The 'Shroom talk:Issue 165/Director Election

Election Process

This page is where members of the community may make nominations and vote for candidates to direct The 'Shroom for the next year. The rules for the election process may be viewed on the election rules article.

Candidates and Voting

Ninja Squid (talk) / Goombuigi (talk)

Hello, folks!

I am Ninja Squid (talk), the current Statistics Manager of The 'Shroom, and I am joined today by my running mate, Goombuigi (talk). It is with great pleasure that we present to you our campaign for the position of Director and Sub-Director for the 2021 term of The 'Shroom. The reason for why I am running for the position of Director mainly stems from my passion and dedication to this project, as well as my attachment to this welcoming community. That can easily be seen by my involvement as a staff with the 'Shroomfest, by my number of inputs in 'Shroom projects (such as giving in ideas regarding the sign up page, the manual of style, community engagements, and current overhaul of our track records), and also by my leadership as the Tenth Poll Committee chairperson last year.

With all of this, I would like to be able to have the chance to do more for this community, by continuing my involvement in this wonderful project as a Director. I would like to improve community engagement, increase accessibility to the newspaper, and keep spreading positivity. Now with that said, allow me to turn it over to Goombuigi, candidate for the position of Sub-Director, before going on with our experiences, and plans.

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Greetings, everyone! My name is Goombuigi (talk), and I'm running for the position of Sub-Director for 2021. I'll briefly introduce myself, as well as explain my motivation for running this year, and my past experiences with the 'Shroom and the community.

Although my interests tend to wander in various directions at times, I would say that I'm most well-known for my artwork, clay work, and 'Shroom sections. I joined the Wiki and the Boards in late March of 2020, and have cemented myself in the community since then.

My main motivation for running for this position is due to the meaning that the 'Shroom has for me, and it's the primary reason that I joined the community. I've been reading it irregularly since 2018, and writing for the 'Shroom made me appreciate all of the work and effort that is put into each issue. I would like to explore the inner workings of the newspaper, as well as work and collaborate with other community members more, by taking on this position.

Although I joined the community somewhat recently, I feel that I already have a lot of experience here, and I have several qualifications. I've written for the 'Shroom since April of this year, and I currently write two sections, and I'm a member of the Eleventh Poll Committee. Lastly, I have participated in several large-scale community events, such as the Mario Awards and the 'Shroomfest. With these experiences in mind, I feel that I am ready to tackle a larger position such as this one. Of course, Ninja Squid has done an excellent job with helping me out so far, and I am confident that he will be a great person to work with, and a great Director.

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Experiences

To start, we would like to share about our previous and current experiences within the community with all of you.

Ninja Squid

• Current Statistics Manager of The 'Shroom (Issue 131-present)
• Current writer of The 'Shroom
• Tenth Poll Committee chairperson (2019-2020)
• Seventh, Eighth, and Eleventh Poll Committees member (2016-2018, 2020-present)
• 'Shroomfest Host

Goombuigi

• Current writer of The 'Shroom
• Eleventh Poll Committee member (2020-present)

Schedules

This is our proposed schedule for the 2021 term:

2021 Term Calendar
January 2021	166		Transition Issue Opening Application process for the Activities Manager position
February 2021	167		First Issue of the 2021 Ticket Announcement of the new Activities Manager
March 2021	168	Themed Issue	Super Mario Bros.'s 35th anniversary sendoff Open Invite for writers to write about their best memories regarding Mario games 'Shroomfest
April 2021	169		Ultimate Location Battle
May 2021	170
June 2021	171	Special Issue	FunkyK38-themed Issue 'Shroomfest Community Awards Dossier Poll Chairperson Election
July 2021	172
August 2021	173
September 2021	174		'Shroomfest Poll Committee Awards Analysis
October 2021	175	Special Issue	Luigi's Mansion-themed Issue Celebrating 15 years of The 'Shroom Special Staff Collaboration section
November 2021	176		Awards Director Election
December 2021	177	Themed Issue	Holiday Issue 'Shroomfest End-of-the-Year Awards The 'Shroom Director Election
January 2022	178		Transition Issue

