Good afternoon, happy summer, and welcome to our newest Bell Tree Direct! We have a few announcements to share with you today, including our event schedule for the summer, opening of staff applications, a new video series featuring TBTer islands, and more.
Upcoming Events This Summer!
Hopefully you've been enjoying all of our events lately because we're not stopping yet! This summer we're hosting three different events and we'd like to share their dates with you ahead of time so you can mark them on your calendars. Each event is quite different from the others, so look forward to a wide variety of tasks to do!
June 23 - June 30 | Celebrating Diversity 2: Last June we held our Celebrating Diversity event and it's back again! Instead of an art contest, this year's event will use Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Check back when it starts this Wednesday for more details.
July 11 - July 19 | ????????? ????: A super seek-ret event that will have you feeling like it’s Christmas in July. What does that mean? Hmmm. Well I'll let you know that @Oblivia wrote that sentence, so it's probably some sort of riddle we're supposed to figure out.
Introducing The Bell Tree Island Tours
Join us island hopping across the community in this new video series hosted by @Vrisnem. Introducing The Bell Tree Island Tours!
In The Bell Tee Island Tours series, each video will feature the Animal Crossing: New Horizons island of a TBT community member. However, for the tour to get started we'll need to know where we're going! Submit your own island for consideration and the chance to be featured in a video. For all of the TBT Island Tours details, visit our Animal Crossing: New Horizons board or go directly to its official thread by clicking here.
New Staff Badges and Other Staff Updates
The staff members' "staff" banners that appear under their usernames have been replaced with more descriptive badges. First, the primary role of the staff member is listed: Administrator, Moderator, or Project Staff. Some staff members may contain additional badges underneath the first one, which help better describe how they contribute on the forum. We're still trying these out, but let's take a look at the new badges we have so far.
- Administrator / Moderator / Project Staff: The primary staff roles on The Bell Tree. If you're new and wondering what "Project Staff" is, it's a staff member who helps with events and other forum things, but doesn't moderate the community.
- Community Manager: A staff member who helps lead moderation, community, and general site decisions.
- Senior Moderator: An active and experienced moderator who helps lead moderating decisions.
- Artist: A staff member who focuses a lot of their work on creating art for the site.
- Event Manager: A temporary role for staff members leading current and upcoming events. This will be removed when the event ends, but we've expanded the role a little bit to start since it's new.
- Site Owner: I wanted to be included!
- Retired Staff: Former staff members of the forum. These users were called "Sages" until last year.
In other staff-related news, Bobo is stepping down from the team. We added him last year in the Project Staff role, but he was not able to be as active as he originally thought. He has asked to step down from the role, but we hope to still see him around the forum as a regular user!
Finally, we have two more small staff updates before moving on to our next section, which is also about staff. The threads in our Contact the Staff board could previously only be viewed by admins and mods, but now project staff will also be able to help users there. Speaking of project staff, they will now be represented by a brand new color.
Staff Applications Are Now Open!
The Bell Tree is looking for new staff members! Staff applications are now open for new submissions after a little over a year. There are two roles you can apply for: Moderator and Project Staff. A moderator is someone who helps moderate the forum, deals with user reports, sends warnings to users who break the rules, and other things to help keep the community running. However, they can also help with events or other projects. Project staff only help with events and projects, as they have no moderating powers on the forum. You'll see that the application forms are exactly the same except that the moderator version has a few additional questions.
Since project staff focus solely on events and projects, we are especially interested in adding people who are skilled in art or development for this role. This is the first year that we're mentioning software development. While we might not add developers during this round of applications, we are interested to see how many community members would be interested in helping with this before turning it into an official role. Developers would be working with the XenForo forum platform, which uses PHP, but experience with XenForo is not needed.
Before you apply, please take the time to read through the list of expected responsibilities and requirements by expanding the spoilers below.
Moderator Responsibilities:
- Be willing to take objective action on reports. This is the primary task of a moderator.
- Help respond to users' Contact the Staff questions.
- Log in on a regular basis and be active on the forum.
- Handle disputes between members confidently and fairly.
- Contribute to both creative (events, features, etc.) and mundane (rule updates, etc.) projects.
- Provide input on decisions and projects.
- Mature and responsible, while also laid back and fun. We look for someone who exhibits both of these traits. Know when to be serious, but also when to joke around.
- Objective and capable of viewing situations from both sides. Everyone has an inherent bias, there's no avoiding it, but you can do your best to look past it which is what we expect of our moderators.
- Sociable! We want moderators who openly engage and participate in the community with everyone. This is also important within the staff itself since we work as a team.
- Generally speaking, a longer active history on TBT reflects better on you because your history allows us to more accurately judge your character and whether or not you would be a good fit. We don't require everyone to be around for several years, but applicants are expected to have at least several solid months of activity in their history.
- At least 18 years of age.
- The most important thing moderators do is moderate the forum, but if you are interested in helping in even more ways, we would be interested to know if you have artistic or software development skills. See the project staff section for specifics more about that.
