The 'Shroom:Issue LXIX/Director Election

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Debates

 * A debate will take place in # mwshroom (which can be accessed either from the applet or through Mibbit) on Wednesday, December 26th, 2012 at 9:00 PM EST (which is Thursday, December 27th, 2012 at 2:00 AM UTC).

Tucayo
You know what they say, third time's charm. What? This is already my fourth time running? So I already lost three elections? Holy poochy. Oh well, fourth time's charm, then.

Hello, I am longtime 'Shroom contributor, Tucayo. If you have read The 'Shroom over the course of the past 5 years, then you have probably heard of me, but in case you haven't, allow me to further introduce myself. I have been part of The 'Shroom for almost five years, and I am a former Super Mario Wiki SysOp. I started as a regular writer and, after half a year, I thought I had what it took to become Director. I lost the 2008 Director Election, but I managed to get a job as Sub-Director. During that year I acted as Director many times, often doing the jobs of both the Director of the Sub-Director. Once again I ran for Director, and once again I lost, but I managed to keep my job as Sub-Director, even getting the job of Fun Stuff Director later in the year. After a year-long break from directing duties (never from writing), I decided to run for the third time; and, for the third time, I lost. I was kindly invited back into the Core Staff for this part year, and throughout the course of the year I’ve held the Social Networking Manager and Statistics Manager positions. And now, once again, I'm running for Director.

But enough of the past, let's focus on what 2013 can look like for The 'Shroom, should I win. Here are my plans for next year (all of which will be carried out with the help of an excellent Core Staff, of course):
 * Naturally, a Special Issue. Next year we'll be releasing the 75th issue of The 'Shroom (big number), which is why, in June 2013, we'll be having our big Special Issue. I can guarantee this will be the biggest and best issue so far.
 * We'll have one or two big, juicy Special Issues, but that doesn't mean the rest of the issues will be your typical 'Shroom issue. Be it special sections, guest writers, a special theme or a special event, all issues will have a feature that will distinguish them from one another and will keep readers interested.
 * I'll continue with the Shroom Achievements system that started this issue.
 * 'Shroom Awards IV, a big part of our yearly events. First and foremost, we at the Core Staff will work closely with the Awards Committee to come up with the best possible categories for the awards. If we can come up with 15 good categories, we'll make the push to get 15 awards; but if we can't come up with 15, we have guaranteed we'll get our 10 awards. Quality before quantity. A huge problem in last year's ceremonies was the apparent lack of informed voters in the Community Awards; that is why I promise the Core Staff will work with the Userpedia Staff to raise awareness of the Community Awards. But this project won't be limited to raising awareness; we'll also create a feature to help voters cast a more educated vote. This feature will likely explain the categories and the nominees, giving voters solid and objective information to base their vote on. Who knows, this feature may even come as a 13th issue.
 * As for the situation with the Single Issue pages, as much as I oppose it, I'm forced to do something about it, so I'm going to follow a suggestion that was thrown around during the first discussions of the subject, which is to show a sneak-peek of each section with a Read More link at the end. Here's how it would look, thanks to for helping with the coding.
 * As I was browsing the Super Mario Boards today, I thought of something. We have a great amount of promising fan creations on the community; be it games, stories, comics... you name it; but sadly, most of them never see the light, which is often due to the lack of attention they get. And even when they do see the light, they still get less attention than they deserve. But it doesn't have to be that way. One of our goals at The 'Shroom is to help our community and their projects grow, and a great way of doing so would be promoting their work. What I propose is that we create a section similar to the old Fangamers Report, in which we could advertise fan creations that need it. Advertise which ones need sign-ups, which ones were just released, which ones need editors... whatever we can do to help their authors. We could even further expand our relationship with Userpedia and, should authors want it, show previews of upcoming updates of their creations; this would help create expectation and would give them a wider audience.

As you can see, I have the experience, the commitment, the enthusiasm and the plans. So please, vote for me and allow me to direct the newsletter I love so much. I won't let you down.

