Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping ^_^

Because I'm required to spend time on a lot of other parts of the site (feature development, training moderators, etc), I don't have time to run these sorts of clubs - but they're ideas I've had for awhile, and am here to ask the community if any of you have interest in helping create or run these club/s ^_^

Specifically, I have two ideas in mind - they could potentially be the same club, or maybe split apart into two if people have a strong desire to do one or the other. I'm open to suggestion on how they'd be run, anything - I'd love for the community to work together on how they would best work, and for a few people to run each of them ^_^

1) A 'welcoming' type of club. the idea i had was that club members could welcome newcomers to the site (the 'users' homepage has a list of people who joined that day). I think you'd agree that seeing friendly faces when you join a community is always a great thing :)

2) a 'we're here for help' type of club. These might be the same clubs because I think 'welcome to the site' and 'let me know if you have any questions' sort of go hand in hand, and new folks often want help with things like setting up their lists or figuring out site features.

Ideally this would be a large team (or teams) of people who love Anime-Planet and want to help out people with questions, or just help people feel welcome. This would hopefully mean I get less private messages/profile questions and things to me directly, most of which I never have time to respond to :/ you'd be the club I'd send people to if they need help figuring out something, etc.

Other random notes/ideas:

-I could get a badge created for both the admins of the club, and for members of the club. In theory (i think this is set up already, i just need to make sure), the club admins would be able to award these badges to the club members themselves, without needing me to do it

-We'd need a good handful of people to run each of the clubs - this way if people are gone/lose interest, there's others to keep things going :)

-We'd have a subforum in the clubs section, including potentially a mod section where the mods could brainstorm projects/plans

-The mods could decide if they want to do projects on the site that awards TACO points (or something else) to the members who do the most

Any other thoughts/ideas? Is anyone interested in this, etc?

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

I'd be willing to help. I could do that welcoming club thing.

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

I personally would be happy to be a part of the second club. The first sounds like it would be something of a time-demanding club, so I can't say I'd be terribly helpful there, but I would be happy to help other users out if they need anything. :)

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

I'd be interested in a "help" club thing, I'm always interested in helping people ^^

I'm used to having a thread or such open indefinately to check =P (I haven't left R C-C or LT for a year or so xD)

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

Would like to be aboard the second one, at least. First one sounds a bit demanding unless the welcomes would be spread out over the members or something like that, since welcoming that many people per day... well...

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

Hey.. I haven't been to active on the site.. But it's a great site and I was looking to get some web experience so I'd be keen to help.. could do either :)

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

I think both club ideas should only make one. What's the point of "hiring" people only to giving a friendly welcome to newcomers? There's already a section in the forum to introduce oneself, how big of a difference would it make to create a club? It makes sense if the club includes your second idea ("we're here to help"). Friendly faces as you join the forum? Isn't it already happening because nice people post something in the "introductions" part of the forum?

Except from that, I'm willing to help if I can. ^^

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

one idea i just had, there could be a fake person entry that coudl be set up on the site just for helping. joining the forum can be a hassle (until we get the accts merged), and maybe daunting for a newcomer. if we had an account whose purpose was helping (for example, anime-planet.com/users/help) (the name of the user being 'help'). one of the mods could have access to the account (or both mods, or whatever), and then the 'helper' club could just pay attention to the comments left on that account's profile, and whoever sees it first could go answer the person on their page.

so the scenario would be, if we had two clubs, the welcome club could go around and always give a link to the 'help' user account if they have any questions at all about the site. the user could then go there, ask any questions in the profile, and the help team could just monitor the acct and reply to the person ^_^

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

greg - i mean on the site, not the forum. lots of folks don't know about the forum, don't realize you have to have two accounts, etc. this would be a group that would welcome people on the site (User Community - Anime-Planet <---the new users). yes, some people might introduce themselves, but a lot won't/wouldn't. this is us coming to them.

i can tell you from experience over the last 10 years that when people are welcomed to a site personally, and see that it's a friendly community, it greatly impacts their desire to stay. i say this having left messages like that myself (especially when i had more time), and watched when others did so, as well. the response was 99% of the time extremely positive, people often were surprised that someone was actually reading their profile, they immediately felt welcomed, etc. trust me, it works :)

funari: yeah i wouldnt see the welcoming club as being all 'every person has to welcome everyone else every day'. there could be a 'division of labor' per se, or it could even just be a volunteer thing when you have time, having a 'statement of intent' for the club, something like that^_^

i can indeed see why having two clubs might help for different users' interests. some might like the simple hello type welcome messages, others might want to volunteer more time to help peopl eget through problems/show them how to do things.

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

sothis said:

one idea i just had, there could be a fake person entry that coudl be set up on the site just for helping. joining the forum can be a hassle (until we get the accts merged), and maybe daunting for a newcomer. if we had an account whose purpose was helping (for example, anime-planet.com/users/help) (the name of the user being 'help'). one of the mods could have access to the account (or both mods, or whatever), and then the 'helper' club could just pay attention to the comments left on that account's profile, and whoever sees it first could go answer the person on their page.

so the scenario would be, if we had two clubs, the welcome club could go around and always give a link to the 'help' user account if they have any questions at all about the site. the user could then go there, ask any questions in the profile, and the help team could just monitor the acct and reply to the person ^_^

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Sounds like one possible solution to get help to the site-side users as well. And kind of like for the ClaimingClub where I made the dummy-account all editors could access, it makes transferring the "position" to other people seamless.

