One and all, gather round!
It's time for a release of our annual Admin Meeting notes! For those who haven't been through this before...
Every year, TarValon.Net's leadership gets together in person (for those Director's who cannot make it personally, they either join the meeting remotely (i.e. through Skype) or appoint someone to represent them who can be present) to discuss the overall progress of the past year, talk about issues that have come up in that time, and to come up with a general plan for the comming year. These meetings have been known to be epic, weekend-long affairs. This year, thanks to the grace of God and a Keeper who was ready to get the heck out of Dodge, we managed to to get things done in about half a day. That was a nice.
So, without further ado....
Executive Branch/Overall Site/Re-orgs
- Current Org Chart is a little confusing and needs to be corrected. It currently looks like staff members assisting Officers are Directors. We clarified that they are Staff (as they assist a single person) and not Directors (who manage a Department), and will update the org chart to reflect that.
- We are adopting a formal policy that TarValon.Net official emails (like amyrlin@tarvalon or keeper@tarvalon) are property of TarValon.Net and not the individual (this has been the practice since we first got our own email domain name, we're just formalizing it). Official email should be used for official Tower business only.
- We reviewed a request from a member to be able to allow people to "opt out" of the merit recognition system we're rolling out. Given the scope of this project, and how tied in it will be to our administrative procedures and community, this isn't an option. Like raisings and bondings, merits will be recorded on member's Who's Who page and (the larger merits) announced in Site Announcements. However, no one is required to put badges in their sigs, wear their pins, or otherwise involve themselves unless they want to.
- The Department of Community Development was created to fulfill a specific purpose, which it certainly achieved. As does happen, the community has evolved to a point where we need to restructure a bit in order to fit current needs and expected growth. The projects currently in the Dept of Com Dev will be moved to departments where they are already most involved rather than centralized in their own department. The Department of Philanthropy will also be undergoing a transition and becoming the Department of Community Outreach (which will be taking on a wider scope than just our fundraising efforts). The "Tar Valon Times" will now be in our Marketing Dept. Online Events will go to Outreach.
- Guilds were adopted on a trial basis, and this was clearly stated at the time. In the end, we wanted to add special topic forums, and we tried to find a way to justify which topics had a forum in the same way that the "city" used to be a links page with pictures of lots of tiny buildings going to shopping websites. What we have found, though, is that there is a robust desire in our community to have special real-life topic discussion forums. Trying to pick and justify which topics we allow based on what would be a profession found in WoT is unnecessarily restrictive, and the idea of forums as "Guilds" isn't adding enough value to justify the restrictions it generates. The Guild forums will be moved into their own sub-forums, and the guild leaders will be moved into the Dept. of Moderators (their job, to moderate their forums while also encouraging activity among members with common interests, doesn't change). In the end, the change is largely a cosmetic one that will allow us more freedom to allow additional speciality forums.
It's time for a release of our annual Admin Meeting notes! For those who haven't been through this before...
Every year, TarValon.Net's leadership gets together in person (for those Director's who cannot make it personally, they either join the meeting remotely (i.e. through Skype) or appoint someone to represent them who can be present) to discuss the overall progress of the past year, talk about issues that have come up in that time, and to come up with a general plan for the comming year. These meetings have been known to be epic, weekend-long affairs. This year, thanks to the grace of God and a Keeper who was ready to get the heck out of Dodge, we managed to to get things done in about half a day. That was a nice.
So, without further ado....
Executive Branch/Overall Site/Re-orgs
- Current Org Chart is a little confusing and needs to be corrected. It currently looks like staff members assisting Officers are Directors. We clarified that they are Staff (as they assist a single person) and not Directors (who manage a Department), and will update the org chart to reflect that.
- We are adopting a formal policy that TarValon.Net official emails (like amyrlin@tarvalon or keeper@tarvalon) are property of TarValon.Net and not the individual (this has been the practice since we first got our own email domain name, we're just formalizing it). Official email should be used for official Tower business only.
- We reviewed a request from a member to be able to allow people to "opt out" of the merit recognition system we're rolling out. Given the scope of this project, and how tied in it will be to our administrative procedures and community, this isn't an option. Like raisings and bondings, merits will be recorded on member's Who's Who page and (the larger merits) announced in Site Announcements. However, no one is required to put badges in their sigs, wear their pins, or otherwise involve themselves unless they want to.
- The Department of Community Development was created to fulfill a specific purpose, which it certainly achieved. As does happen, the community has evolved to a point where we need to restructure a bit in order to fit current needs and expected growth. The projects currently in the Dept of Com Dev will be moved to departments where they are already most involved rather than centralized in their own department. The Department of Philanthropy will also be undergoing a transition and becoming the Department of Community Outreach (which will be taking on a wider scope than just our fundraising efforts). The "Tar Valon Times" will now be in our Marketing Dept. Online Events will go to Outreach.
- Guilds were adopted on a trial basis, and this was clearly stated at the time. In the end, we wanted to add special topic forums, and we tried to find a way to justify which topics had a forum in the same way that the "city" used to be a links page with pictures of lots of tiny buildings going to shopping websites. What we have found, though, is that there is a robust desire in our community to have special real-life topic discussion forums. Trying to pick and justify which topics we allow based on what would be a profession found in WoT is unnecessarily restrictive, and the idea of forums as "Guilds" isn't adding enough value to justify the restrictions it generates. The Guild forums will be moved into their own sub-forums, and the guild leaders will be moved into the Dept. of Moderators (their job, to moderate their forums while also encouraging activity among members with common interests, doesn't change). In the end, the change is largely a cosmetic one that will allow us more freedom to allow additional speciality forums.
In reality, I am very excited about these changes and look forward especially to the Special Interest forums, and the OE/Philanthropy merger. Personally, this comes at a good time because it will give me a bit of a break to hopefully move house, and more importantly, before the arrival of my second child at the end of summer. RL trumping site life and such is a good thing, and even though different groups are going off to different departments, all of my Staff and Admins have been amazing at their jobs and are going into good, trustworthy hands under Kari, Meilen and Viv.
