The 'Shroom:Issue LVIII/Directorial Address

Directorial Address

Hello again, fellow readers. I am, the incumbent Director who has been elected to a second year of managing The 'Shroom. I am happy to have been given the chance to serve the paper for a second term in this capacity, and I will do my best to make this year one full of improvement, innovation, and excitement for The 'Shroom. I would like to thank my supporters for ensuring my reelection, and I would also like to thank my opponents in the election, and, for sharing their ideas and participating in the election process.

For the past year, the Core Staff, the writers, and the readers have worked hard to improve The 'Shroom. We increased the amount of affiliates, expanded The 'Shroom Awards from five awards to ten awards, held multiple feedback surveys, created new Core Staff positions in order to better manage certain projects, improved the application form, had several Special Issues, and introduced the Section of the Month process. It was a good year for The 'Shroom, and I am happy to have presided over the paper during this time of innovation. Towards the end of the term, however, certain sub-teams lost a huge amount of writers and have been doing their best to recover. During the past election, my proposed plans have centered around further improving certain aspects of The 'Shroom and ensuring that we get good writers for the paper.

I would like to first announce the Core Staff that will be helping me implement these plans throughout the next year:

The individuals that I have selected to participate in the Core Staff are completely dedicated to bettering the paper over the course of the next year. I know that they will do their best, that they will accomplish what they need to accomplish, and will be overall productive members of the team. My team and I will work hard to bring forward necessary improvements in order to make this year the best year The 'Shroom has ever seen!

Throughout the next year, we will have a maximum of two Special Issues to make sure that they remain as special and of the highest quality as possible. These sorts of projects are extremely time-consuming and require a lot of effort from the writers and the Core Staff, and to have them on a regular basis would not only be undesirable, but it would also be practically impossible. Having a smaller amount also increases each individual Special Issue's uniqueness and quality, and will enable the readers to look forward to each one as they come.

We will also start posting more on our social networking accounts and add more affiliates. We have created a new position titled "Social Networking Manager": the individual that holds this position will make posts on our Facebook and Twitter accounts in order to make announcements, communicate with the readers, and advertise new issues. Adding affiliates will allow us to network and create good relationships between other news projects, as well as potentially bringing in more readers and writers to The 'Shroom.

The About page and the Archives page will also be overhauled. The About page will be expanded to provide more information about paper and will also cover more of the history of The 'Shroom. The Archives page will be significantly changed in order to make access to the older issues easier. We will also be working on fixing up any errors any of the archived issues may have that were not originally included (an example being if the entire content of the Front Page of that issue was deleted accidentally during a move) and making sure that all content that is included in The 'Shroom is on the wiki (this includes images that are linked to).

Feedback Surveys will be run three times throughout this next year: May 2012, September 2012, and January 2013. Questions about existing processes and on various new ideas will be included in each one, and decisions and changes will be made based on the results of the surveys. The readers must have a voice in how the paper goes: without the readers, the paper would be nothing.

The forum board and chat will be used more often this year. We will have events every time we have a Special Issue, during election debates, and much more. Some of those events will be held on the forum, and others will be hosted on the chat. Logs of the events held on chat will be posted up on the forum in order to allow people to see what happened and to encourage more posting in the board. Polls will be posted after every issue on the forum by the Statistics Manager. We will also try our best to keep the 'Shroom Awards (which is held on the forum as a part of the Awards Ceremonies) at a total of ten Awards.

Finally, we will take several steps in order to counter the current employment situation for the paper. We will simplify and condense the rules on the Sign up page so that finding out how to join The 'Shroom is not a hassle. A one-week time limit for the staff to review applications will also be implemented in order to prevent them from piling up and applicants waiting ages for a response. We will maximize writer turnout by allowing people to contribute to The 'Shroom in three ways: either by committing to a monthly submission schedule, committing to a bi-monthly schedule, or submitting a one-time section voluntarily (a question regarding which one the applicant would like select will be added to the application form). We will also allow each sub-team Director to increase or decrease the section limit in order to fit their team's needs.

I hope that these plans will allow The 'Shroom to grow and move forward, as well as to be able to serve the community to its furthest extent. Thank you once again everybody, and I look forward to the rest of this year! Be sure to check by on February 18th, 2012 for the next issue, which will be absolutely fantastic!

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