Project Staff Responsibilities:
- Contribute to and be willing to host site events and projects.
- Provide input on decisions and projects.
- Although not required for this position, we would like to find someone who is able to draw and design banners, collectibles, and other graphics for the site. Similarly, we are also interested in potentially expanding our team with members who are experienced in software development. However, neither of these skills are required to apply.
- Bring site and user problems to the attention of a moderator.
- Mature and responsible, while also laid back and fun. Any staff member represents the forum and users look up to them.
- Be sociable and participate in the community.
- Like moderators, a longer history on the forum is preferred for the project staff position.
- At least 18 years of age.
- We are interested in adding artists to the team, so if you are able to create art, there is a place to share examples of your work in the staff application.
- We are considering adding developers to the team. If you have experience in software or web development and are interested in working with the XenForo platform as a staff member of The Bell Tree, there is a place to explain this in the staff application.
To apply, make a thread in one of the application boards inside of the Contact the Staff board. Only you and current staff members will be able to see your application thread.
To apply to be a Moderator click here and post a new thread
To apply to be Project Staff click here and post a new thread
After a week or two, we'll send a private message to the people we'd like to add to the team. Due to the amount of applications we usually receive, we unfortunately can't reply to every applicant, but we'd like to keep your application archived for future consideration. Thanks to everyone for their contributions to this community and we're happy to see so many people interested in contributing in a more official manner. We look forward to reading your applications!
Rules Updates
We also have several rule updates to announce today, so I'll go over each one with a quick explanation.
First, we clarified the "low content" part of the post quality rule and made it slightly more lax. Our intention with post quality rules is to keep forum threads discussion-based or at least have a coherent purpose. However, we feel that there may be some cases where one-word responses fit the discussion, so we clarified this sentence to avoid being overly strict with its enforcement.
With the previous change to the post quality rules, we still want there to be actual discussion or some sort of contribution from each person who posts. We've expanded the part above by adding "link-only" and changing the wording slightly.
This is a new rule added to the list of prohibited content. This type of post is most often made about public figures, but it applies to all people. Criticism is allowed, but advocating for harm or celebrating their death is a step too far for the forum.
This second addition to the prohibited content list was actually already an unwritten rule on TBT, enforced for information about ROMs. It has come up a lot more lately due to the existence of fake amiibo cards. We don't allow sharing information that helps people violate copyright laws. For example, posting a how-to guide for creating a fake amiibo card would not be allowed, nor would sharing a link to where they can be purchased. However, talking about their existence or simply saying that you use them is still allowed.
We've added this to the "respecting others" rules to stress the importance of being respectful to our hardworking staff members. TBT as a website and community is open to constructive criticism and suggestions. However, it's not okay to target staff members or attempt to bully them into doing something you want. The staff are volunteers and already spend their time doing free work for the community. The last thing we want is this to be an environment where there is an opportunity to be attacked while doing thankless work. That being said, if you ever feel there is an issue with a particular staff member, feel free to contact an administrator.
In the past, we have typically refrained from deleting accounts because of the content connected to them. However, we will now delete accounts upon request if they have fewer than 12 posts. Additionally, users who have too many posts may be helped with "vanishing" their accounts by changing usernames or posts that contain private information. This should only be used when there are serious privacy concerns, not as a way to get a free username change. This is also not a way to make a new account, as account switches are still disallowed. To make either request, a thread in Contact the Staff should be posted. Also remember that everyone is given two free username changes through the seashell currency, once when joining and another after being a member for two years.
At some point we thought we would list exceptions to this rule, but it wasn't maintained so the rule has now been simplified.
We've added this to the list of prohibited transactions to prohibit users from profiting off of plagiarized art. This rule is most relevant in the Museum Shop board.
In the Amiibo Card Post Office Rules and Information thread, it says only card for card trades are allowed, but we wanted to clarify that giveaways are also allowed.
Finally, since our last TBT Direct, we have also updated the Post Quality & Etiquette Reminder thread in the Animal Crossing: New Horizons board. With many passionate Animal Crossing fans recently disappointed after E3, this is a good time to remind everyone about our rules addressing toxicity and rude behavior. Please share your opinions respectfully!
Free Bells!
Another TBT Direct concluded, another free bag of bells! Click the link below to receive 50 bells for free. Feel free to use them towards anything you'd like, but the giveaway link will expire after one week.
Click here to receive your 50 Bells!
Thank you for taking the time to read our latest announcements and we look forward to seeing everyone during our upcoming events.
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and thank you for the bells but I have 1 question. What is considered a senior member? Like how long do you have to be a member for to get that tag
thanks so much for the bells, i can now buy the collectibles someone has been holding for me!
Talking about you, dragonflies, mosquitoes, bees and flies, yuck! But I'll be participating for sure, since I'll be having lots of free time this summer! (unless something comes up at work oh no I prob jinxed it 
)
