The Wizard of Oz
[A candid peek behind the curtain Q & A with the Administrator of ReVo]
Hello Everyone, and welcome to the Emerald City! This will be a candid, behind the scenes, one of a kind look at how things are run here on ReVo and just what goes into the day to day and everything that we do, and we’re going to kick this segment off this month. Each month (or more than once a month depending on how we adjust things later) I will be fielding questions sent in by you guys either to myself (on the forums) or the ReVo account (also on the forums) or directly to Smurfy or Rivers to pass on, and attempt to offer as much insight into things that I can, as candidly as I can.
While it is that I may not be able to answer every single question that is floated in my direction, I will attempt to address each one that comes across in some fashion. We do after all, have to keep some tricks of the trade behind closed doors.
So without further ado, lets go ahead and jump into fielding some questions and get candid.
Q: Now that you’re back to work, how does that change the time constraints, do you ever feel like it’s a second job?
A: Yes, because it is. It always has been. But moreover while that sounds like a complaint, it’s not, because it’s a labor of love. A passion project if you will, and there’s an old saying, ‘love what you do, and you’ll never work a day’. As far as time constraints goes, it definitely changes things, but that’s why we have a team. We try and provide as much around the clock coverage for everything that we can, though it does slow down the turnaround time on some things. Some things are a little more involved and can’t be done on the side or on my phone, or everyone’s at work, so it gets taken care of when we’re available or at home.
Q: Following up to that, how does that affect your roleplay time?
A: What roleplay time? *laughs It does a lot, and that isn’t an excuse not to do it, but there are some days when things are really busy that you just wanna go somewhere where NOONE knows your name *snickers* Its like Murphy’s Law, where it never fails, getting out and involved into some roleplay or just chillin and something happens that needs to be fixed. It comes with the territory though, and is what we signed up for, so its kinda like knowing what you’re getting into from the very beginning. Even when in a room or chilling and rping there’s usually multiple discord messages being passed and things being worked on behind the scenes, being updated, etc.
Q: Have you ever went with a chatter suggestion or put something into the site that you didn’t necessarily agree with or think would work?
A: This might be my favorite question for this month, and makes me chuckle, because the answer is absolutely yes. From site rules to room innovations, we’ve pushed a lot of boundaries over the years. Though it’s not often when an idea is brought up to Cabinet that it gets veto’d, especially when we know its something that the chatters want (if its something that can actually be done), but sometimes we might feel it might not work in the long run, or its a little redundant, but if its for the greater good, we do it. Sometimes they work out, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they get iterated on again and again and turn into something completely new or are tweaked and then ‘BAM’, you have that ‘huh, should’ve thought about that earlier’ moment, which is always cool.
Q: How do you guys decide when to run drives for the site?
A: We’ve had this question before, (not here in the blog) but the answer isn’t too complicated.
Whenever we want!
>.>
<.<
Ok not really. We usually try and run them twice a year, sometimes it could be three. Sometimes this can coincide with holidays, site events, or something else, but we usually try and have it spread out over the course of the year to assist in financing the site when it’s needed. This usually coincides with like ‘springtime’ and then maybe something in the summer, and then around the time of our Anniversary in November, though we will often try and tie that one in with something for the holidays since they’re so close. The site of course costs funds to run and is solely funded by the memberships and purchases that come into the site. We do these drives in order to finance the site in chunks just in case something were to happen out of the ordinary so that we can ensure that we stay operating (like the pandemic, etc).
Q: How much time actually went into coding? Because sometimes the ways the rooms work amaze me
A: Allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the hours. *laughs* I’m not a coder. I dabble. I know some things. But when Q started ReVo the chat software that we purchased (the same pretty much everyone else uses) was already old and antiquated (which we’re working on fixing), at least in the way it looked. But we wanted it to look sharper. The old rooms didn’t do what we’d wanted them to, and so we started with the layout. Many hours of testing on a private copy of the whochat for a couple of weeks straight just to get the layout and look right, then taking what was learned and applying it towards other little things and touches in the room. Some things came later, but never really easily, such as the file manager and the code’s manager, connecting them to all the rooms, adding previews, etc. The little touches were something we were very excited about, and worked on the coding for the site before we even initially launched for almost a month straight. Work during the day. Meetings during the evening. Coding all night long. Then after that, it was a few more months of adding things in phases, constant testing so it didn’t break anything. There were many nights of staying up all hours of the night until I was finally able to run into Q’s office at 5am and yell I DID IT! I figured it out! Only to see her eyes light up with joy, then summarily tell me she broke the site. That’s when the coffee came in. But there’s a lot of little things out there and available in the rooms that a lot of people don’t even realize, and its fun when they find them out (I’m looking at you, revo world, zenpad, and other things).
———
So that’s another sneak peek behind the curtain for our second installment of The Wizard of Oz and hopefully (surely), there’s plenty more questions that people might come up with, or thoughts and things that they’d like me to expound upon in upcoming segments. I’m also open to taking suggestions and feedback for this format and willing to branch things off and talk about my thoughts on other things you guys would like to hear about.
Until Then.
