Greeting
Hello folks, for those of you who don't know me, I'm Director Xnemth of ARK Community Relations. You may remember a similar thread here in the past posted by my mentor and former Director Saberharth, as the information in that thread is outdated I felt it important to replace it with more current information.
In the previous thread Saberharth announced the ARK Reporter Program who's sole purpose was to bring focus to the player community and myriad activities that YOU as players do to make Rubi-ka so much more real.
You'll also probably remember that shortly after launch the program went quiet, returned briefly, and went quiet again. Sadly that was due to real life issues taking it's toll on our volunteer group in CR. I'm quite happy to inform you that our staffing issues are handled, and new progress being made in many areas.
Current Status
I'm very pleased to inform you that in the time period from 18 July 03 to now, the reorganization, retraining and staffing of the new CR Department, combined with a new focus, and additional support from the ARK Manager Lucien has allowed us to get this program back on track and keep it there!
The Reporters have been very active lately, covering player events, conducting interviews, and reporting story information as it develops. The end result as you can see in this forum has been a number of interesting articles which I truely hope you enjoy.
There are still some issues being worked out internally about the reporters program, but these issues are things we're presently working to solve and are, as you see, working around so that we continue to produce fresh content for you.
Being Addressed:
--Lack of Clan Reporters - Added Sept 5 03
Function of Reporters
As I said above, the purpose of this whole program is to bring you, the player, into the spotlight and share the roleplaying accomplishments of other players with the community for all to enjoy. It is these stories and events that bring life and a sense of greater reality to Rubi-ka, and it's our mission to help you stay informed.
In short:
-- Provide coverage of player run events.
-- Create articles based on this information and post it publicly here in 'The Buzz'.
-- Publish Content by sending stories to popular AO Fan sites for your ease of browsing. Several sites presently offer compilations of all articles to date. This list of sites is expaning. More on this as it develops. - Added 4 SEPT 03 STATUS: Presently sending new articles to aostratics and aovault. Other fansites that wish to be on our mailing list please email crsubmissions@ark.anarchy-online.com subj: ATTN Xnemth Mailing List
-- Provide coverage of story related events to help you keep track of what's progressing in the greater scheme of things.
-- Provide Faction spun articles.
-- Provide social roleplaying opportunities while out 'hunting' for a good story via player interaction at popular hang out spots etc.
Contacting us
We look for player events by searching the Player Events Calendar primarily, and if a reporter is available to attend a function or finds something that is particularly interesting, they make an effort to attend.
Many that I've contacted amoung the RP community are hesitant to publicly proclaim their work due to the increased harrassment issues. I completely understand.
Those who wish to submit an upcoming event for consideration to us by email may do so by clicking HERE. Please use the following subject heading: ATTN ARK Reporters - followed by either 'Request' or 'Feedback' depening on the nature of your email. Example of a email subject request for reporter presence at your event: ATTN ARK Reporters - Request
REQUESTS: Please include the date, time, server name, and location of your event along with a summary of what's expected.
Please bear in mind that right now we only have a handful of reporters available, so coverage is limited by staff size, and more importantly, time zone. Thus we are unable to cover all requested events, please don't be discouraged. We're working to increase the size of the program and thus coverage, but a few things must be handled first. Additionally, a reporter presence does not guarantee a public write up.
This email address is a temporary solution to the problem of secure contact, and will be replaced by a submissions tool on the ARK Public Website as it's redesign nears completition.
Questions
Can a non ARK be a member of a particular reporters group?
Non ARK staff are not able to be part of the on world organizations, or on the official Reporters Staff which is Administrated by the ARK CR Department. THOUGH in the future player submitted articles may be published through this program, this is still under consideration.
Can we (players) submit articles to be posted through this program?
Presently our editing staff is very small, so not at the moment. I'm looking at ways to increase our capacity there, and potentially look at posting some player written content. If you have the time and really wanna give us a hand with this project, might I suggest signing up for ARK? *winknudgegrin*
What sort of activity can we expect to see from this program?
Once again, although the CR Department itself is quite large now, the editing staff, and number of trained reporters on hand is still small. Daily updates simply aren't possible... right now. At the moment we're focusing on expanding our abilities and staff. With new story events happening quite a bit lately we're trying our best to keep up. I can't set a number, but I'd like to say you'll see increasing activity from us over the next few weeks.
More questions or thoughts? Please feel free to post below with your questions, comments etc. Please keep your remarks civil and mature and I will do my best to answer and keep this up to date.
Respectfully,
Reply With Quote
. Having seen a bunch of these wonderful folks in-game, and read every word they've written, I have to say this is one of the most awesome ideas I've seen.
very nice to see more greenies walking around.
See ya soon.