Super Mario Bros.
Hello readers of The 'Shroom! This is Super Mario Bros., but can also be referred to as SMB. I am a seasoned Super Mario Wiki member, having been active on this website since April 2009 and having been on the administrative team since October 2009. I joined The 'Shroom in August 2009 in order to direct the Music & Artwork team (which I suggested to the staff team at the time to implement), and held that position for four months until I switched over to direct the newly-created Pipe Plaza team in December 2009. I remained in the position of Pipe Plaza Director when I returned as a Music & Artwork Director in July 2010. I continued to be a part of the leadership of those departments until February 2011, when I assumed the role as Director of The 'Shroom (after having been elected to the post in January 2011, and reelected to a second term in January 2012). After two years of serving this project in this capacity, I would like to ask the community to give me the opportunity to direct the operations of The 'Shroom for a third year&mdash; I have a great deal of experience in how things operate around here, and am also willing to propose and consider new and fresh ideas in order for our project to progress and grow.

My Qualifications

 * Wiki Sysop/Administrator
 * Former Wiki Patroller
 * Forum Global Moderator
 * # mwchat Owner
 * Incumbent 'Shroom Director
 * Former Pipe Plaza Director
 * Former Music & Artwork Director
 * One-time Fake News Director
 * Former Poll Committee Chairperson
 * Sub-Director of the Mario Awards V (2011) and Mario Awards VI (2012) festivities
 * Mafia Hosts Guild co-founder and member

The Past Two Years

 * Throughout the past two years, the Core Staff had run an affiliation program in order to associate The 'Shroom with other good newsletter projects around the internet in order to help promote our paper in other communities as well as to promote the affiliated projects to our memberbase. A position entitled the "Affiliates Manager" was designed to manage the communications with potential and current affiliates (which first held, then  succeeded  him), although in the end the position was abolished and the affiliation efforts were shifted toward more local projects.
 * The 'Shroom Awards are held each year in conjunction with the wiki's anniversary festivities in order to honor those that make this paper possible. In 2011, we saw 'Shroom Awards II be expanded from five awards to ten awards. In 2012, despite attempts to cut down on the amount of awards and even attempts to outright remove the Ceremony, 'Shroom Awards III was kept as a ten-award Ceremony.
 * Several Feedback Surveys were held throughout my terms in order to ensure that the readers had the ability to comment on the overall quality of the paper and to provide assessments of the numerous changes that were applied to how the paper is managed and designed.
 * Various positions were added, removed, and merged together in order to change the direction of how The 'Shroom was managed. The Editor-in-Chief position that once served the purpose of reviewing sections to check their coding and grammar and such was merged into the Sub-director position. The Statistics Manager position was created in order to create and maintain lists and tables vital to the progress of The 'Shroom. The Affiliates Manager (mentioned above) was created to manage the affiliation program, but was phased out after these responsibilities were absorbed by the Director and the Core Staff. The Social Networking Manager was a position designed for maintaining the Facebook and Twitter pages for the paper, but was also phased out and delegated to the entire Core Staff in general. Finally, the Activities Director (suggested by ) was tasked with assisting in the scheduling and planning of important issues, events, and projects for The 'Shroom.
 * The application form was rewritten and made more direct and the concept of limiting the amount of time applications could be open was introduced in order to allow for the process to run along faster and hiring to be more frequent was implemented. Additionally, a question asking the applicant whether they want to submit their section on a monthly or bi-monthly (every other month) basis or as a one-time submission was added to the form.
 * Sub-team Directors were given more flexibility over the amount of sections that an individual could hold on their team: each Director was permitted to change their section limits for their own team so long as they were to provide solid reasoning for a change and were to obtain my permission for the modification.
 * The rules on the sign-up page were simplified and a copy of the application form was provided publicly in order to streamline the process for signing up for a section on the paper.
 * The About page was rewritten so that it would better inform the readers about the history of The 'Shroom.
 * Several new sections were created in the past year, and also took charge of the newly-organized Critic Corner sub-team (where reviews and opinion sections are displayed for the readers).
 * Numerous chat meetings were held in order for the Core Staff to discuss and debate ideas in a medium that would allow for the conversation to flow better and to allow for any problems to be quickly dealt with.
 * Section of the Month was started during my first term, and was significantly modified during my second term. Public voting was introduced for the Section of the Month earlier this year, and SOTMs specific to each team were also introduced. Due to conflicts between the Overall SOTM and Team SOTMs, the Overall Section of the Month was eliminated and the team-specific versions still run to this day.
 * Several Special Issues were held on The 'Shroom throughout the past two years. Among the list of these are Special Issue L (which was held in celebration of the fiftieth issue to be released), Special Issue LVII (celebrating the Christmas/Holiday season), Special Issue 64 (held to honor the sixty fourth issue of The 'Shroom and was themed after the Nintendo 64), and Special Issue LXIX (our newest Holiday Issue).

