Recent low activity

[Samantha]

Ah, looks like things around here never change. I can't really comment because I never go on any fansite or forums anymore. But from a quick glance it seems HFFM has improved in activity, not the opposite way round.

Thus, to say that it is impossible to improve Habbox is stupid. Looks like HabboxLive is doing alright, it could do more and when I visited the perm shows page, sadly I saw none. Also, the actual HxL website looks like a bad nightmare and needs upgrading or merging urgently. Listeners seem not too bad and have improved under Jade. However, I believe HX can still hit 80 + listeners at a regular basis, there just needs to be some fun things advertised clearly, and of course things like perm shows. Also, can we not have these stupid alpha, beta groups listed out on the staff list; sure, have it as your groups but I'd rather have DJs split into UK, International/ North America + Oceania (1 section) on the staff list. Finally, there needs to be something figured out with the high turnover of DJs, it's been a problem for about a year and a bit with 20 DJs coming in and 20 more quitting and being fired, which is really bad! However, I congratulate Jade and Ms. Woodsy for holding it on the right track- keep it up look forward for even more improvements .

If news (and I don't know this seeing as I don't check and cba to check) still cannot get its act together and get articles posted quite quickly, then yeh close it down and replace it with a bot. It's been like this for a while, so it's silly to keep a department that posts articles 3 days after everyone else has done so. Now don't jump on me, but if all you're doing is rephrasing articles posted days earlier on the forum or by Habbo, then there really is no point. I understand staffing concerns, but in that case have a news feed replace people. It's a shame, but there's no point dragging it on, unless there are substantial plans or efforts going on to turn that around.

As for the said moderator who said that Habbox is doomed, I'm surprised that you even have a job here with your attitude and your smug comments towards new members is the last anyone should expect from a moderator. I don't see how you can possible defend this "strong opinion" and still believe in HX to stay in your job. That's sheer hypocrisy.

I don't know if I can mention this yet but maybe news doesn't get posted quickly due to the amount news reporters or should I say content staff (writers) have to do. Some people can't manage 2 per week but they try and most of the time they succeed, we've got some people returning and hopefully they will be quicker - I know I get news out as quick as I can, the amount of times I've beaten the forum members since Christmas is good by anyone's standards, same goes to others in the department too. It shouldn't be a bot because where is it going to come from? Habbo doesn't do articles anymore so how would it get published?

@FlyingJesus; your recent comment about news, have you been reading articles and not other news reports? If I saw a report with commas after every word it would be edited quickly, we have 3 senior content staff at the moment and they can all edit and it does get done.

---------- Post added 03-04-2013 at 10:12 PM ----------

I don't see why habbox does news other than habbo(x) to be honest

If i want a review on tech (assuming by janice mentioning "techy"), i'm not going to (nor is anyone really) going to listen to a view of a teenager over somewhere like cnet, techradar etc

If I want to read current affairs BBC news, Sky news etc is always going to be most peoples first choice and it's always going to be more accurate (having a news sections where by staff are just copying news (by copying I mean viewing something on Sky news then posting their own version on Hx, not simply copy and pasting) from other news sites has always seemed pretty pointless)

Habbox should stick stricly to Habbo and Habbox news.

---------- Post added 03-04-2013 at 09:14 PM ----------

also while i notice, why doesn't a manager require the same name as their habbo

If they manage a content department: content, forum then they don't need one.
If they manage a community department: comps, rv, hxl, events and hxhd then they do need one.

---------- Post added 03-04-2013 at 10:16 PM ----------

oo thanks musta missed that

---------- Post added 03-04-2013 at 07:15 PM ----------

Ok on the topic of news actually, I'm just interested if anyone would be interested in these sort of things which we could do -

--> techy stuff like jake was doing and should be doing now he's back again
--> trade advice and investment advice sort of articles based around habbo like back when I did market watch (I know that had a lot of interest back when I was doing it and had quite a lot of comments about it)
--> more sort of opinion based articles about certain topics that will hopefully be very interesting to read and will involve an accumulation of ideas and opinions from other people as well as writer, editorial sort of things basically.
--> any other stuff really

Also I do believe in the fact that a forum for news articles to be also posted into would be of utmost benefit for us really so will definitely talk about that with matt, have been thinking about that for a while quite a bit after all. Tbh reading the results of the survey have boosted my hopes a lot more though woo!

No, we don't need a forum, I suggested that we have a tab on the forum to link people to the news reports we've written, once clicked they can choose the topic they wish to read and they then can see a list of them - this would then enable them to post with their forum account on the site, something that could be done and would be beneficial.

