Missmorris

Missmorris is a former Miniclip employee who served as the company's first Community Manager from 2011-2013. The inaugural holder of the Community Manager position, she replaced the community-based administrators who had managed the forums for most of the past decade and was also responsible for managing Miniclip's social media accounts among other duties.

Old Forums
missmorris began working at Miniclip in September 2008 in the role of "operations assistant". Taking on additional duties, she was later promoted to "communications officer". In June 2011, Miniclip decided to bring administration of the forums in-house to "better reflect the fast growth of the website" and the forums were placed under the temporary care of the Estonian Team. Four months later, Missmorris was made Community Manager, responsible for all correspondence between Miniclip and its community on its forums and social media accounts. Previously unknown to the community, she took steps to introduce herself to members and the volunteer moderators, the latter of which were sent Miniclip gift packages. Not long after, Missmorris heard about plans for a staff-meet-up in Manchester, UK, and expressed a desire to attend in order to meet her mods in person. The meet-up took place in November and Missmorris, accompanied by fellow employee kieranjo, met with moderators Tetsumonchi, m4rt1n and Cheeseymonster. The 5 went for dinner where they discussed Miniclip and the forums before going for drinks at a nearby pub.

As the person in charge of the Miniclip Forums, Missmorris proved to be more neutral than The Estonians had been and did not involve herself in drama on the forums or pick sides in historical disputes. She was friendly and professional towards all members and supportive of her volunteer moderators; allowing Tetsumonchi to remove American Girl's Tetsugate signature which he found offensive and reassuring m4rt1n after numerous official complains were made against him and she was forced to investigate. It was during this episode that Missmorris learned of troublemaker Kat Von Dookie's alleged links to former moderator Poisenman101, who had been sacked and banned in December for leaking the results of The Mini's. This, along with previous moderator sackings for leaking information, as well as Tetsugate, made Missmorris aware of the possible dangers to the company's image posed by volunteer staff and the legal implications. She decided that it was necessary from now on to know exactly who Miniclip were appointing as moderators on their forum and that these people could be trusted. She sent an email to all volunteer staff, explaining that "that as Miniclip moderators, you are in a position of responsibility and with young people using our forum, we need to protect them, you, and ourselves". Moderators now had to be aged 18 and over, and were required to complete full background checks. Any who were under 18 or felt unhappy to undergo the background checks would be required to resign.With the necessary checks made on her mods, Missmorris spent time rewriting the forum rules and devised an official job profile for the volunteer moderators, outlining what their responsibilities were and the standards that were expected of them, as company representatives. This, it was hoped, would allow issues on the forums to be dealt with in a more concise and professional manner, as well as putting an end to disputes between users and staff as well as complaints about corruption, bullying and preferential treatment, all in all making the forums a more friendly and relaxing place to be.

In June 2012, Missmorris heard plans for a second staff meet-up, scheduled for July in London. She invited the moderators to visit her at the Miniclip Offices, which they gladly accepted. The following months as planned, Missmorris welcomed Tetsumonchi, m4rt1n, Cheeseymonster and Joeri to Miniclip's head office in London. She gave them a tour before they met with senior employees including CEO Rob Small, Ben Gillbanks and the creator of 8 Ball Pool. Missmorris took the opportunity to speak extensively with the moderators about her future plans for the community and gather their ideas for further improving the forums.

Hacking and Closure of the Old Forums
On the 29th August, 2012, the Miniclip Forums crashed - the first time this had happened in over two years. Missmorris emailed the moderators to explain that some data had been corrupted and they were doing everything they could to retrive it, although they might have to bring it back with limited functionality for a while. On the 31st, she reported that they were still working on the forum but new problems had arisen, although she remained hopeful that the forum would be back very soon. Despite her initial optimism, though, Miniclip were unsuccessful in recovering the data and on the 4th September Missmorris relayed to the moderators that the decision had been made to keep the forum closed for the forseable future. She added that they were already discussing a brand new build, however as it may take months to get started on/completed the moderators were not to reveal this to the community until she had more information. In response, the moderators opened the Community Forums as a temporary home for their members. On the 14th of September, Missmorris emailed the moderators once again to announce that work had been ongoing to try and repair the forums, and Miniclip's tech guys had apparently found what they think is a solution to the problem. She asked the moderators to let the community know and promised to keep them informed of developments. On 20th September, she announced that the forums were about to go live again and that they should let the community know. Despite some initial hiccups, the Miniclip Forums opened later that day as planned and the community returned.

On 10th October, the forums were taken offline once again and Missmorris emailed the moderators to explain that they had been further problems, although she was working with her technical team to sort it. The forums went back online two days later, but staff and members soon reported seeing strange elements such as random boxes and scroll bars on the page. The forum was taken offline yet again and shortly thereafter Missmorris contacted her moderators to announce that Miniclip were closing the forum permanently. She explained that over the past two months the forum had been subjected to scripting expl'oits and while no pe'rsonal data was compromised, as a precaution' Miniclip felt unable to 'restore the existing data without the risk of exposing' themselves t'o more serious exploits. 'The company's utmost priority, she explained, is the security of their members' data; consequently they've decided that they cannot continue to run the Miniclip forum using VBulletin software. Missmorris promised that this would not be the ende of the Miniclip Forums, and they would word towards opening a new forum on a different platform in the future. In the meantime, she planned to direct users to the community forums, where she could keep the community updated on developments. She asked the moderators for their ideas or suggestions for the new forums, including features that worked or didn't work in VBulletin and improvements to moderation tools, etc. While the moderators and the community felt devastated at the loss of the Old Forums, Missmorrris seemed excited by this new project and believed it was a positive step which in the long run w'ould secure the successful future of the Miniclip forums.

Community Forums
15th February 2013: Missmorris conducts an AMA bout the forums and site - http://wwwomf.myfanforum.org/ftopic1111-0-asc-0.php

28th February 2013: Missmorris announces the release of the new Robot Rage, which opens on 17th March - http://wwwomf.myfanforum.org/about1226.html

21st May 2013: Missmorris announces closure of Sketch Star - http://wwwomf.myfanforum.org/sutra29313.php

31st May 2013: Missmorris announces that she's resigning next month - http://wwwomf.myfanforum.org/sutra42837.php