What are my plans for the next year?

 * I would like to suggest that the Core Staff make serious efforts toward revamping the Archive page in order to make navigating through past issues easier. This would include redesigning the table to include more information about each issue to make identifying specific issues or sections quicker.
 * During the process in which we will revamp the Archives page, I would also like to check every issue and every section to find and correct any major technical mistakes that have arisen. This includes uploading externally-hosted images to the wiki and using the local copies to ensure that images are preserved for the issues forever, making sure that old issues do not accidentally list the current issue number due to the fact that was not replaced upon the archiving of the issue, making sure that coding that is now broken due to the changing of extensions is corrected to the furthest extent possible, and much more. The older issues should not be changed content-wise, but most certainly should be maintained to ensure that their original look and style is maintained as closely as possible.
 * Last year, restrictions were placed on the Core Staff that limits the amount of time that could be taken to review applications. This has helped add a pressure that makes reviewing applications faster and gives the applicant an idea of when to check back for the results of their application. I would like for the deadlines to be followed more strictly this year to allow for more writers to be hired in a smaller amount of time.
 * Throughout the year, advertising The 'Shroom and promoting it throughout the community has helped increase awareness and interest in the paper. However, most of these efforts were voluntarily done by certain members of the Core Staff (one major contributor was ). I would like to establish an official effort to advertise and attract attention by delegating this responsibility to the Activities Director throughout the next year.
 * I will work with The 'Shroom Core Staff to plan up to two Special Issues this year. Doing any more would make each one less significant, and doing none would make the next year a very boring one.
 * As the Core Staff has done throughout the past few years, I would like to continue the practice of asking the readers about our progress and for their ideas on how we can improve. Unless it is decided that having more or less of these is vital to the well-being of The 'Shroom, we will have three Feedback Surveys throughout the next year.
 * I would like for the Core Staff to work with the Awards Committee to come up with good, solid ideas for awards and nominees to include in 'Shroom Awards IV next year. Several people have mentioned that we should run a program to inform individuals that vote in the 'Shroom Awards polls about the history of The 'Shroom in a manner that would allow them to make educated votes on the polls, and I support this effort completely and will work with the Core Staff and Awards Committee to make this possible.
 * Throughout the past year, the Core Staff often planned meetings whenever we needed to discuss major topics or an assortment of minor topics (and often combinations of both). I would like to ensure that we schedule more meetings so as to cover more topics and further plan out major projects or issues and make a standard, regular schedule to go by.
 * On the Sign-up page, there are three classifications of staff members: "Director," "Leading Staff," and "Core Staff." Next year, there will only be "Director" and "Core Staff." The "Leading Staff" is simply unnecessary and may send off various wrong messages to members of the staff and the community. All positions that are currently classified as "Leading Staff" will be reclassified as "Core Staff."
 * I would also like for the Core Staff to investigate ways to make the Sign-Up page even more organized, simple, and streamlined than it already is. We did a good job at removing a lot of unnecessary content that bloated the page earlier this year, but there is certainly more action that we can take to make navigation and viewing much easier.
 * As suggested by during my first term, I would like to see the Core Staff create a Manual of Style for those who apply to be able to read to understand what we expect from applicants when they apply. Coding tips and instructions will be provided to the users so that they may format their own sections properly when they submit their application. Expectations and notices about proper spelling and grammar, a mature and intelligent vocabulary (and informing them to use  if the content is strong), and section length (not making the section one or two sentences that do not inform people of anything) will also be displayed in said manual.