As we begin our term, we intend to fill in the position of the Activities Manager, and we will be working closely with them to the creation of interesting and unique ideas for 'Shroom-sponsored events. For Issue 168, we planned a small themed issue. In March 2021, the celebration for Super Mario Bros.'s 35th anniversary will end, and we would like to provide a little sendoff within the newspaper. We plan to do an Open Invite for users to write about their best memories with Mario games, thus will be our first engagement within our term. By doing so, this will help us define the kind of process we want to take on regarding this form of accessibility and engagement. Furthermore, March is also the month of Mar10 Day, which would be even more fitting for a themed issue.

Once our first two issues are released, we would like to plan a staff meeting focused on our proposals that we would like to put in place for 2021, which includes listening to the recommendations of our staff members and brainstorming ideas for the upcoming issues. Overall, this meeting would be more of a general discussion between the directors and the staff members. Following that, in June, we intend to hold our first Special Issue of the year. At Issue 171, FunkyK38 (talk) will be celebrating her 100th issue as the Palette Swap Director. This is a phenomenal achievement, and we would like to make this issue dedicated to her, in a similar vein to what was done with former Fake News Director, MrConcreteDonkey (talk). In addition, as usual, the Poll Committee Chairperson election will be held in June's issue, alongside the Community Awards Dossier, which we will be working on closely with the Awards Committee.

By the end of summer, we would plan our second staff meeting focused into the planning of Issue 175, which will take place in October. To celebrate 20 years of Luigi's Mansion, we are planning to make Issue 175.a Luigi's Mansion-themed issue, while also giving a focus on Halloween, to increase the theme's radius. There is also something important in 2021 we want to address. The year 2021 will mark the 15th years since the very foundation of The 'Shroom, which started with "2006 Beginnings". Because of this incredible achievement that would not be possible to be done without the help of our community members over the year, we want to focus most of our efforts in making the 175th issue the best issue of 2021. During our term, we intend to reach out to our community members and staff members, so we can generate discussions to make this issue special for the entire community. With Issue 175, our focus would be to look forward, celebrating this with our community members of today, who are the ones that will make the 175th issue a reality. We will also be discussing the possibility of creating a special staff collaboration, in a similar vein to what was done for Issue 150.

In November, the Awards Director Election will be held. Regarding the Holiday Issue this year, and because we intend on making Issue 175 the big event of the year, and with how close it is to the Holiday Issue, we are planning on doing it on a smaller scale. It is important not to burn out our staff mates by doing too many big special issues close to one another. The 'Shroom Director Election will, as usual, be held here.

Overall, during the year, the spacing of the special issues would allow for the January-May time period to focus on our goals and recruiting new writers, while the period between July and September to be focused on the Awards, with September serving as a cooldown from the Awards. After the work that will be accomplished during the year, we will be making the transition between however elected ticket is as smooth as possible.

To conclude, we want to maximize our effort so that 2021 is a year that will allow the newspaper to evolve, while being a source of inspiration and joy for all of us. This is the message we want to send regarding our 2021 schedule.

Plans

The 'Shroom is an important form of engagement in this community, which brings us a lot of positivity. While the newspaper has undergone a renewed interest in 2020, with many new writers joining this year both in the long-term or guest form, we feel like there are certain improvements that we want to make in 2021 to facilitate this continuity. It is important for The 'Shroom to keep evolving in order to stay fresh and up to date. By that, we mean both in multimedia integration and in accessibility. Overall, The 'Shroom should and must be able to adapt to the needs of our potential writers. With that, we would like to share some of our plans for the next year.

Refurbish the position of Activities Manager

Our first goal this year will be to refurbish the position of Activities Manager. This position's main duties will be to manage the 'Shroomfest events, and working alongside Goombuigi and I, to create new and interesting ideas for 'Shroom-sponsored events throughout the year. We do feel that with the road The 'Shroom is currently going regarding community engagements, that there is a need for an Activities Manager during our directorial term.

