>>>Because it's a volunteer operation, not a path to fiscal security.

I was expecting a response along these lines. Let me translate this for the players. We as the imm staff are not interested in doing things better over the course of time because we enjoy working harder to affect the same results. Just because your not recieving money for your product does not mean cf is not one. further because the processes are performed by volunteers does not mean they can't be examined and improved upon. This should be easier with volunteers because would you rather spend 2 hours working on a project or one?

This also does not need to cost money. Often times some of the biggest time/cost savers are free. You could run a streamlining event once a month where you as an imm staff examine a process and think of a way to do it better/easier for you. You spend X amount of hours at this time with the hope of saving even more hours in the future.

For example areas are still entirely written by hand. this is a lot more time consuming then using a development tool or creating a development tool to facilitate the writing. I mean there is one thing if you changed in some way that could help the imm staff over all. By reducing time to write and get an area into the game (not by working harder but by working better) you now cut down the rate of heroimm failure.

If you do not try to continually improve your processes as cf gets bigger eventually the immstaff will get crushed. these changes will indirectly affect the player and directly affect you. You keep talking about those 10 hours of grunt work to add to the game why not attack the reasons it takes 10 hours and not 4.

>>>Having a third party review some of our processes, means spending money on something that we do as a volunteer basis. You're making this a second job (which it already feels like at times).

well I mean if your doing this for the fun of doing this, why not do it well. This process doesn't have to cost you money. It could be something you talk to a friend about. so on and so forth.

the process sounds like extra work but in reality once you sit down and do it once or twice its really not that hard at all. Cf is a business and while you guys don't get paid perhaps you should consider incorporating more business-like ideas, such as dedicating marketing immortals.