rydenius wrote:In light of discussion on the preceding rule ratification thread (New Project Startup Guidelines) related to handling site-wide Recent Updates reporting, I'm wondering:
Should chapter completion reporting be a responsibility that should be added for Project Managers? If update notices are posted to a central "Recent Updates" page by the Project Managers, that would save the person running the Twitter and Facebook feeds a lot of effort trying to keep track of when a new chapter is finished. It could also be useful in that Project Managers could then delay the update notice in order to give editors time to edit and quality check a newly posted translation.
In an ideal world, that would be nice.
But from a practical standpoint, people (especially people on Baka-Tsuki) are really lazy. xD I don't really believe it that even if we made it a rule, people would go along with it. I can imagine the faces of half of our project managers grumbling if they're told they need to post the updates to a central location. I even know projects who don't even post their update notification to their own project updates list. xD In the end, it wouldn't be utilized universally, and then we'd have a dead-weight rule that really isn't really followed.
As much as possible, I'd like to stick with natural rules. Baka-Tsuki kind of regulates itself, and I've been trying to write rules that reflect
what we do, rather than
what we should do. Why? Mostly because of ease of transition. A lot of things are changing nowadays, and there's no real imperative to double the amount of bureaucracy on everything. As a matter of fact, I'd prefer to minimize the expansion of bureaucracy as much as possible.
No one here wants more work if they can avoid it.
TBH, it actually doesn't take that much effort on my part to do the tracking. It's about 3 minutes a day to scan the recent updates page. I also have plans to recruit more individuals to do this job... (preferably a reader, not a translator/editor), so if I ever retire/vanish the system doesn't collapse.... @_____@;;;;;; But yeah, we'll discuss that later in the future. xD If and when the blog goes up again, perhaps I can get a more effective recruiting drive out... audition some people... and fire the ineffective ones >:D
rydenius wrote:Additionally, thinking about the "Requirements and Responsibilities" section and detailing what the Project Manager duties are, the draft seems to be mainly "requirements" and not very specific in the way of "responsibilities". Are there specific responsibilities that it would be good to enumerate here? Maybe as sub points or appended to this line:
You must be a dedicated contributor of the Project, meaning, you frequently monitor the project and read all of the contributions that are made to it.
Monitor the project and... do what?
Also should the "what" to be monitored for be detailed? Or is it better to just leave these things vague? (Surely the monitoring is for disallowed material, maintaining compliance with the guidelines, and resolving issues between editors and translators, etc., but are those things that should be made specific in the guidelines?)
I'm not necessarily in favor of any changes here, just throwing it out there since everything was going so smoothly on the ratification...
Well, different Project Managers perceive and act upon their role differently.
Some Project Managers are control-freaks and extremely detailed. In their cases, "monitoring" means scrutinizing every diff for
every change with a magnifying glass, be it (+3 characters) or (-1). If they see something they don't like, they march onto the user-talk pages right away and give a very feisty talk.
Other Project Managers are laid back. These ones don't necessarily freak out over edits they think aren't stylistically ideal, but they keep a watchful eye open, even if they don't check every minor edit to the project. They perceive their role more-or-less to coordinate the contributors and resolve arguments, perhaps less as an individual who enforces rules. Project Managers have the capacity to change the default Baka-Tsuki guidelines for a project, but these ones may not even want to.
People have different personalities and different opinions about what a Project Manager sure do. Sure, maybe one is better than the other, but I'd like to give as much freedom as possible to baka-tsuki members.
Under these guidelines, Project Managers have power, but
they also have a right not to exercise the power if they don't want to. IMO, this kind of flexibility is important, and I eavesdropped on a conversation between OH&S and Cthaeh yesterday that confirms my opinion on this (OH&S was taking Project Manager roles for Index). Some Translation Projects just aren't as suited to one person in absolute power over the others.
I really approve of the way they handled the situation, especially the way that they sat down and clearly delineated what they expected from each other. Every Project is different, just as much as every project staff is different. There's different needs, and the best way for handling things for one project isn't necessary the best for all others.
In short, Project Managers can do a lot if they want. They can also do very little, if they want.
Their most important responsibility is to
act as a contact point and
resolve conflicts should any ever occur.
