The Purpose of this report is to inform Community Management and the Brand Teams about the mood(s) of the Community on various topics. This is not to imply that Community Management does not read the forums, because they do. However they also requested that VCLs provide these reports in order to provide an outside perspective.
It is important to note that even if the Community, the News Guides and I all feel that an item is important and needs to be acted upon immediately, WotC may have different priorities. These reports are not intended to be "honey-do" lists for WotC, nor is a lack of response by WotC towards any of the topics on these reports an indication that WotC has read and dismissed (or even worse, is ignoring) the concerns of the community. It simply means that they have other items that have higher priorities, or are more urgent for WotC to deal with.
1. Art/Map Gallery going behind a paywall has been met with a significant amount of resistance.
2. Still no word on the discrepancy between RSS time to go live and the actual article going live.
3. The loss of permissions in the Announcement forum and the Article Discussion forum has led to a number of posts by non Forum Guides in these areas.This week, the announcements seems to have calmed down, but the Article Discussion forum has actually picked up.
So far, we've not responded publicly to any post made in the Announcement forum, and I think this has helped to get the message across gently that user's shouldn't be posting there with questions. The locked threads have helped too.
4. The DM Hotline seemed to be pretty popular. It would be nice to get an update on if that is possible.
5. On rare occassion, our omnipotence fails, and we actually make a mistake. When this involved putting up a wrong title on a thread, we would like to be able to correct it. However, we cannot do this if someone else has replied to the thread. Can we add this to the list of forum feature requests?
6. The Vistani article came out in a really strange format. the community was ready to go for blood, until Chris Sims posts on ENWorld explaining what had happened with the article. I would've liked to see Chris Sims post to our own forums about this, personally. Seems a mite unusual that he posted to some third-party with information like that without posting to our site first.
7. Maps from Dungeon magazine come in tagged and untagged versions, but maps from other sources, such as books and printed adventures, do not come with untagged versions. Lots of people have asked for the untagged versions to be made available as well.
8. Search Terms in the compendium don't seem to be functioning the same as they were normally. Reference Thread: community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...
9. An Adventure Index! This seems like a good idea:http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/20952885/Adventure_Index
1) seems a bit of an understatement, but i know, nothing on your plate really. also, art has been mentioned a lot more often than maps, if this is any indication on what people really need.
4) and 9) is missing
1) seems a bit of an understatement, but i know, nothing on your plate really. also, art has been mentioned a lot more often than maps, if this is any indication on what people really need.
4) and 9) is missing
For 1, trust me that WotC knows that the bodily waste has hit the air distribution mechanism quite well. I don't think that a day goes by that one of us doesn't poke Trevor with it. I have some stuff in the works to try to get a more...effective response going, but I have to run it by Trevor first. I would be very surprised if he had a problem with it though.
4 and 9 being missing are problems with copy/pasting on my part.
Thanks!!
Nine and Ten are still missing.
And I agree that the unofficial WotC policy of posting on Enworld and never on here for updates and clarifications should be changed.
I am torn about devs posting on ENWorld.
On one hand, ENWorld is the biggest WotC fansite out there. It is simply good PR for WotC devs to post there and interact with the community. But at the same time, it would be really nice for them to post the same things in these forums here. Rest assured that I am poking Trevor about this.
i have to say that i'm not really surprised anymore that wotc devs post over at enworld a lot more than here. this is the place they work at. enworld is the place they socialise at.
however, this needs to be changed in order to believe that wotc really cares about this community.
one day or week of "phone your master DMs" and occasional stops in the forums do not make a good interaction with R&D or any other team they have up there in seattle.
I agree that they need to do more interaction with the community here.
That being said, whenever I have taken the time to notice (which isn't always, so my impression may be skewed), the devs are posting at ENWorld when they are not working. Evenings, weekends, holidays. That sort of thing.
that's why i stated that they "socialise" over there.
Maybe because Enworld's colours don't burn the eyes.
