Ghosts of the Vanguard (original) (raw)

Happy New Year, Spectres!

We had our first Staff meeting of 2014 last night, and in accordance with our policies we have some new policies and announcements to go over! Please pay close attention, as a lot of what we discussed will come to affect you not just in the coming weeks, but are changes that have taken effect on the Archive and Forum.

To start, we had two participants for the Holiday Contest; and same as with the Halloween contest, we on Staff would like to personally thank you for participating. We understand the holidays can be a hectic time for all and that you managed to get your collections finished to present to us surely is deserving of reward. Felina has gone ahead and transferred your stories back to you and made the proper announcement. In terms of judging, however, we are going to reward both of you for participating, and you both will be sent prize packages as we feel strongly it is more important to honor your participation rather than split hairs by determining 1st and 2nd place. Thank you for showing support of what we were trying to do, and when the time comes, we on Staff sincerely hope the prize packages show our gratitude. I (Dot) will be in touch with you within the coming weeks, to discuss how the packages will be sent and to get your shipping information.

If you participated in either the Halloween or Holiday contests, please add somethingappropriate@outlook.com to your safe list within your email accounts, as I will be contacting you via email. I will post when I've sent the emails so you know to be on the lookout for them, as well.

Carrying on with the talk of Contests, we have a new two-part poll on the Archive that we would like everyone to participate in. Please ensure your skin allows polls; and then select the option you prefer. It is in regard to Contests, and to be frank, deals with the lack of final participation and why, out of almost two thousand members, we have an average of two members at the end of each Contest. We encourage everyone to come out and vote, to help us to understand if Contests are an effective way to unite the Community. This poll will be closed on the 24th, so please vote in a timely manner! Once that poll is closed, the second part of the poll will be posted, which will follow-up in regard to the response from the first poll. Thank you in advance for your participation.

The final word on Contests is that we are planning to host a Valentine's Day Contest, and we will have all the information, from the theme to the deadline, for you next week. We will make the announcement in regard to that once it's ready to be unveiled!

Next up are a few policies that have either taken effect or will in the coming weeks, the first being in regard to acceptance letters. This affects non-validated authors only, so if you are a validated author, you may skip to the next policy. Non-validated authors, beginning Monday, January 27th, when you submit to the Submissions queue you will either receive an Acceptance letter, or a Rejection notice in your email, letting you know of the status of your Submission. That is why it is explicitly important that you have added gotvg_staff@live.com AND staff@gotvg.net to your email safe lists. If you submit to the queue, you will be receiving notification from Staff beginning next week and it is important that it not be received as spam as it could result in downtime for the Site. We on Staff listened when you expressed you wanted this new option to receive positive feedback should your work be validated, so please hold up your end by ensuring our emails don't go to your Junk/Spam folders. Be on the lookout for the Acceptance letters to begin circulating on the 27th!

The second policy is in regard to sub-categories on the Archive. It has always been a policy of ours to only add categories to the Archive that will have stories for them. As of right now, we are a small enough Community that bandwidth is not an issue, but we grow in number every day. One day, it could very well be an issue and so this new policy is not only one of preemptive measure, but simply a stricter enforcement of what we have always asked of you. When you request a category be added to the Archive, we request that you have a story to place within it to prevent it from sitting empty, or the category will not be added. Moving forward, any sub-category that sits empty for two weeks from the date it is added, will be deleted without notification. So if you request a category be added and you have a story to add, you need to add it before the deadline is up or it will be deleted. It is suggested that you complete any editing or adjustments needed before requesting the category be added, and before that deadline begins.

Next in line we have the fate of the old Freedom of Speech group on Facebook. As most of you know, it is still open and accepting new members, but is locked from members being able to post, and is used solely to direct old members to our new group and Archive. As we are still finding members wishing to be added to that FoS group, as well as the members still making their way to GOtV from there, Felina and I have decided to leave the group open until March 1st, 2014. Old members, if there are any posts or documents that were saved there that you would like, you have until the 1st of March to collect them before the group is purged and closed.

Next, we would like to simply make note that we are aware there are still dead links and "Coming Soon" social media sites that need to be tended to; trust they are not forgotten and that we have plans in motion for them for 2014. This includes special Community-involved Contests (outside of Holiday contests) as well as ways to be involved with GOtV every day on a small, but fun scale. Be on the lookout for those updates in the coming months!

The final announcement that we have for you is in regard to Staff; Felina and I are pleased to announce that we are going to be opening applications for Staff positions the first week of February. We are looking for 2-3 new Supervisors, and one specialty Staff position; we'll cover the Supervisor position first.

Though we are going to post up specifics in a newsletter upon opening the applications, for those of you who think you would like to become apart of our Staff, here are a few things to keep in mind should you want to start preparing to apply. As a Supervisor, your position is exactly what it sounds like. You would work closely with other Supervisors to keep tabs on the Forum as well as the Archive, and you're the first point of contact within the Submissions queue as well as member questions and involvement around our social media networks. You'd be the face of the GOtV Staff, a truly essential part to keeping the site running smoothly and an invaluable tool to helping our authors succeed in their own personal literary endeavors. If that interests you, keep an eye out for the announcement pertaining to the Applications process.

Our specialty staff position will contain different responsibilities than a traditional Supervisory role, and we are currently in the market for a graphics artist to become part of Staff, to help design Contest prizes as well as logos and layout skins. Do you design your own layouts for social media sites? Are you familiar with creating and designing logos? Are you artistic and looking to expand your portfolio? As GOtV's Graphics Artist, you'll be able to design and display your work on profiles of our members through Contest artwork, as well as fostering and encouraging our members through your own artistic vision. You'll be the visual side of our literary world. If that interests you, keep an eye out for the announcement pertaining to the Applications process.

That wraps our first announcement to welcome 2014. Let's make this year a year of literary growth as well as growth in our Community. Thank you for helping us reimagine our image in 2013, and we look forward to helping you realize your literary goals in 2014.