Behind The Scenes At TSA

Regular readers of TheSixthAxis will be used to occasionally seeing these kind of posts by now. For those of you who are more recent converts to the wonders of TSA, we like to keep everyone informed of what’s going on behind the scenes. We’ve had some changes to staff, some issues with features and we’re looking to the future in a couple of other areas.

Firstly, and most importantly, the personnel changes. Lee Cash (Kovacs) has departed the site and the entire field of games journalism. He’s not leaving the industry though, he’s got a job in the industry where we’re sure he’ll put his considerable talents to excellent use. He has also assured us that he’ll still be dropping in on the comments section as regularly as he can. I’m sure you’ll all join us in wishing him all the best with his new job.

That left a considerable gap to be filled at the head of our news team. Thankfully, we have Dan Lee, formerly the Assistant News Editor, ready to step into the breach. Dan is a dynamo and has such a fantastic attitude to the industry and to the job that we’re lucky to have him on board. We’re positive that he’ll do a wonderful job.

Aside from that, we have a few more casual contributors you may have seen around. Jen Allen is a freelancer with considerable abilities and achievements already in her career. I had admired her work for sometime before finally managing to get her to submit some reviews to us and I’m very pleased to have her associated in some small way with the site.

Likewise, Lee Bradley has been attending the odd preview event on our behalf and submitting excellent quality copy that we’re sure you have enjoyed and will hopefully continue to enjoy for the foreseeable future.

Our Community Team has changed shape slightly with Colin leaving to concentrate on family and his hectic start at university. We wish him well and have assured him that there will always be a warm welcome at TheSixthAxis should he ever want to make a return to action.

After a period of evaluation, it was decided that the Community Team was in need of some more clearly defined leadership. With that in mind, we have asked Adam (AG2297) to become our new Community Manager, working with Stefan (teflon) as our Assistant Community Manager. Both have answered the call and are already working hard  in conjunction with the rest of the Community Team to intensify and further coordinate community events.

Following a series of popular guest submissions, Toby (Dexter17) has made the transition from community team member to regular contributor and will be providing his usual thoughtful articles roughly once a week. This left something of a gap on the Community Team and Adam and Stefan recently set about finding the best candidate to fill that space. James (JamboGT) was finally approached to add his influence to the team and has graciously accepted.

There will also be one or two new members of writing staff added over the coming weeks, when we’ve finalised the details. So, when you start to see the new names popping up on stories feel free to offer them a warm welcome and we’ll make introductions around that time.

Now, to the bad news. Some of the community features we have been working on are proving difficult to implement. It’s taking us longer than expected to get everything running smoothly so at this point we thought it wise to advise you that we will probably roll features out gradually as we did with the pinned posts feature and test it for a period of time before admitting that it’s a fully featured part of the site.

I can assure you that amongst those plans are the introduction of some way to filter comments so that you can turn off the visibility of comments from people you don’t want to listen to. We hope that this will dissuade the arguments that we’ve seen breaking out a little more over the past few weeks as tensions are high and we’ve had something of an influx of new members who aren’t used to the way TheSixthAxis community behaves.

Finally, I’d like to make special thanks to one community member who has always gone above and beyond in an effort to contribute in an engaging, interesting and entertaining manner. Bunimomike agreed to act as a forum moderator for us a while ago and since then has gone on to provide advice and guidance to the Community Team, graphical assistance for competitions and he’s even stood in on the podcasts while Lewis is unable to attend. He isn’t formerly a staff member but I think his contribution to the site is worth making a special note of.

I often receive emails from members with suggestions for how we could improve on things and what features might be welcomed. I read them all and, though it’s often impossible to reply fully, every suggestion I receive is given careful consideration and often tested and eventually implemented into the site.

As ever, we continue to make every effort to provide our valuable readers with regular gaming news updates and multiple original, interesting opinion articles and we appreciate the loyalty and support you offer us every day.

Oh, and while you’re here: It also looks like TSA might have some sort of presence at E3 this year. Beat that, Kevin Butler.