Sorry, but haven't you read past threads in news? We were all against a forum for articles as it wouldn't do anything, what's the point of having a thread in news and rumours and in this new section of the forum - it's not needed. Also, it's just making seniors work more when we've just had to triple our workload, I can't see many staying if you do that and I wouldn't be happy with it in the slightest. If I remember correctly, seniors would need moderation perms in that forum and I doubt that would be allowed.

[Zelda]

Is doing the tech stuff worthwhile though? In short-term and long-term. No offence to Jake but say If we went by the survey itself and the answers people sent in. It seems quite a lot of people don't care for any other news apart from mainly Habbo itself.

I not really sure it is myself it's just something a few people have brought up to me so was just interested to see if anyone has any interest in it. From reactions though and like the feedback probably isn't I have to agree, just thought I might as well mention it anyway.

---------- Post added 03-04-2013 at 10:37 PM ----------

No, we don't need a forum, I suggested that we have a tab on the forum to link people to the news reports we've written, once clicked they can choose the topic they wish to read and they then can see a list of them - this would then enable them to post with their forum account on the site, something that could be done and would be beneficial.

Sorry, but haven't you read past threads in news? We were all against a forum for articles as it wouldn't do anything, what's the point of having a thread in news and rumours and in this new section of the forum - it's not needed. Also, it's just making seniors work more when we've just had to triple our workload, I can't see many staying if you do that and I wouldn't be happy with it in the slightest. If I remember correctly, seniors would need moderation perms in that forum and I doubt that would be allowed.

If you read the feedback or what other people have been saying It is quite clear we do. People don't want to go onto habbox.com to read the news cause either it won't load for them (reasonably common), or just cause of how laggy it is/radio etc. I don't see anyone against a forum except you in news atm and what is the extra workload for a senior here when it's the staff themselves just c+p'ing the article into there once they've posted it? doesn't even need to be seniors doing it.

[Samantha]

I not really sure it is myself it's just something a few people have brought up to me so was just interested to see if anyone has any interest in it. From reactions though and like the feedback probably isn't I have to agree, just thought I might as well mention it anyway.

---------- Post added 03-04-2013 at 10:37 PM ----------



If you read the feedback or what other people have been saying It is quite clear we do. People don't want to go onto habbox.com to read the news cause either it won't load for them (reasonably common), or just cause of how laggy it is/radio etc. I don't see anyone against a forum except you in news atm and what is the extra workload for a senior here when it's the staff themselves just c+p'ing the article into there once they've posted it? doesn't even need to be seniors doing it.

We need to edit twice, it's not going to look good going 'last edited by Samanfa at 00:00' is it? Then it could easily be edited again etc. yeah it's laggy but I'm sure it's doable to have a pop up of the news article, especially if people are just using the short story option?

[Zelda]

We need to edit twice, it's not going to look good going 'last edited by Samanfa at 00:00' is it? Then it could easily be edited again etc. yeah it's laggy but I'm sure it's doable to have a pop up of the news article, especially if people are just using the short story option?

hrm that's something we'll have to consider but at least once you have edited the report you can then copy the report again so you don't at least have to look for everything again. I suppose requiring us to edit first and then having us copy over could be an idea especially now there is 5 of us but that is stuff we'll have to all consider when putting this through i suppose. I still think it is a necessary option to get though

[Grig]

I not really sure it is myself it's just something a few people have brought up to me so was just interested to see if anyone has any interest in it. From reactions though and like the feedback probably isn't I have to agree, just thought I might as well mention it anyway.

---------- Post added 03-04-2013 at 10:37 PM ----------



If you read the feedback or what other people have been saying It is quite clear we do. People don't want to go onto habbox.com to read the news cause either it won't load for them (reasonably common), or just cause of how laggy it is/radio etc. I don't see anyone against a forum except you in news atm and what is the extra workload for a senior here when it's the staff themselves just c+p'ing the article into there once they've posted it? doesn't even need to be seniors doing it.

I am against a forum. We had it in the past and it failed, news got attacked for being annoying and that is because HxF is structured differently from other fansites, we already have a Habbo News section where people post before news does. The forum made people extremely annoyed and starting telling myself and Martin to remove it, so we eventually did. It was too glitchy, it served no purpose considering Habbo News was already posted by other people in a format that would allow better discussion.

This works on other fansites like ThisHabbo because this is how they were structured from the off-set.