One thing we are also considering to implement during our term is to allow our community members to pitch in ideas for 'Shroom-sponsored events they would like to see us doing, and the Activities Manager will be there to keep records of such ideas. It is important for The 'Shroom, as a community project, to listen to the community's interests, and this is precisely the approach we would like to do with such process.

While working closely with the Directors, the Activities Manager will also be working on making sure there is a good flow of 'Shroom-sponsored events through the year. If we are the elected ticket, this postion will be going through an application process during Issue 166, in January. They will be taking office for Issue 167, in February.

Improving our way of communication with potential writers through our promoting efforts

Another important plan of our campaign is to improve our communication with our potential applicants by overcoming the fear barrier. There's been concern in the past about having to write long to very long sections in order to be able to write for the newspaper, and we think there is a possibility of overcoming this barrier by improving on our own promoting efforts (such as Staff Section of the Month). While this is entirely speculative, but as The 'Shroom gives lots of promoting for longer sections, such as Mach Speed Mayhem, or Anton's Half-Baked Reviews for example, it is possible that people get the wrong idea that for their section to be of great quality, they have to make them long. So, we feel like it is important to see an improvement made to the promoting of smaller scale sections throughout the newspaper. With having a good average of both smaller and longer sections being promoted by the newspaper in a monthly basis, we think that potential applicants might have a better idea of what kind of section they could write and how long their section could be.

Other possible ideas are to communicate directly with our potential applicants and discuss with them about capitalizing on their strengths, or even leading by example. With the Director and Sub-Director being on the spotlight, we might be able to take advantage of this by writing sections that are smaller than average and show that it's entirely possible for a section to be good while still being smaller.

As we want to focus first into improving our promoting efforts, we would like to create an internal staff discussion regarding our Staff Section of the Month process, and discuss what is working, what isn't working, and what changes could be made. We are also planning to discuss with potential writers and showing them previous short sections as examples of how good smaller sections can be written.

• Objective: Improving our promoting efforts and overcoming the fear barrier of writing for The 'Shroom.
• Result: Our potential applicants will have a better vision of how long their section needs to be, to be considered good, thanks to our improved communication and promoting efforts.

Refining the application process, in order to make it friendlier to our potential writers

Among our priorities, we would like to refine the application process to make it more attractive and helpful to our potential and newer writers. In that regards, we should be able to address and communicate any issues that is upcoming with the applications. When we receive applications that must be rejected, but that still demonstrate an idea that has potential to work, we believe that we should maximize our effort to make it possible to accept this application. As such, an approach we would prefer to do is keeping communication with our potential writers, providing helpful tips, suggestions and possibly a key staff member in case they need help about things like wiki-formatting to their section. This could be done, instead of the current process, which makes the users aware of what needs to be changed, and lets them work on this mostly by themselves. Of course, a good communication between the writers and staff is necessary, and writers should still demonstrate a will to cooperate with us, and demonstrate efforts in the long term. We believe this would increase the quality of life of the application process, and would remove the burden of having to go through another application process for the same section. The 'Shroom should be a platform for possibilities, and we would love to make a shift towards that trend.

An approach we would like to do in this case would be to present the project to our staff members, and discuss a method that everyone would be comfortable with for the refinement of the application process. To conclude, it is about making the application process more communicative with our writers, and increasing accessibility to The 'Shroom.

• Objective: Create a push towards more "accepted with contingency" sections, rather than formal "rejected" sections, while providing continued support to our potential writers during the application process.
• Result: The newspaper's accessibility and the communications with the staff members with our potential writers would be increased.