I feel pretty strongly about 1, 3 and 6. 1 and 6 are pretty self explanatory really. I have already posted in the Community Business about my feelings about the art behind the pay-wall, I am against it, and that is as a DDI subscriber. 6 should be just pure common sense, if you have a "community site" then the people associated with that product should foster that community by posting information to it first and then other fan sites second.
Number 3 is something that I find trickier than you may think, Mudbunny. I certainly agree that if the Announcements and Article Discussion thread creation was a flawless process then the Forum Guides should have complete control over it. However it does not seem to be a flawless process. I have noticed, on a few occasions now, that some articles (usually FR ones because those are the ones I follow) do not show up in the announcements and therefore (and/or) don't have a thread created in Article Discussion. Is there a rationale behind this or is it a mistake? If it isn't a mistake then I find it pretty odd, and if it is then well... wouldn't it be good to let people create the threads the Forum Guides have forgotten?
Number 3 is something that I find trickier than you may think, Mudbunny. I certainly agree that if the Announcements and Article Discussion thread creation was a flawless process then the Forum Guides should have complete control over it. However it does not seem to be a flawless process. I have noticed, on a few occasions now, that some articles (usually FR ones because those are the ones I follow) do not show up in the announcements and therefore (and/or) don't have a thread created in Article Discussion. Is there a rationale behind this or is it a mistake? If it isn't a mistake then I find it pretty odd, and if it is then well... wouldn't it be good to let people create the threads the Forum Guides have forgotten?
The way that the news guides do the news is to pull the articles off of the D&D RSS feed and then post them up in the announcements forum, with a link to a discussion thread that they create. If they are articles from Dungeon/Dragon, they get a corresponding thread started in the Dungeon/Dragon Artricle Discussion forum. Excerpts currently get placed in General Discussion, although we are going to be posting those in Future Releases in a couple of weeks.
If an article is missed, it is not on purpose, and is most definitely an error. If an article is not released to the RSS feed at the traditional time (midnight Sundayu, Tuesday and Thursday) it may get missed by the news guides.
In reference to the Tagged and Untagged maps. I would also liketo suggest on the Untagged maps the removal of identifying marks. These would include secret doors, types of terrain, weak points, etc. Its nice to have a map with no tags on it, but whe players ask what the giant red Xs are on a map(warehouse encounter in The Temple Between), it kind of makes it a moot point.
Ramius
Number 3 is something that I find trickier than you may think, Mudbunny. I certainly agree that if the Announcements and Article Discussion thread creation was a flawless process then the Forum Guides should have complete control over it. However it does not seem to be a flawless process. I have noticed, on a few occasions now, that some articles (usually FR ones because those are the ones I follow) do not show up in the announcements and therefore (and/or) don't have a thread created in Article Discussion. Is there a rationale behind this or is it a mistake? If it isn't a mistake then I find it pretty odd, and if it is then well... wouldn't it be good to let people create the threads the Forum Guides have forgotten?
Because I'm the one who's still awake when the RSS news feed updates, I'm usually the guy handling the news posts. That also means I'm generally the one to blame over any mistakes on announcements and discussion threads. However, I don't think I've missed any articles in recent memory. Certainly not on purpose. Do you have an example of an FR article that has not been put up for discussion? Maybe there is something weird going on where they are not getting added to the RSS feed properly?
I could have missed some when I pick it up when you can't. I don't use the RSS feed, I don't know why I don't. Just never though of it.
I use the Editorial Calendar. When it was the old site I used the Front Page of the D&D as well as the Calendar to make sure I didn't miss any. I guess I should be using the RSS feed as well.
If it was an article that went live during my watch, I apologize and will be more mindful of it in the future.
Luckily you're awesome and I don't have to do it often :P
Edit: See you are so awesome you have the Candle Guide Tag and I don't...
You mean you don't have a candle in your inventory?
Oh no! You are likely to be eaten by a Grue!
To Ramius613, it would be pretty cool and it's deinitely something we're interested in doing.
