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*Zoone16* · 06-05-2020, 04:30 PM

(1865 words. Ready for grading)

Hello SHL,
A few weeks ago, I put out a survey to see how the SHL Media grading/team was perceived. You were 59 to respond to the survey. That is way more than I expected to respond and I am infinitely grateful to everyone that took the time to answer this. So without further ado here are the survey results:

Feedback

Generally speaking, how happy are you with SHL Media grading?

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Overall people are satisfied with the way SHL Media grading is going with 57% of respondents stating they are satisfied or more. This is a pretty big difference when looking at the 10% of dissatisfied users. Globally, this is a solid result for the SHL Media team that can be improved upon in the future.

Do you agree with the following statements?

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From these four questions, we were looking to see which areas of SHL media grading have been improved upon and which ones needed further improvement. It’s good to see that people are noticing that articles are being graded faster and overall a global improvement in all aspects has been shown. More interestingly, the voting was decently split over fair compensation on articles. For people that want to discuss on this subject, leave a comment below sharing your opinion.

Do you have any feedback for the team?
Other than the usual ‘good joib, you’re doing great, no, N/A” answers lets look at some of the answers that I found most interesting:

Quote:- bump the podcast pay up to the sim league standard of $4,000,000 for an hour instead of $3,000,000.

- I have not actually done media in about 2 seasons cause the rate we get cash from media is disheartening. Perhaps it has improved but I would hope it has in that amount of time too. A small nitpick would be rounding the money up. That usually means I lost 30-80 words at times which sucks cause that can add up considering how many medias I used to do.

- I would like to see more bonuses for content that shows people are really putting an effort into realism, such as fleshing their players out into more realistic humans that make the league feel more real. For example, around draft time, I think people should be rewarded more for profile pieces that obviously took longer than regurgitating the same "here is what this team needed. Here is what this team drafted" that's been written about several times (and even in that category, there are some pieces that obviously show more effort than others).

- Please reward spread sheet work properly. Mass rambling seems to be worth more than spread sheet work which is crazy. If not expect to see a lot of poorly formatted copy and pasting in the future to pad word count if thats what gets paid.

- The method of grading can incorrectly miss older articles if they are bumped to the front, as was seen with fitted. So rather than sorting the forums by "last active" date, you ought to sort by posted date, or something, if you can.

From the first four comments, I do see an emerging pattern that correlates to the fair compensation spread above and I’ll go a bit into detail into my thoughts on the matter:
- Podcasts – It is true that when pay for them was initially set, that podcasts weren’t all that common as a medium. With the rise in quality podcasts it might be worth looking into better compensating the podcast community. The user proposed 4M/hr. Is that fair? Should it be more/less/the same as it is now? This is something I’d like to hear from podcast creators. One thing that I am NOT looking to change is the time per week cap. Contrary to popular belief, we do listen to podcasts when grading and the longer a podcast goes, the more it strays off-subject. Now I don’t mind going a bit off-subject, but when it constitutes 20 minutes of your 60 for the week, that’s when it gets iffy in my eyes.

- Articles – personally I think that the current base rate per word is definitely in a good spot. I would say that the main issue people have is on the bonus side of things. Since bonuses are subjective, this is up to the grader itself. I have always preached that rounding up and giving bonuses should be a factor so that users continue to pump out quality media.

- Spreadsheet work – This is a risky subject. A lot of what people want us to grade is just a list of all players with ‘a bunch of numbers’ next to them. To some this takes time to build, and to others it’s just a matter of semi-automating it. So where do we stand on the matter? It’s a mixed bag honestly. I do want to find a way to better reward users that put in the time with spreadsheets to make quality media out of it. I do not want to end up giving people word count just for listing all the players ever made since Season 1. If you have a better solution than the current rule about spreadsheets, do let me know.

How regularly do you read or listen to SHL Media

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I was extremely pleased with these answers. The fact that over 60% of users read articles in SHL Media regularly shows that there is an interest for all sorts of content. The SHL Media (and SMJHL Media by extension) are a core part of the site that needs to continue being nurtured by dedicated members churning out quality content as inspiration.

What is your preferred SHL Media format to read?

