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Note: Bold text is for proposed ideas that were heavily agreed upon.
July 21 2007 Meeting minutes:
- Introduction: Echelon thanks attendance. Acknowledges attendance as part of the 1% that contributes the majority to SW. Special recognition to DrBob, Dan, Blendmaster, DukeRuckley, Skizzerz, and Teddy.
- Rules: Procyon explains how the proceedings work. Moderated during echelon’s topic introductions, timed unmoderated discussions follow.
- Echelon lays out agenda, mentions reaching top 10k sites in Alexa as major goal.
- Increasing traffic: Questions raised about SW’s readiness. Posters definitely seen as a worthwhile pursuit. Do not spam sites. Direct-marketing over mass-marketing. Survey (poll) newcomers about how they learned of the site.
- Increasing contributions: Make site more attractive to potential contributors, make community seem fun. Stubs are heavily debated, seen as both good and bad. Contact bloggers? Contact game fansites and ask members to contribute to respective game guide. Intro video, possibly in Flash or FLV.
- Forums: Essential to building a community. No phpBB. Code our own, or use existing software? Two requirements for the forums: 1) common look/feel with SW, 2) Common user database with single sign on. Forums per single game vs. per series? User created vs. admin created? Possibility of "trusted user" with "request" privileges. Talk pages would be kept (for guide construction discussion.) Post ownership discussed, potentially under GFDL, but ultimately not needed.
- Homepage redesign: Want to be easier to navigate and appeal to new users and SEO optimized. Look at other sites for inspiration: Wikipedia, GFAQs. No advertising for abxy (yet). Simplify. Rotating featured guide. Apeal to a variety of game-genre fans (e.g. RPG, FPS, Classic, etc.) Community Portal under used. Use of portal page. Use of Flash considered.
- Finance: AdSense not cutting it. Procyon meeting with Advertising.com on Monday. Not putting ads everywhere. Paypal donation button highly recommended (many times). Need money for: Servers, ad compaigns, future endeavours. Amazon referal "Buy this game" Debating non-profit vs. for-profit. Distinction between contributors/editors and SW staff.
- Regular meetings: For now, the last Saturday of every month at 2pm, unless major schedule incompatibilities arise. Next meeting @ Aug. 25th 2pm (planned to be much shorter.)
- Number of admins vs. users: General consensus that ratio is pretty good right now, and round-the-world coverage is decent.
- Committees: Committee leads nominated, not yet completely formed. Committee leads to meet with echelon approx. twice a month (short updates on non-staff meetings)
- New user committee (welcome message and guides): Lead - Skizzerz nominated and accepted
- Look and Feel committee (content standards): Lead - DrBob nominated
- Front page committee: Lead - Teddy nominated
- Awareness advertisement committee - Blendmaster nominated and accepted.
- Ratio of SW admins to ABXY admins raised and postponed due to Echelon and Ness absense.