The 'Shroom:Issue LXVIII/Director's Notes

Director's Notes

Greetings to those that read this paper! This month, I do have some announcements to make, so please be sure to read.

Next month is the December 2012 issue. This means that the Holiday Season is amongst us, which also means that we need to celebrate! Henceforth, next month's issue will be a Special Issue. There will be fun events planned, special sections written, and much more! It will be an issue that will end 2012 on a great note, and will hopefully lead into a new year of prosperity and advancements for The 'Shroom. Be sure to check out the forum board for any new developments that might be announced about the issue.

There will be a chat party to celebrate the release of the Holiday Issue. It will begin at 12 PM EST on December 22nd, 2012 in # mwshroom (The 'Shroom's official chat channel), and each section will be released throughout the hours that follow. A more detailed schedule with timeslots and everything will be included in next month's issue. I hope for this to be an exciting and orderly function. The rules of # mwchat will be adopted for this party and will be enforced upon those that do not wish to behave in a proper manner.

The annual Director Election is coming up next month! For those who may not know, the individual that holds the position of Director of The 'Shroom is elected every December&mdash; candidates file their campaigns on the election article, attend sessions in which the candidates discuss their plans with each other and the voters, and the person with the most votes at the time that the January issue is released wins! If you are considering running for the position, you should probably start preparing your campaign, arrange to have a runningmate should you opt to do so, and coming up with plans that you want to implement in the following year. The election will run from December 22nd, 2012 through January 19th, 2013. Directorial Addresses should also be prepared for the January issue in the case that you are the winning candidate.

Also, I would like to announce that there have been new policies that is planning on implementing on The 'Shroom. It will affect certain long pages and will require for there to be some changes. To quote Porplemontage himself:

One thing we're beginning to crackdown on is super-long pages. It's why this policy was created for the main namespace, and changes need to be applied to the long issue pages of The 'Shroom.

To quickly solve this, I would take the contents of The 'Shroom:Main Page and make that how the issue pages are handled&mdash; linking to each individual section. If you guys want to do some restructuring/combining to end-up with less pages, that's fine. To give you an idea when combining pages, you probably don't want the result to be longer than The 'Shroom:Issue LXVI/Critic Corner.

Updates
 * The 'Shroom:Issue ???? - How the Shroom main page is now.
 * The 'Shroom:Main Page - Could use something more-distinct from the issue pages, but otherwise:
 * The 'Shroom:Single - Gone/redirect to Shroom main page.

The changes do not have to be exactly along those lines, but the main point is that changes need to be made with the Single Page and the Issue Pages in order to comply with the policy. And after discussing it with him, the Core Staff has determined a timetable for implementation that will allow for the candidates in the Director Election to propose their own ideas on this topic! The timetable for the implementation of this new policy is as follows:


 * December 22nd, 2012 - January 19th, 2013: Director Election candidates should come up with a plan for the Issue Pages and Single Page that fits in with the new policy,
 * January 19th, 2013 - April 2013 Issue: The candidate that wins the Director title should work with their staff to plan the changes in question and come up with a plan to implement them,
 * April 2013 Issue: The new designs and plans must be implemented, or the default plan that Porplemontage proposed will be implemented.

That said, should you plan to be a candidate in the Director Election, be sure to think of what you will propose to do with the Issue Pages. It is a very important topic that will likely generate a good amount of interest from the voters this year.

And that is all I have to say this time around. Please check back on December 22nd, 2012 for the Special Holiday Issue, and be sure to join us in # mwshroom (applet &middot; Mibbit) at 12 PM EST on that day for the chat party! It will be a blast!

Until next month,

&mdash;