Liz is Departing

[rob]

Over the past few years, Liz has established herself as a prominent force here on the forums and our social media. However, as the adage goes, all good things must come to an end. Liz has chosen to pursue an opportunity in another industry, and her tenure with Lone Wolf will be ending this Friday, April 22nd.

I’d like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Liz for all her hard work, and for always managing our amazing community with aplomb. Her positive energy was felt by everyone, and she will definitely be missed. We all wish her the best as she ventures off into an entirely new pursuit.

Unfortunately, Liz’s absence will be felt in a more tangible way as well. Lone Wolf is a tiny company. As such, it is simply impossible for other staff members to absorb everything Liz has been doing without it having profoundly adverse effects elsewhere. So I want to provide a heads-up on assorted changes that everyone will be experiencing as a result of Liz’s departure.

• The forums and other community-focused aspects of the company (e.g. social media) require regular care and attention, which Liz ably handled. That care and attention will be greatly diminished in Liz’s absence. We will likely be less responsive to issues until Liz can be replaced and that replacement gets up to speed. Social media will potentially experience a comparatively bigger delay, since Colen and I will be the ones taking over the responsibilities, and sites like Facebook don’t factor prominently into daily routines.

• Part of Liz’s duties included the occasional need to “play sheriff”, spotting threads that have become inappropriate in some way and intervening as necessary. We won’t have Liz’s watchful eye, so we’re requesting everyone to help us stay abreast of any threads that violate forum rules (e.g. language, disrespect, non-constructive, etc.). On the forums, there is a convenient “Report Post” button in the lefthand pane that features a red-bordered triangle. Feel free to even report posts that look like they might become contentious and lead to forum rules violations. That will flag it to our attention so we can take a look and monitor the thread more closely. Reporting a post doesn’t get anyone in trouble – unless they deserve it. All it does is make us aware that we need to take a look ourselves. We’d rather have users with an “itchy trigger finger” reporting a few false alarms than to have a thread get out of hand because we weren’t able to pay close attention like Liz has done.

• We’re also instituting what some will consider a change in policy in regards to inappropriate posts. In the past, we’ve been pretty accommodating when forum rules are violated, using stern words and issuing lots of warnings. That’s going to be changing, since we don’t have a “sheriff” anymore. Violations of forum rules will now receive little tolerance. First-time offenders will typically still receive a warning, but repeat offenders will be met with more decisive handling, which will usually involve being banned for a suitable period. These situations arise very infrequently, but they can quickly get out of hand without close monitoring, and our lack of someone to actively monitor things dictates this change.

• Complex technical support queries will likely have slower response times. However, simple and relatively common things like license reactivations should not be appreciably impacted.

• Liz served as the primary point of contact for numerous groups, whether it be data file authors, marketing related, licensing focused, or a host of other things. Those responsibilities are being absorbed by Colen and myself, which means they will now be competing for attention with all of our management and development responsibilities. As such, our responsiveness will not be what everyone has become accustomed to.

• All consumer-focused communications have been Liz’s responsibility. This encompassed the monthly newsletters, important news updates, videos, and a whole lot more. Things like the monthly newsletter will be taken over by Colen and myself, but more time-intensive things will simply have to be dropped. For example, without Liz to invest all the time and effort in creating the Realm Works Spotlight Series videos, there is no way to continue them at this time.

• Liz coordinated all the logistics for conventions, such as PaizoCon and GenCon. Liz’s absence will deal a severe blow to the smooth operation of those events, and we’re still figuring out how to adapt. There’s four months before GenCon, which may seem like a lot of time from the outside, but it actually isn’t when planning something of that magnitude. We’ll get GenCon sorted out, but events like PaizoCon are significantly more problematic due to the very short time window to make adjustments.

I’m sure that there will be other areas where Liz’s departure will have a material impact, but those are the big ones that leap to mind right now. The bottom line is that things Liz previously handled won’t run as smoothly or efficiently for a while – at least, until we can find a suitable replacement and get them up to speed. Please keep this in mind over the upcoming weeks and months. Your patience and understanding is greatly appreciated!