The ScoutLink Global Youth JOTI Review 2007 is a document that look at many peoples oppinions of JOTI from a #youth point of view, perticually focusing on the postive and negatives of JOTI from a operators perspective.

When reading this document please remember that this does not include everyones opinion and it should not be used to predict what your JOTI experiances will be like. Also remember that this document focuses on #youth and not other channels, where the JOTI experiance may of been completly different.

ScoutLink Global Youth JOTI Review 2007

Overview

This year’s JOTI went well, however there were some mistakes and areas for improvement. This new #youth-trefoil channel was a success even though the number of users in #youth was down.
The allocation of temporary operator rights was reasonably smooth but, again, there are some issues that could do with being addressed.

Channels

General #youth channel comments

There was confusion in the #youth channel as to whether or not the #youth channel rules, created by the #youth-team to create a more relaxed and fun environment, should be followed or if the stricter ScoutLink JOTI rules should be followed.

#youth??

The numbered #youth channels were only used for a very short period of time this year when we has #youth01 and #youth02 open to handle the number of users in these channels.

This was mostly due to the lack of a bot to redirect people from one channel to another, which made it not worth while having multiple channels coupled with the lower number of users in #youth this JOTI.

#youth-UNO, #youth-kaos

These channels were definitely a success. It was the second year of #youth-uno and the first year of #youth-kaos.
UNO users enjoyed the games; however it took a lot of explaining

KOAS was received well as it was easy to play, simply type answer in channel. However complaints were received that some of the questions couldn’t be answered due to being aimed at the wrong age range and too many questions about movies.

#youth-games

Did not use in the end. This game would of have Trivia, hangman, hot potato, higher/lower. However, “the bot crisis” stopped this channel being implemented by the #youth-bot team.

Users did report that they missed these games.

#youth-trivia

This channel worked well. Not much to say.

#youth-junior

This channel was mostly run by lorri_oz on behalf of #youth. From what I saw of the channel it was very active and lively while open. In an e-mail regarding #youth-junior lorri_oz wrote:

 “I had no problems in #youth-junior and I feel that channel runs very well indeed. My only concern is of the people that come to the channel and are in several other language channels and don't say a word. I am very protective of little innocent kids who will trust anyone.  I truly believe that any person who ops in #youth-junior should be prepared to put in 100% effort, keep chatting to them in the channel and encourage them to reply. Most importantly the ops need to have a lot of patience.

From my experience I have found that ops who are trying to op in many channels just don't put the required effort into #youth-junior because often there is what appears to be little happening in the channel. It could be of benefit of your youth team to op solely in #youth-junior for one hour - never know they just might enjoy it.

I have had a fair bit of feed back, including from our ops, that the kids who came to #youth-junior while I was there absolutely enjoyed the experience. That's what it's all about.....right.....enjoying JOTI.”

#youth-trefoil

This was a new channel for this year, jointly run by #youth and #trefoil. To me, Peter, this channel seemed to be a success providing an area for younger females to chat in.

We need to find a way to advertise this channel to the younger female chatters.  When we do a global announcement we run into the problem of boys going in there either ranting against the idea of an all-girl channel or else looking to pick up girls.   Neither one of these scenarios is desirable. 

Aside from the issues in the paragraph above, the channel worked well.  The girls enjoyed have an “all-girl” place to hang out; and they also enjoyed chatting with other girls (rather than adults).  

Allocation of temporary op rights for JOTI

The #youth-JOTIops worked reasonably well. However, like with a lot of people the information regarding who should be given JOTIops didn’t seem to get passed down to the right people for some reason. This was especially true in the Oceania region.

Additionally #youth failed to take into account where the ops were from properly when deciding who should have JOTIops due to the youth coordinator leaving the organisation of JOTI too close to the deadline. The result of this was that some time zones had too few ops and some had to many, which turned out to be worse for #youth in many respects.

Allocation of Ops to channels and control of the network

While this did work as other years the feed back received from the #youth-JOTIops was

• People not paying attention to #opers

• Difficult to leave channels (due to problem of not being able to see anything in #opers)

• Techteam didn’t appear to be prepared for JOTI

• Services crashing were a problem.
Mainframe’s backup facilities greatly appreciated.

• It appeared to the #youth-JOTIops that the communication between CCs/RCs and the TechTeam was poor.

• Swearing in #opers is not acceptable.

• WE NEED BOTS! Implemented based on features that work and the features of the bots to be thought out before hand so that they only have realistic aims.

Training

Training was adequate however some of the youth people felt that the training wasn’t aimed at them particularly well. Also the training didn’t cover the #youth-bots.

Suggestions for JOTI 2008

• Might want to consider having the #youth-JOTIops mainly opping in #youth instead of #english as this left #youth being opped by #english ops and #english being opped by #youth ops most of the time. This also allows #youth-team to handle incidents were a nick is acceptable in a none-English language but isn’t in English better as #youth can keep an eye on its ops better than #opers can.

Possibly run #youth through #youth-team with a #youth-team member communicating between #youth and #opers?

• maybe a #opers-Important-Annocments channel where only the people running joti can talk. So important announcements are heard?