There should still be a forum section though for the forum-side of things.

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

agreed - nothing would change in the forum, this would just be the easy place to point people to. what im thinking is the bio for that account could contain links to all of the common questions/issues that people ask, such as the links to the anime/manga help threads, a blog post somewhere that shows how to register for the forum, info on setting up anime lists (drahken did a great post about this), etc

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

Sounds like a really good plan, I vote "aye" for that.

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

Habhome said:

Sounds like a really good plan, I vote "aye" for that.

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I second the idea.

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

just as more ammo for why this is a good idea (the 'help' club), out of all of the comment form submissions i receive, probably 95% of the ones that arent spam are things easily answered in the forum. either an anime/manga that's out of date, asking how to change a username, asking why they cant log in to the forum (they dont know about the two accounts), etc. i get so many of these that it keeps me from working on other features, plus given everything i'm doing i often forget to respond at all.

i think the combination of welcoming (shows we're friendly here :)) and simultaneously pointing people to the 'help' user means that questions will be answered before they'd get to me, and everyone would be happier with the site in the process!

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

sothis said:

just as more ammo for why this is a good idea (the 'help' club), out of all of the comment form submissions i receive, probably 95% of the ones that arent spam are things easily answered in the forum. either an anime/manga that's out of date, asking how to change a username, asking why they cant log in to the forum (they dont know about the two accounts), etc. i get so many of these that it keeps me from working on other features, plus given everything i'm doing i often forget to respond at all.

i think the combination of welcoming (shows we're friendly here :)) and simultaneously pointing people to the 'help' user means that questions will be answered before they'd get to me, and everyone would be happier with the site in the process!

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Yeah, the welcomers should say something like:

"Hi! Welcome to the site! *personal comment if there's something interesting in the bio* If you need any help then feel free to drop a comment at *link to help account*"

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

I would love to help welcoming people. I already try to do it as often as I can, so this would be great.

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

sothis said:

greg - i mean on the site, not the forum. lots of folks don't know about the forum, don't realize you have to have two accounts, etc. this would be a group that would welcome people on the site (User Community - Anime-Planet <---the new users). yes, some people might introduce themselves, but a lot won't/wouldn't. this is us coming to them.

i can tell you from experience over the last 10 years that when people are welcomed to a site personally, and see that it's a friendly community, it greatly impacts their desire to stay. i say this having left messages like that myself (especially when i had more time), and watched when others did so, as well. the response was 99% of the time extremely positive, people often were surprised that someone was actually reading their profile, they immediately felt welcomed, etc. trust me, it works :)

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Alright, I get your point, I always see AP's site and forum as both being indiscriminately part of the same great thing with is Anime-Planet, thus I didn't understand the meaning of the "welcoming club".

I agree with what you're saying when it comes to being welcomed personally. It's really different. There's a great community in AP, that's actually why I stayed in the forum, it'd be too bad if people didn't know that because it wouldn't be "transparent" enough.

sothis said:

i think the combination of welcoming (shows we're friendly here :)) and simultaneously pointing people to the 'help' user means that questions will be answered before they'd get to me, and everyone would be happier with the site in the process!

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*Agrees* You get my vote! ^^

Count me in the "Welcoming club" if this idea comes to life. By the way, how do you plan on starting this club? Did you think of a way to train mobs/members?

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

what i'd ideally like to find is a few people who would be interested in running both (others would be members, but i'd like to find a few people who actually want to run it - meaning in the future they'd be the ones to be proactive and start conversations with the members about ideas/projects, assign badges, recruit new members (or have a plan for that and delegate to others), etc).

i could create the subforums for the clubs and also help brainstorm and together all of the members/mods/me could come up with how we'd want people to get started, what sorts of things should be said, any of that. i can help out at first, but yeah, the goal is to have people who are willing to run it :) this way you can run the club without me (i can pop in from time to time and help too ofc, or help with decisions if people cant decide, coding help for features we might need, etc), which means you can do more autonomously and i can work on site features instead :D

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

sothis said:

what i'd ideally like to find is a few people who would be interested in running both (others would be members, but i'd like to find a few people who actually want to run it - meaning in the future they'd be the ones to be proactive and start conversations with the members about ideas/projects, assign badges, recruit new members (or have a plan for that and delegate to others), etc).

i could create the subforums for the clubs and also help brainstorm and together all of the members/mods/me could come up with how we'd want people to get started, what sorts of things should be said, any of that. i can help out at first, but yeah, the goal is to have people who are willing to run it :) this way you can run the club without me (i can pop in from time to time and help too ofc, or help with decisions if people cant decide, coding help for features we might need, etc), which means you can do more autonomously and i can work on site features instead :D

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Count me out of the running the thing option. I'm not exactly cut out for that sort of thing. Be happy to be a member though.

Re: Looking for volunteers to run one (or two?) clubs, for welcoming ppl and helping

I wouldn't be too reluctant about being one of maybe two or so in charge, I've been running the Claiming club before for some time, and I was active in the Stalking club which was aimed at making people feel welcome and otherwise entertain members =P

You know who I am I guess, and if you think I'd be fit for it I'd be willing to give it a shot ^^