Is it time we looked into bringing in more staff?

[ninetalescommander]

People bring this exact topic up from time to time but always seem to miss the most important point - we don't keep our team small by choice. With models in particular, finding qualified people who are willing to donate their time just isn't easy. You accurately bring up the ever increasing model count and use that to suggest that there are more people now than ever who could lend a hand and I really wish that were the case but let me change your perspective here for a second.

That number continues to grow larger and larger because it takes significant time to go through each submission. A large part of the time required to approve models is that often, there is a lot that needs to be fixed. If things are outright broken or critical elements are missing, it's quick to reject and tell the submitter to fix it. But when relatively minor things are missing, the staff usually makes those fixes themselves before approving. Of particular note are the icons. Icons have historically always been optional to make the submission process accessible to as many people as possible. This isn't a huge deal on tSR where icons can be generated quickly but for models, the entire thing needs to be loaded, rendered, and captured at least twice.

I'm getting a little off topic now but my point is that we don't just bring on friends here. For models especially though, we only consider those who have a proven track record of exceptional submissions and while that is definitely a high bar, it's a needed one for the complexities encountered while reviewing model submissions. We frequently discuss the need for more staff on tMR but as I said, finding people is difficult even from the larger base of submitters we see today.

So, to sum it up, we'd love more help, especially for tMR. It's just not as easy as you might want to believe to find it. I assure you we're not being picky because we want to though and we don't extend invites to the staff only to some secret inner circle of friends. I love that your desire here is to help the site grow and I'll definitely have a chat with the staff to see if there is anyone sticking out to potentially come on board.

I had a feeling there would be areas that I'd be ignorant to so I am grateful for you shedding some light on the areas I was not aware of.
Obviously, I'm just a member, how this site is ran is of course up to the people in charge but I only want what is best for this website as I really do appreciate what this site offers and it's been 1 heck of a personal journey for me as well. I actually find myself visiting this site daily to see if anything new has been posted.
Regardless of whether things improve or stay as they are now, I want to say that I will always be supportive of this site.