 * I would like to take our Subscription service and overhaul it into something actually worthwhile. Currently, it is simply a box that only registered users can put on their userpages. However, this does nothing for guests who like to read the paper or those who do not frequent often enough to find out when new issues are released. Firstly, I would like for the to undergo a redesign to make it look more appealing and to keep that as one means of subscribing and showing support for our publication. Secondly, I would like to make it possible for the readers to subscribe to receive updates about releases and events via wiki talk page, private messages on the forum, and/or e-mail notifications. A subscription list with the wiki, forum, and/or e-mail accounts to which updates must be sent will be created and maintained in GoogleDocs by our Statistics Manager.
 * I would like to continue to work with the Awards Committee to have The 'Shroom partake in the so-called "Anniconomy" by offering tokens for 'Shroom Achievements, and would also like to set up a similar partnership with Userpedia in order to offer Userpedia Shopping Credits as an alternative prize for these Achievements as well. Additionally, I would like to work with Userpedia to license official 'Shroom products to be placed in the Userpedia Shop system should that system be set up soon.
 * I would also like to feature a section or two relating to Userpedia in our paper. Perhaps reviews of fiction from there, and maybe a Userpedia news section. I would be willing to work with their staff team and ours in order to allow something like this to happen.
 * I will work closely with the Music & Artwork Director to discuss possible innovative changes that can be applied to the team in order to foster an environment for its success and its growth. This team should be shifted in a direction that will allow those with artistic/musical talent and appreciation to have a stronger role in shaping our publication.
 * The 'Shroom Spotlight has been very inactive for the past year, even though there were some changes in who led the project. I will try my best to work with the Activities Director, the Core Staff, and the editors of the wiki to revive this project and to see if it can survive in its current form. If the project cannot pick up by May 2013, I would like to either remove it completely, or modify it so that it can serve as a vehicle to accomplish other tasks around the wiki.
 * has made new policies for several namespaces that disallow certain gigantic pages. In the end, what this basically boils down to is that we can no longer use the Single Page format for Issue articles, and must come up with an alternative design by the April 2013 issue.
 * A possible alternative design that I think could work would be having blurbs on the Issue page that offer a small preview of what is in each section, and possibly include images in them if there are any present in the section(s). The end result could look similar to the wiki's Main Page (small snippets of information with links to the rest of the article, making use of colorful boxes that liven up the page, making use of columns that run down to the end of the page, etc.). The Single Page article can redirect to the Issue Page. This is not set in stone, though, and other ideas can be brought up and considered.
 * I will, of course, consider other options and will have the Core Staff as a group approve of all changes before they are implemented. In addition to that, questions about certain aspects of the design changes will be included in the Feedback Survey in order to give the readers and writers a voice in the process. Appropriate changes will be made after the implementation of the new design in April 2013 until we achieve the best possible look that we can.
 * Added after start of campaign: My opponent proposes that "we create a section similar to the old Fangamers Report, in which we could advertise fan creations." I support this idea completely and will implement it if elected. However, I feel that this one proposal that he offers is not sufficient enough to attract attention to our community's fan creations or to build a substantial partnership with Userpedia. I would therefore like to reinforce my support for strengthening our bond with the community and Userpedia by adding other sections related to fan projects and Userpedia, such as fiction reviews and a Userpedia news section, as well as partnering with Userpedia to enhance both our 'Shroom Achievements and the upcoming Userpedia Shop. I am certain that implementing all of these ideas will allow for a more extensive growth and development of The 'Shroom and the community overall.

In the end, I would like to be elected to a third term in order to continue the successful policies of the past two years, continue to implement new ideas and projects, and refine processes that might have come to a standstill or might need modifications. Reaching out to the community will be a priority this year, and providing incentives to write for the publication will be in place. I feel that my plan will succeed in making the 2013 - 2014 term one that will stand out for years to come.