Forum:How to run the News Team Application Page System

So, branching off the recently closed forum Proposal for News Team additions, The News Teams application page currently lacks any form of guideline on how to accept New Memebers, What to look for in New Members, what you can use to understand if an applicant could be beneficial to the News Team, etc. This forum aims to simply implement a system for reviewing and accepting new News Team members, and nothing else.

There have been some ideas as to how to accept New Members to the news team. One I particularly like comes from the formentioned forum, and was posted by Drkdragonz66:
 * "For the people who want to become news team members, we give them 2 old news things to write a 'mock' blog post. If the blogs are agreed to be good news blogs by a number of existing news team members, then they are given news blog membership and we put them on the list of the people on COD:NEWS. I'm gonna suggest we need 3 out of the five "founding" news team members to start (out of Bovell, COD4, N7, Smuff, and me) to approve the application, the ammount of members needing to approve the person applying increasing as the news team grows."

Other ideas could be things such as a "trial" period. Where a user, after a consensus has been met by the Senior Members of the News Team, is accepted and given a sort of 1 month trial. If they perform well during this month, they are given full membership in the News Team. Or it could be as simple as the senior members of the News Team voting to accept a user.

A final piece we have to work out, is just who gets to vote for these applicants acceptance? Currently, the App page is run by 5 senior members, but thats out of an 8 person News Team. It may be more fair, and possibly even an easier process with less fighting and headaches, if all News Team members are granted a vote.

Let's just try to find a system that works, and that most of us can be happy with. 04:39, April 27, 2012 (UTC)

Discussion
I like Drk's idea, and I believe all News Team members should vote. 04:41, April 27, 2012 (UTC)

I like Drk's idea, but not the part about re-doing old blogs. All our blogs are up to standard, re-doing an old blog well will look like a copy-paste, and even if it's not it's far too easy if you're working off a guideline. I feel we should have applicants do new news, either if they find it, or someone passes news to them and than they make the blog. If the blog is good standard than it shows the applicant can make a blog well and shows the user is active, as they were available to make the blog. If the blog was poor than a senior member can remake the blog and said applicant is no longer considered for that time frame. This seems to be more fair, as I could just find one of N7's old blogs where he's used his bad grammar and spelling jokes and correct that and I've made a good quality blog with no real effort. 13:29, April 27, 2012 (UTC)
 * But they will pass the blog to senior news team members for evaluation first right? I don't think we'd like the categories crammed with a lot of test blogs. Another thing: What should be the cap for the number of news team members? I can't see every single member fighting to write the best blog post. 14:57, April 27, 2012 (UTC)
 * If you mean re-creating news blogs those won't be categorised. If you mean my test blogs idea it would be on real news, which is new, to which seniors will assess. Also I believe it was discussed that only a few should be added for now.
 * There shouldn't have to be a "set" cap, as it should function like Blog Patrol. When a new member is needed, they can be added. 16:30, April 27, 2012 (UTC)

I strongly oppose anything involving "practise blogs". The subjectivity involved is far too high. 18:04, April 27, 2012 (UTC)
 * But what else would we do? Just open up the half-assed Application Page? I think the practice blogs would turn out to be much more efficient. 21:24, April 27, 2012 (UTC)

Did we ever establish the "community blog" thing? Joe Copp 21:15, April 27, 2012 (UTC)

I like Drk's idea. We can see if the people know how to write a news blog and it doesn't compromise the current news. Leon S. Kennedy AKA Shepard 21:24, April 27, 2012 (UTC)

Drk's idea looks like the way forward. 10:11, April 28, 2012 (UTC)

Urgh... 10:13, April 28, 2012 (UTC)

Drk's idea is pretty good, they need some way to operate it.

I'm going to say I also like Drk's idea, but only if the test blogs aren't actual blogs. They should be either sandbox pages or emails. Joe Copp 10:48, April 28, 2012 (UTC)

Per Joe. DrRichtofen (  Talk  ) 17:42, April 28, 2012 (UTC)

What if instead of old news blogs, making 'fake situations' to make a news blog about as a test? I.e. Activision would confirm MW4 (of course, the picture wouldn't have to be real, just a random pic) via a tweet. 17:49, April 28, 2012 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't work, we write our news blogs off other articles. Making up a situation would mean blogs would be written without context. The mock blog would be a test of iterating news clearly, not a test of creativity. 18:22, April 28, 2012 (UTC)

Like I've already said, testing off of fake news or old news isn't enough, if we're going to use test blogs they need to be real news, if it's good enough to please the team, they're on, if not it gets redone and said user can't do news until they try out again. 19:33, April 28, 2012 (UTC)
 * The test blog doesn't have to be about Call of Duty you know. 23:24, April 28, 2012 (UTC)
 * My thoughts exactly. Give them a world news topic to write about. We can't control when a new Call of Duty-related news statement will occur, so we wouldn't be able to regulate that for use. Joe Copp 23:34, April 28, 2012 (UTC)

I'm concerned that people are supporting this idea. An ideal news blog applicant would have blogs available that can be looked at. You can also judge someone's ability to write from their edits as a whole. Why the hell do we need some pretentious "test blog" system when it clearly isn't required?

What's more, the subarguments put forward just won't work. Old news blogs? Not hard to just look up whoever made the original blog and copy off of that. New news blogs? They're for the existing news team. Nothing proposed is a coherent idea. 13:00, April 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * Which brings us back to "The test blog doesn't have to be about Call of Duty." 13:05, April 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * Having a standardized system of test blogs would allow us to avoid any sort of bias when reviewing someone's ability to make a good blog or write well. Like Smuff said, it's completely unnecessary to require that the blogs be about CoD. Joe Copp 01:41, April 30, 2012 (UTC)
 * Per Joe Copp and Smuff. What we would be grading here is the applicant's ability to create news blog, which can range farther from simply the Call of Duty series. 04:24, April 30, 2012 (UTC)
 * But we're trying to gain members who will write about Call of Duty  . So they would need to write a blog about Call of Duty to be judged properly. You can't just get them to write about whatever the hell there is to write about, that's a non sequitur and makes no sense at all. Not to mention that it goes directly against shot's "standardised" idea, which is a fine idea, but simply cannot work when you want to have people write about whatever the hell there is to write about. Because how can you standardise the system when people can write a test blog about anything?  11:58, April 30, 2012 (UTC)

My suggestion is that we have the IRC decisions just as we do now, just that we have an "interview" of sorts with the applicamt on IRC. 06:00, April 30, 2012 (UTC)


 * Not a good idea. Plus people will rage and go mad on IRC again. DrRichtofen  (  Talk  ) 15:48, April 30, 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Cod4, having applicants recreate a blog would be far too easy, or would end up looking too copied (how does one make a good quality blog of a good quality blog and make it look different?). Also, it's irrelevant what news the applicant does a blog on, in the end any news worthy of a blog would be done by the current team. I'm certain if we can choose blog patrolers, who also have no way of proving their ability to do that job (no normal user can delete blog comments) I'm certain the current team can elect new members among themselves. But if we do end up going down some test blog route, don't elect recreating old blogs, it's simply a redundant idea. 08:09, April 30, 2012 (UTC)