It's been tried and tested and didn't work, so I don't see the point of trying and testing it all over again.

[FlyingJesus]

No, we don't need a forum, I suggested that we have a tab on the forum to link people to the news reports we've written, once clicked they can choose the topic they wish to read and they then can see a list of them - this would then enable them to post with their forum account on the site, something that could be done and would be beneficial.

That is essentially a messier backwards version of having threads which are shown on the main site

Sorry, but haven't you read past threads in news? We were all against a forum for articles as it wouldn't do anything, what's the point of having a thread in news and rumours and in this new section of the forum - it's not needed.

There doesn't need to be a separate section, you could have some official news tag that only staff can use if it's that important to them but as you say there's no point having a thread in news and rumours (or Habbo news or whatever) and one elsewhere, so why do we do that with the site? It makes far far far more sense to host all discussion in one place (and clearly the forum would be the best venue for that) and then on the site it would simply be a case of copy&paste and instead of a comments box a link to the forum thread for discussion. That way as I said before people would actually read the articles and get involved, and it would give some validity to the role of news reporter which quite frankly there isn't at the moment

I am against a forum. We had it in the past and it failed, news got attacked for being annoying and that is because HxF is structured differently from other fansites, we already have a Habbo News section where people post before news does. The forum made people extremely annoyed and starting telling myself and Martin to remove it, so we eventually did. It was too glitchy, it served no purpose considering Habbo News was [is] already posted by other people in a format that would allow better discussion.

This works on other fansites like ThisHabbo because this is how they were structured from the off-set.

It's been tried and tested and didn't work, so I don't see the point of trying and testing it all over again.

Previously we had a stupid bot which posted every single article it could find and clogged up the forum, I don't think anyone's advocating for that this time around. The part I've emboldened explains why in its current format the news team is utterly pointless, which could be solved with the above suggestion

[Foregetfuhl]

Obviously I'm going to base my argument here on HabboxLive. I've been reading with interest over the past of days and have been thinking long and hard about HabboxLive. Our listeners are average. But I know we can be reaching those 50+ maybe even 80+ if we were to go about everything how we have planned with short, mid and long term goals. They are pretty much dead on the same as HFFM as ThisHabbo everytime I check them other than when they have their giveaways or what not.

Unfortunately we've been told that we cannot host giveaways or win a room's etc. when there are events on as they take priority so don't say we should host more of those when DJs obviously are being told to advertise events that are on. I know many of the DJs (Popcorn, Curtis, Sarah, Markster, Myself) all have Giveaway rooms but we need to obviously make use of those. I wanted to speak to GM about this actually to get rights to at least book events for HxL because at the moment I have to go through events management and it is generally a pain.

I know we need more events but it is hard when I don't particularly have the funding to do so and we don't get a whole lot of donations anymore either. Hopefully we can get the DJs to start helping a little more with that. Many of them have with a 24hr Giveaway we have planned for tomorrow-Saturday. I try to sell lottery tickets too but usually to no avail other than to the DJs, and that usually ends up on DJ point rewards. (a system we have in place to reward those who do exceptionally well every month). Obviously HabboxLive suffered a tremedous knock before myself and Jazz were put in place and I genuinely feel it is recovering. Many of my short term goals have been achieved and work for our long term goals if ongoing and will hopefully come about.

Many of our DJs are good quality DJs, especially with some of the trialists we have had coming in. I give it that some may not be up to par but we are currently doing things about that. We regularly host feedback sessions and each month every DJ can expect to receive help in numerous ways other than reports. We have trialist mentoring schemes done by the seniors and as Grig may remember we also have the feedback PMs. I know Grig mentioned we have DJs coming in and out like there is no tomorrow. Unfortunately that is what HabboxLive is like and it's just one of those things. At the moment we have a pretty stable team and around about 15-20 international DJs can't remember of the top of my head so this side of things has incredibly improved since October.

Weekly shows are back, we do have two in place at the moment and are currently going through some more with DJs at the moment. Habbox Comps are going to be starting a weekly show which should be fun starting next Friday and Jack does a cool remix weekly show on Sunday. I believe Mark was looking into a game show type of thing and a couple of the seniors wanted to do a breakfast show on Saturday. We also have an idea for a chat show and even a podcast being set up at the moment. We're trying to get everyone to work around eachother so it's not 5 weekly shows on a Saturday rather than on odd days throughout the week.

