View User's Journal

Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

if you grow intolerant to change, you'll be left behind
So.... as I slowly come out of my funk, I'm trying to remember to keep track of things. I acquired the planner on Saturday, and immediately wrote things in, but remembering to check it and keep using it since then has been sporadic. I found myself writing things in this morning that I had decided on Sunday. >>;;

Gaia's got a lot of changes going on, obviously. I'll make a few brief notes on the two major ones.... well, let's go with the less controversial one first, shall we?

Gaia gets a new look... again
As annoying as it always is to get used to a new layout and the changed functionality each time that they do this, I always try to keep in mind that it always IS a fucntionality change as well as a new look. Usually when they have a major overhaul of the way the site looks, they're also incorporating new functionality for something which wasn't possible to implement with the old layout. Which is of course, why they won't ever provide a way to 'switch back' to the old layout.

The preview looks interesting... and I like the removal of the changing art logo. On the other hand, it looks rather dark compared to the Gaia environments we've had previously. Heralding the battle system, perhaps. It's fine for me, since I like dark colors, but I find myself wondering if there will be hue and cry about the dreariness again. I remember there was at a previous update when they went a bit dark.

All in all, the layout/new style doesn't seem either good or bad to me. It's just another step towards achieving the functionality that is desired. Function matters more to me than how it looks, so until I try it out, I won't be able to say whether or not it's better or worse.

Mod Applications
Oh dear, that brings me to the controversial one. Well, honestly, I think that every community must switch to a volunteer system that allows people to make it known that they are willing to volunteer once they reach a certain critical mass at which the method of current staff feretting out individuals to train into new staff becomes too slow to keep up with the needs of the community.

I mean, when you start falling behind, you are left in a downward spiral with no way out unless you change methods. Since work is piling up, current staff has less and less time or none at all to search for new staff, and so less new staff is brought in, thus meaning that the work piles up even more.... and I do think that Gaia probably reached that critical mass about two years ago.

Of course, there are good and bad ways to implement such a system. Since I haven't directly experienced Gaia's, I don't have a whole lot to say about it at the moment. I will say... that I hope they've finally done a few things internally that sorely needed to be done. Otherwise, they may have a larger team, but they will still have a terribly high turnover rate.

**********

Annd.. that's pretty much it from me for now. I'm going to climb back into my near-solitude for a while.

Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

More Information