Other Features The Smog Interview

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a fairy

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Birkal told me to post this here, C+P from a PM I sent him.


[Bir(d)kal, I came up with an idea for a [recurring] Smog article that I'd like to get your input/permission/rejection about.]

We have two interview formats in the Smog currently. One as an overall interview, interviewing people high up in the ranks of Smogon. Admins, SMods, Moderators on occasion (and Loki), and the Artiview (or however it's spelled :/) which interviews the active artists that contribute to the Smog and other places. However, aside from the Contributors page, nothing is really set in place to recognize the people who do a lot of work behind the scenes - article writers, HTMLers, grammar checkers, people who help Oglemi with ideas for the top 10 articles, the Smog Staff, and others as well. (I didn't mention artists in particular because ium has a good series going with those guys.)

If you would like some examples, here are some questions for hypothetical interviews with some contributors.

- ium [only because he can't interview himself in the Artiview, and his contributions go much farther than art, otherwise I would have left him to be Artiview'd]
1: You're a rising star, coming out of nowhere to pretty much replace Alchemator in the Smog, except you can draw well. What happened?
2: You run the Artiview. Can you explain what that's like, from picking/asking people to come on, to the actual interview, (and adding flavor)? [I dont know if he does the flavor or not for the Artiview.]
3: If Alch came back, would you give him back your articles freely, or would you see if some collaboration was possible?
4: What's the background behind the name ium?

-Olgemi
1: You're known for doing the Top 10 articles, were there any ideas you wish you could do but were too controversial?
2: Explain your relationship with user Jellicent in five words.
3: Are there any criteria for picking the Top 10, or is it just 'anything goes'? How does this affect your opinion when people suggest Pokemon for whatever Top 10 you are doing?
4: Why'd you pick the name Olgemi?
5: Is there any article you wrote that you felt you could have done better, or after re-reading it, disagree with?


-Zystral
1: You've been here a while, and you've generally only done Trivia. Aside from when you couldn't do it and had to let another contributor do it for you, do you think you'd ever willingly give up a issue of Trivia if you were there to do it?
2: What happened to the TGC articles you used to do, with or without Mekkah? Do you plan to do more in the near future?
3: How easy/hard do you generally make your questions? Why?
4: As one of the most - if not the most steady contributor to The Smog, do you have any hints to anyone who wants to help contribute without overwhelming themselves?
5: What's a Zystral?


-Bir(d)kal
1: Explain what BIRDKAL is, and why you haven't changed it back to Birkal yet?
2: You're pretty new to Smogon, yet you already help run The Smog. What do you do at The Smog, and how did you get there so fast?
3: If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
4: During your time here, was there ever a decision or an article you regret?
 

Birkal

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Lady Salamence has expressed interest in writing another article too. We'll keep in contact about which one he'd prefer to write; I'll only allow one until the first one gets finished. Seems only fair!
 

Birkal

We have the technology.
is a Top Artistis a Top CAP Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributoris a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
Talked with Lady Salamence about this tonight. He's not going to be doing the Smogcraft article, so this is his main area of focus. Glad that is cleared up.

Now, the primary concern that I had with this is that we already have two consistent interviews each Smog: the big interview and the arterview. While I'm not inherently opposed to adding another intervew into the mix, I'd like to spice things up a little if we were to go ahead with this. It can be something as minimal as interviewing multiple people or as complex as making it some sort of Q&A with the community. I don't really know the best way to go about adding something extra, but I'd like to see some extra "zest" to make this unique. I don't want the interviewees to waste their time on something that isn't special or valued by our readers, y'know?
 

a fairy

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Yeah, I have no problem with that.

I was originally thinking about doing something like a interview where the community can send a PM to me or something on who they want interviewed and for me to ask said person a question. However, I'm worried that another 'The Well' incident will happen, where a group of people will stack the odds for a specific user to be interviewed for whatever reason.

I realize I can go ahead and say I don't have to take suggestions, but that takes the 'special' part out of it...

I am perfectly fine with doing double-interviews or whatever works, but unless there is a way around the above problem or a solution, I'm going to go with double-interviews if the article is approved.
 

a fairy

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ok i cant edit the above post so:

should the article be approved, what i'd like to do is have a double article for the first interview, and if it's re-approved, go ahead with the community input thing
 

Birkal

We have the technology.
is a Top Artistis a Top CAP Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributoris a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
I talked with Jumpluff about this, and I think we're going to say no to this article. Between the actual interview and the arterview, we're covering ground with a lot of users being interviewed each issue, especially now that it's monthly. This idea just doesn't break enough new ground to validate writing.

If you have any other ideas for The Smog though, please feel free to submit them!
 
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