I know before Jazz departed she was in talks with Jan about stuff for news and habboxlive so that is something I will continue to talk to Jan about so hopefully we can get something there. We're already having a 60-second news update being done everyday now which went quite good yesterday so hopefully will continue. I haven't been able to put them up is all because 1) We don't have graphics yet and 2) I only just received access to that again yesterday. I've wanted to update HabboxLive for ages but I'm not a coder and I presume that if I asked I would be told no point we're waiting on v7. So obviously we just work with the very old layout we have, which I 100% agree needs a revamp.

At the moment we now have a semi-big event every month until September planned so it's just a matter of working those out again and sorting them out. Obviously with Jazz leaving it's thrown a bit of a everything into the air kind of thing and I'm kind of running around trying to work out where to go from here but we'll get there thats the main thing.

The teams idea was put in place on a suggestion from Bethie and I do quite like it because it creates a nice little interdepartmental competition every week between the DJs when we have the weekly leaderboard posted to see who has done the most slots or got the most listeners etc. Obviously when people look at habboxlive.com and they see team alpha, bravo and delta they may think 'What on earth is this?!' but it's more for the benefit of the DJs and it doesn't appear on Habbox.com in that way. Obviously it would be nice to have them just appear under where they are from on hxl.com but yet again, coding and it would have be completed switched around as the panel takes from their team name and the DJs are all mixed together instead of having a distinction between ints and uk. If anything this has created a better connection between all the DJs as they all talk to eachother and get on well which I KNOW that is not the case at other fansites.

I know 100% that HabboxLive has it's flaws but at least we are trying to fix them and improve them which is the main thing as far as I'm concerned. The radio hardly ever has down time now except for maybe early morning slots but we only have two AU DJs so that is to be expected. As far as I'm concerned that is a push in the right direction for sure. We'll get to a point that I'm sure everyone will think HabboxLive has improved for the better, for my personally it isn't what it should be but I know for a fact as a department we are doing the best we can with what we have and that it will continue to improve day by day.

[Zelda]

Tom js though I definitely agree with a lot of what you are saying, I really wouldn't call it a redundant role. The results of the survey sorta back that up too, think the numbers were around 43 read always 28 sometimes 23 don't , something around that off top of my head so its not like people don't read it, more that its just people who use forum don't read the news, only people who dont use forum which is why we need this sort of thing to boost people reading it who usr the forum.

[FlyingJesus]

And also to bring those who do read it onto the forum and therefore into the community, win-win

[Chug!]

Obviously I'm going to base my argument here on HabboxLive. I've been reading with interest over the past of days and have been thinking long and hard about HabboxLive. Our listeners are average. But I know we can be reaching those 50+ maybe even 80+ if we were to go about everything how we have planned with short, mid and long term goals. They are pretty much dead on the same as HFFM as ThisHabbo everytime I check them other than when they have their giveaways or what not.

......

I know 100% that HabboxLive has it's flaws but at least we are trying to fix them and improve them which is the main thing as far as I'm concerned. The radio hardly ever has down time now except for maybe early morning slots but we only have two AU DJs so that is to be expected. As far as I'm concerned that is a push in the right direction for sure. We'll get to a point that I'm sure everyone will think HabboxLive has improved for the better, for my personally it isn't what it should be but I know for a fact as a department we are doing the best we can with what we have and that it will continue to improve day by day.

I won't quote it all, but seriously everything here is so true.
I hope staff members will start to become more involved, within the community; going down to these events, advertising habbox and habboxlive (&even the forum!) on the hotel. People seeing habboxlive will make people think 'o wow, habbox? I've heard of that!' and tbh even people who are new to habbo they will want to know what it is. Get people engaged! Although we can't all do giveaways or events when we'd like to, we can advertise and join in the ones the hosts are planning, and tbh thats what the hosts are there for!

Coming from a different fansite, to Habbox most recently I know what other fansites are doing, and ways in which another one gets there listeners, and yes.. it is through mainly giveaways, BUT, alot of the listeners I get are through loyal members who like listening to a certain DJ or a certain fansite. Get people interested in Habbox, and KABOOOM we got more listeners (And not just ones who bugger off every so often!)

Yes, Jazz has left over the last few days, but that doesn't mean Habbox will flop? Jade does an amazing job as Radio Manager (and tbh most fansite radio managers have just ONE area to cover, eg. UK or International!) She does it all. So, obviously she will need the help of donations, support on the hotel, advertisement etcetc. Let's get Habbox rolling again !

xx.

And also to bring those who do read it onto the forum and therefore into the community, win-win

This.