[Valg]

1) We only take new staff from established players who seem to have a broad skillset (notable roleplay, typically at least a couple years of experience and multiple notable characters, etc.), a heavier playing schedule, a good grasp of written English, and a sense that they follow the rules of the game during play. This establishes that the person has some understanding of what areas are out there, and that they have the raw skills necessary to produce a useful area.

2) We meet with new authors and work together towards a project idea. This initial idea gets bounced off of several senior staff, often rewritten, and then archived so reviewers can later look it over. The idea is to find something the author is excited to do, but also to make sure it meshes with the rest of the game.

3) The new staff member then writes a small piece of the full area, and submits it for review. This lets us catch chronic problems before they spend a lot of time on it, and it also shows us that the person can handle small deadlines.

4) The new staff member submits a rough draft. This gets debugged and put in for private review, first by the author, then sequentially by multiple senior staff, each of whom brings a different focus. The new staff member is usually given other things to do where possible during this phase.

5) If the initial reviews come back with a sense that the area can 'work', a request for any custom code needed by the area gets written up by the author, checked by senior staff, and assigned to coders. If the area is deemed to be terribly flawed, awkward conversations follow and we see if there's a way to fix things, or if its better that we go our separate ways.

6) The area gets some final whacks from Implementors, who have final say on edits, then gets connected and put 'live' for the players.