I think it should be back

 

I agree, I found a lot of helpful things in UE when it existed.

 

Thanks to those presenting their opinions.

Schools finished forevererrr, got some time on my hands haha.

Yeah the User Education was on and off between 2007 I think to 2010. Then Community Assistants came in 2011, then the whole system was removed.

I agree wholeheartedly, but ranks and miniranks continually appear as the common denominator for these sorts of groups :/

 

This is the arrogant stance that's been taken by staff for a while now. Why are we treating ranks like they're holy fruits. UE was a really good concept. However it was poorly managed.

The real issue with UE was that people were using it as a gateway to staff. Consistently the team was pillaged by staff, so the team lacked any consistency to move forward. The HUE was always oblivious to promotions too, which didn't help. The application process was shit. The checklist was shit. The organisation of the team was shit. If you wanna re-introduce UE there needs to be several changes on the managerial side of things.

 

Support, apparently admins can add whatever garbage ranks they want and hand it around to each other like candy, but when someone wants to help the site they deserve no recognition at all unless they're staff.

Also guides help us on google rankings, such as if you google "mod borderlands pc" - 4th result is one of blade bro's guides. Or if you google "squid proxy debian", 3rd result is one of my threads(or if you search "install squid proxy debian" it's the first result).

If the fuckwits that are currently staff can get it out of their heads that ranks are like fucking gold, maybe more good guides/content can be encouraged, but no, this shitty "do stuff for the site but no recognition" culture has been festering here for years, unless they're staff of course, then pile on the fun-ranks.

Same with the people on the CDT, they make all these competitions and shit, but when it comes to if they should have a rank, "no because then newcomers will get scammed", what kind of retarded logic is that.

 

What if UEs started with a minirank, and anyone who's been helpful enough would get a rank for the effort. And by no means am I saying it would be easy, achieving it should include the effort put and how many 'big guides' you have made. By big guides I mean guides that attracted a lot of views and posts. Include something like maintaining being a UE for X months to even be able to qualify.

In the end, only people really deserving would get it, they would also be doing Sythe a favor by bringing it traffic.

Maybe even some sort of ex UE rank, I mean if they did this they would put a tremendous effort and they would deserve to at least keep it for all the people they've helped. Can anyone post the previous UE ranks? I remember the books, but I dont remember if there was a different image in the middle.

I support this however, I also believe incentives should be given but not as easy to get as they previously were.

 

Sums it up pretty perfectly tbh.

 

I'd love to see the return of UE, I remember attempting to apply but giving up after 1 guide as my first guide was shit. I'd like to see it back, support.

 

I have to agree with this.
Although there are a lot of retarded people out there that see ranks as a sign of trust (which in a way they are) people deserve recognition for helping... They will also be more likely to help if they know they'll get rewarded for it.
We should just simply emphasize the fact that their ranks do not indicate trust.

I do like fun ranks being staff only, as it's just a fun thing for staff... But not giving people recognition for their hard work is silly IMO.

 

The UE is a source of a lot of tension and negativity here. Even without a rank my suggestion to bring it back was denied. There are a lot of different options for having a similar team back again but I don't know exactly which would be best.

The UE team back when I was first on it was absolutely great. Well over half of the people went from being no one to being on staff. The UE was a great vetting ground and we got a lot of great members out of it. The atmosphere was also very democratic. Staff members were not allowed to see the private forums and we voted on our new members, regulations, etc. We reported plagiarized guides and things within our own private forum and they were dealt with by whoever happened to be HUE at the time or were forwarded to the staff to deal with.

Now before I say what I am about to say: I am simply writing what I remember. The facts may be slightly wrong and the analysis incorrect but I think I know what I'm talking about. At some point Finn (at that point he was an admin) decided that he did not like the way we were running things and decided to change some things by executive decree. That included allowing guides of different topics that we didn't allow before (mainly cooking, don't know why we didn't, silly rule) and reducing the number of guides needed to apply from five to two. At some point Pen was an admin and HUE. He was hardly active and getting anything done was a pain in the ass. Then the staff decided that the HUE should become a sectional staff member and they rejected the idea that they could give someone moderator powers in the guides forum without giving them staff.

All of these things took away from the democratic way that the UE was run and it hasn't been as good since. I think that we need to get that sort of thing back. Something that is sanctioned by the staff but not run by the staff. You can give the HUE moderator powers to move and lock threads without giving them access to the staff lounge or what not. I haven't played with vB permissions in awhile but I believe that is doable although if we wanted them to be able to infract they would have to be able to infract anywhere (I believe).

Then comes the scope of the team. Should they be a more diverse team that does a lot of community building, news letters, helping people, etc or should they be specific and focused on guides? I'm not quite sure what the answer to this is but starting out a UE team and then allowing them to branch out as they see fit can not hurt. Their main focus should be on guides, the FAQ, etc but we shouldn't limit them to that.

Now, onto the contentious subject of a rank. Now that we have miniranks, fun ranks should be handed out very sparsely. The main purpose of ranks should be showing the status of a member in the community while miniranks should be about fun. I am not saying that we should get rid of fun ranks but they should not be handed out as they used to be. The arguments against a rank for UE really come down to either: A) protect new members or B) people just in it for the rank. A is a problem that the entire community has a stake in. B is a problem that only the UE has a stake in and I would argue that it is a good thing because it encourages activity. Let the UE decide for itself what is needed to gain and retain membership. I would further say that due to donor ranks, the community does not care very much about A so I don't think they should care about a UE rank.


My actual suggestion:


The UE team should be brought back. They should be given a private forum in the guides section with a voting section and an archive that is only visible by the HUE (the old system was to delete posts and move them to an archive thread which never worked well). A front page application forum should be made with two sub forums (Accepted and Denied). They should be given control of the guides forum and allowed to request it be structured as they wish. The support center mod (aka Shoop, and not the globals) should be given access to the private forum and should act as their main staff contact, handling plagiarism reports, issuing infractions (if HUE doesn't get that, which he probably should not). The UE team is explicitly allowed to determine their own bylaws regarding getting on the team, staying on the team, responsibilities, etc. They are allowed to create and enforce sectional rules in the guide forum (with the help of Shoop and subject to staff oversight).

In order to get the team going again I would suggestion getting together a team of ex-UE's to seed the initial team and get everything set up (bylaws, aka: application requirements, rules, activity requirements, how the HUE gets selected, etc). I'm not quite sure how this team should be chosen but interest should be gauged before anything is determined.

 

Support, it gives people motivation for a position that is achievable on the forum while also providing the community with some quality material.

 

It's a pretty tough deal keeping CDT running and keeping things coming out, are you not worried UE will just be the same?



hi brendan

 

I agree with a lot of the posts in this thread. I liked UE, and thought it was a great idea. Maybe it wasn't managed to it's potential, but I feel it can be. As previously stated, the guides can be very helpful, they can bring more traffic, etc. As for ranks, I think the UE members should receive them. I'm getting tired of the "newcomers can get scammed" argument. It wasn't that easy to get in, and anyone can scam at anytime, using a User Educator's rank to assume he or she will scam in the future isn't fair. Also, I don't mind if some users "do it for the rank." It created more desire for helping someone, and for those who do effectively, can be awarded a rank. I'm sure the "you don't need recognition for helping the community" argument will come up. Sure, but why not? Fun ranks are being handed around, mini-ranks are being handed around, but when users help the site they are restricted of any recognition. Some of the CDT members work really hard, yet I'm sure some people don't know what the CD is, and who the members are. All in all, I think the UE should be brought back, it can be a major benefit for this site.