Expanding Pipe Plaza's goal

This will need further discussions with Pipe Plaza's Director, but something we would like to change within our current selection of team is to expand upon Pipe Plaza's goal. Currently, Pipe Plaza's focus is into wiki-oriented sections. As you can see as of now, Pipe Plaza's sections are currently divided into two branches, wiki-oriented sections (all sections pertaining to Mario Wiki) and Non-Wiki-oriented sections (such as Anniversary Announcements, Poll Committee Discussion, and Upcoming Games). The main change we want to do is to change the branches into "Community Sections" and "Informative Sections" while making Pipe Plaza's focus into Informative sections.

We have noticed a trend where Pipe Plaza is often the overlooked team, and there is the possibility that wiki-related sections are not the main subject of interest of our readers. In order to remedy this problem and revitalize Pipe Plaza, we believe that shifting the focus of Pipe Plaza from wiki-oriented sections to sections that are aimed to be informative could be beneficial in the long term. Such sections could be related to science facts. A section talking about birds, space, medical world and which aims to inform our readers would fit into Pipe Plaza.

We believe that by implementing this change into Pipe Plaza's goal, we could restore interest in that team, and would be more interesting and fascinating overall for our readers. Please, take note that we do NOT want to remove any wiki and community sections that currently exist right now within Pipe Plaza or for the newspaper as a whole, but simply changing the current focus of that team, and expanding its outreach.

• Objective: Expanding Pipe Plaza's goal by adding informative sections to its focus, while shifting the team's goal towards informative sections.
• Result: The appeal of Pipe Plaza towards our readers would be improved.

Expand and improve writers' outreach

Not so long ago, the staff received a suggestion by Magolor04726 (talk) about creating a separate section for writers of The 'Shroom who have a thread in the forum pertaining to their sections. The concern about such a thing was the low amount of threads dedicated to 'Shroom sections. However, upon reflection regarding this matter, we feel like the lack of exposure and the lack of outreach for our writers right now is probably one of the reasons for why there is a low amount of existing interactions for our writers.

In order to fix this problem, we would like to create a place where our writers will be able to interact with their audience, and expanding visibility and engagement with them. Thereby, we would like to introduce a section within The 'Shroom board on the forum that would be exclusively for threads dedicated to 'Shroom sections. The writers are the core of the newspaper and we should be able to show continuous effort from our part in making sure there is a dedicated place for them for their own outreach. Overall, during our term, we want to demonstrate an effort in being more communicative with our writers.

• Objective: Expanding visibility of our writers sections and thread in order to improve outreach with their audience.
• Result: With a better exposure and visibility, the interest and communication between writers and readers would be improved.

Others

Some more technical and behind-the scene stuff that we would also like to look at, are the current overhaul of our Track Records system that is currently coordinated by the current Directorship. In addition, the visibility of the sign up application process on our different platforms, and the layout and styling of the newspaper across our different platforms by working alongside the Progamming and Website Managers, are also part our planning.

Conclusion

The 'Shroom is important to us, and we understand how important it is also to the community. It is among our priorities that we keep improving the accessibility to our newspaper. We would love to make the 2021 term of The 'Shroom a year that will spread positivity to our community. With my leadership experience as the chairperson of the Tenth Poll Committee, and as the current Statistics Manager of The 'Shroom, I feel like I will be comfortable in taking charge of The 'Shroom for an important term that will focus in communication and accessibility. My focus, as a Director, will be to keep a good and healthy workflow for our staff members, as well as making sure that The 'Shroom is a welcoming and memorable experience to all of our community members. In addition, with a new member such as Goombuigi, someone with a fresh vision, great dedication, and with new ideas among the new blood, joining my own creative mind, we really think we will be able to complement each other well and achieve great results for 2021.

No matter the result of this election, we hope that 2021 will be a year that will live upon the great progress that was done in 2020, but also seeing an improvement to the newspaper's accessibility, an increase in communication between writers and staff members, while continuing to spread positivity in the community. Thank you so much for considering our campaign, and if you have any questions or concerns, do not hesitate to contact us. In the meantime, let's all have a nice election. See you around!

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