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In retrospective, this question would have been better put as ranked choice. However, from what we can see, written articles are the core part of the SHL Media experience, although podcasts have taken almost 20% of people’s preferences, mostly due to the fact that they can be put in the background whilst doing other tasks. Of note, no one prefers pressers (not even media graders).

What is your preferred SHL Media format to submit?

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Going hand-in-hand with the previous question, people much prefer to submit written articles. Pocasts take a similar 15-20% chunk of the submissions with three users stating they prefer to submit pressers. An equal number (3) to that submitted ‘other’ stating that they like multiple formats to submit. Not much to look into here but good to see that the responses correlate to the responses of the previous question.

Events

Do you agree with the following statements related to the 10-Year Anniversary event?

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Ok so let’s get it out of the way right away. Yes, I forgot to remove a question whilst editing and had a few people have fun at my expense for that. But I am glad to see that you all agree that the event was. Simply was.
Onto the more interesting questions, you overwhelmingly enjoyed the 10-year anniversary event in all it’s aspects. From it being a good idea, to enjoying the themes for the two weeks, to the quality of the articles, it all went well. On a personal note, I enjoyed seeing people reminisce about the past and in general, felt the quality of media articles was up on the whole.

Do you participate in Double Draft Media events?

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Whether it be regular media or double media, a lot of you participate at this time of the season. We can definitely tell on the SHL Media grader side of things with pages of submissions awaiting grading often reaching out past page 5. A lot of you take that time of the season to fill up your war chests for the coming season. Please please please, do not submit articles past 10k words. It gives us graders nightmares to read that. Much easier to have multiple small articles. (no but seriously, it’s traumatizing to see ‘15k words, ready to grade’ alongside a giant wall of text.

How often should there be Double Media events (disregard Double Draft Media)

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Now I’m not sure if I expressed myself correctly when writing this question (English is my 4th language after all), but the results were definitely the most spread out of all questions in the survey. From people thinking that Double Draft Media should be the only ‘double media’ event to people wanting it much more regularly (up to monthly or bi-monthly… crazy). This is the most ideal set of results to look upon and reflect what could be done.
Overall, I’m all for adding another double media week that varies from season to season, on top of keeping the draft media week. The 10-year event was a great platform to test out the format and since people enjoyed it, I don’t see why we couldn’t repeat the experiment down the line. To pair with that lets look at some of the responses when I asked about potential themes with my thoughts in brackets)
- Awards (Can be done. Maybe not ‘current awards’ but awards & awards history could work)
- First Generation Players (Covered to some extent in the 10-year event)
- Playoffs (I do like me some playoffs content. One of the better choices in this list)
- Trades & Trade Deadline (GMs please trade more players to make this have more content)
- Unsung Heroes (Could work. Might be a bit too vague by itself)
- Player Profiles (might be coming soon through SHL History department)
- Hall of Fame (
- Team Histories (past locations, team HoF, retired jerseys etc…)
- In/Out of Character (RP your character)
- IIHF (love me some international rivalries. One of the better themes here and easy to implement. Only concern is overlap with Draft.)
- Mid-Season / All-Star ‘Week’ (Could be worked out better. But I like the theme)
- Rivalries (player and/or team could be interesting)
- Past PTs but expanded (might be touchy with the PT team. Would have to look into that)
- Choose your own adventure (hard to do as media. Who do you pay out? Everyone individual? Nightmare for graders. The OP? unfair for the collaborators. Overall better suited as a PT but not as media.)
So what will happen with this? Will we see another double media event? Absolutely. As to when, I’m still sorting out the details and timing. It might not be this season, but from the one onwards.

So what’s next?
I am thankful to everyone that participated in the survey. It really helps to situate where things are from everyone’s perspective. It was interesting and eye opening to see where the areas of improvement were and I’m looking forward to seeing points brought up here discussed in the comments.
Rest assured that following these discussions, steps will be taken to further improve the SHL Media experience. More opportunities for people to express themselves through themed media weeks, better idea as to what people want improved (bonuses and money. Yes we know, but besides that). At the end of the day, we’re all here to enrich the SHL and the global experience for past, current and future users.

Cheers,
Zoone.

***Ohtaay*** · 06-05-2020, 05:15 PM

Big fan of the themed media weeks, feel like there are a lot of unique content posted during them.

Cheers

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