On a side note: You appear to be Grue safe now Cart_Sprinter.
On a side note: You appear to be Grue safe now Cart_Sprinter.
Yay! I wasn't sure if my "NOT GRUE FOOD" shirt would work....
Because I'm the one who's still awake when the RSS news feed updates, I'm usually the guy handling the news posts. That also means I'm generally the one to blame over any mistakes on announcements and discussion threads. However, I don't think I've missed any articles in recent memory. Certainly not on purpose. Do you have an example of an FR article that has not been put up for discussion? Maybe there is something weird going on where they are not getting added to the RSS feed properly?
Sorry about the delayed response, I have been away for the weekend. I have a memory of one article being missed, it was a FR article that had been delayed, I think. I have a memory of a thread on another sub-board becoming unofficial-official discussion thread because there was not one here. I shall, of course, check my facts on that one. In recent days it does not seem to be so much a problem of disappearance, such much as delay. The "Eye of Justice" article for instance was lacking a discussion thread for long enough for me to engage MB on the subject. Twice. Looking at the thread in question I see that it was started, by your good self, on October 23rd. The article itself had been live for two days and this point and the next batch of articles, and presumably the next batch of discussion, was already available.
I have always felt that with a continuous release model the greater portion of discussion on a new article is likely to occur soon after released, I will look at past threads to see if I can find a basis for this feeling, and as such these delays might lead to what may be (and was in this case) superb articles not getting the feedback they are due.
I will stress that these are my own opinions and observations I expect them to have no impact whatsoever. I am also more than happy to be proven wrong. I am also not casting aspersions on your fine work AsmodeusLore, but looking at ways in which an already excellent process might be made even better.
The wed. articles from this last week were 2 days late. I came down with a flu. Hoping it was H1N1, so I can at least get in on the media hype.
Anyways, it laid me up for a few days. Appologies for the delay.
No apologies on account of being unwell, sir. Although perhaps this adds evidence to the suggestion that someone else should have had the capacity to take over when you were incapacitated.
As for the missed article that my memory was prodding me about, I have now tracked it down. The article was the Dragon 376 "Adventurers in the Realms : Tamarlune and the Windrise Ports". I can find no evidence of either an announcement or official discussion thread for this article, only an unofficial thread started in "D&Di General" on the day of release (26th June 2009) asking where it was.
This is an article I remember because I follow FR materials first and foremost. I am not, therefore, about to suggest anything about whether this is a one time absence or not. You did ask for an example. This, I believe, fulfills that criterion.
In truth, that capability exists, and Asmo even tried to take advantage of it.
He let me know he wasn't going to be able to do the news, so I told him we would handle it for him.
My schedule at work and home has been jam-packed to the point that I'm starting to fray around the edges, so I let MB know Asmo couldn't do it.
Unfortunately, he was home taking care of his kids who also had the flu. In short, it was a perfect storm.
Hindsight being 20/20 - MB and I should have tapped others, including up to WotC_Trevor to handle it for a day or two, but that didn't happen.
No apologies on account of being unwell, sir. Although perhaps this adds evidence to the suggestion that someone else should have had the capacity to take over when you were incapacitated.
There are a few others that have the capacity to take over when AsmodeusLore can't. Myself, WolfStar, and Mudbunny.
In truth, that capability exists, and Asmo even tried to take advantage of it.He let me know he wasn't going to be able to do the news, so I told him we would handle it for him.
My schedule at work and home has been jam-packed to the point that I'm starting to fray around the edges, so I let MB know Asmo couldn't do it.
Unfortunately, he was home taking care of his kids who also had the flu. In short, it was a perfect storm.
Hindsight being 20/20 - MB and I should have tapped others, including up to WotC_Trevor to handle it for a day or two, but that didn't happen.
Nobody let me know... 
Last Wednesday I think I was twiddling my thumbs, or watching paint dry. I can't remember.
I use to check the next morning to see if it was done, I'll start doing that again. AsmodeusLore had been consistant for so long I kinda stopped.