Or something.

I want to make a new staff tradition. I want to raise the bar instead of settling for where the bar used to be. I want to see a new level of excellence on the Starmen.Net staff, but it won't be easy to reach. It'll take, as always, time and dedication on your part. It will also require a lot of support from the visitors, which is why I'm making this message public instead of just a staff email thing.

Being on staff has rarely been easy. It has always had its good and negative aspects, but the good things were usually fewer and further between than the bad ones. Due to the way we've run things at Starmen.Net, most of the work has been manual HTML editing and posting submissions, which is tedious, to say the least. However, I'd like to encourage those of you who are still sticking with it, much like Tomato did in our last letters to the community. At least a few times each year there comes a moment on the site when you think 'Dang, its all been worth it. This is awesome.' Like how we were able to switch to a new and very sexy server last year. Or how we got printed in EGM again, or how we gathered something like 26,000 signatures for a petition, which should be completed and sent less than a year from its initiation. Or how we've been given hope for a port of EB to the GBA. Lots of awesome things happen on the site, and its always fun to have a celebration with a goofy forum topic or an insanity fest on IRC. However, what makes it all worthwhile is knowing that you worked hard for it.

So what I'm trying to say is that I really want you guys to work if you're able. If you're not able then don't be ashamed, don't feel like you're letting people down. The only way you can let people down as a staffer is to stay on staff even when you've become too busy to do your job. Becoming too busy to work for the site isn't shameful; wanting to keep your job despite your inability to work is. I know I'm not really one to be talking, considering how busy I am, but Tomato and I are in sort of unusual positions. Anyway, I think a few of the staffers know that I'm talking to them. I'm not suggesting that you resign outright. I am asking you to get back to work if it's just been a case of laziness. But, yeah, if you're too busy to work on the site, you really should give the position to someone else, or at least request that you be allowed to choose someone as a helper. The purpose of having a helper can be one of two things: you're either planning on resigning sooner or later and want to make things easy on Tomato and I so we doesn't have to train a new staffer, or you've got time to work on the section, its just that there's too much stuff to do and you need help.

Anyway, for those of you who are staying on staff, I want to encourage you to keep it up. I also want to warn you that I think some big things will be happening this year and that we need to be prepared for them. Even if there isn't some big game release or announcement, Starmen.Net's growth is almost always directly related to how much the staff updates. Shortly after the site started, there were (no exaggeration) 14 updates a day on many days, and days with less than 10 illicited complaints from Tomato and myself. Back then, the site attendance grew exponentially. These days, and ever since we've slowed it down, visitors to the site remain steady, but our visitors increase and decrease proportionally with the number of (and, usually, the quality of) updates to the site.

Also, its my responsibility to make a formal announcement that, yes, the site redesign has been postponed and is being redone. I dunno how long it'll take. All I can say is that it will be worth the wait :)

In conclusion, I like EarthBound. I like designing websites. I love the thrill of seeing a project I've worked on come to fruition and result in something cool. Starmen.Net has always been such a project, except that its not a one-time deal. Starmen.Net and the people therein continually and persistently come up with new ways of surprising me or amazing me. These surprises usually come about as a result of cooperation and support from both the staff and the visitors.