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I'm finally at home now, recovering from travel and figuring out how to do my job better for BGG News. After (sort of) taking time off, I've realized how much time I was spending doing things that are somewhat news-related – e.g., adding external links to rules or a publisher's game page, adding forthcoming games to the BGG database despite me not planning to write about them on BGG News, adding component lists, fixing wiki formatting on everything related to new games – despite those things not being core to my job. My job, by the way, consists of (1) posting game news, previews and other things on this blog, and (2) creating and maintaining preview GeekLists for Spiel, Gen Con, and other conventions. Lots of tasks are involved in getting that work done, but I've been spending so much time on peripheral things – curse you, latent OCD and not-so-latent completionist tendencies! – that I've not been doing the best job that I can related to BGG News.
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Thus, I'm now looking for a few good news minions, dark or otherwise. After all, in my constant research and web-surfing I run across dozens of games that have been recently released or are forthcoming, yet they're not in the BGG database. I want them all to be listed, for both your sake and my sanity, but all the time I spend doing that takes away from what I should be focused on.
I've made a few haphazard efforts in the past at finding help – such as my "Add These Games to the BGG Database" GeekList and my "Not Necessarily the News" blog – but am now interested in working more closely with a handful of BGG users who are interested in submitting comprehensive game listings, updating existing game listings, or taking on projects related to particular companies. Admittedly, these games will not be glamorous front-page-worthy items – well, all games are equally special, but some are more equally special than others – but the work will net you Geekgold and keep you on the forefront of what's being released by publishers the world over, mostly because you'll be swimming through the data side-by-side with me and trying to figure out how to possibly keep up with it all.
Does this sound like something you want to do? If so, email me at the address at the top of this blog. Please use "BGG News Minion – (your name)" as the subject line to make it easier for me to respond to you. Once I hear from a dozen or so people, I'll call a halt to further submissions – update, 2/22: Halt! – then go into more detail as to what's involved, how I hope this process will work, and whether my ideal set-up matches up with what you want to do here on BGG. Hope to hear from you soon!
• I've maintained a BoardgameNews Twitter feed for years, and currently the feed sends out links to items posted on BGG News. In addition, I sometimes post news tidbits on the feed: items that feel too small for inclusion in a BGG News post, yet still big enough to be of interest to some. All of those Twitter posts are then posted on my Facebook page, with me sometimes going onto Facebook to also post links to crazy art-related videos or other obscure things. If you've signed up to receive news posts through one or both sources, super, but I do want to let you know that BGG has its own Facebook page, and the BGG News posts are repeated on that page should you care to follow/like that page instead. I'm not sure what else we're doing with the Facebook page – I think we've done polls there perhaps – but perhaps once Facebook has truly established itself, we'll figure out some additional uses for it.
• Related to the travel commentary above, I've fallen terribly behind in answering emails, especially from those who want to submit designer/publisher/developer diaries to BGG News. I'll respond to everyone in time, but do note that I'm leaning farther away than I have in the past from diaries for games on Kickstarter or other crowdfunding sites. In general I'd prefer to publish a diary when the game is already available or about to hit the retail market so that I'm not publishing a diary for a game that might change prior to publication or – heaven forbid – never be released at all.
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