Upcoming Structural Changes

[Mieriana Souvra]

This community means much to all of us here at TV.Net, and we have seen a lot of excellent work coming from all corners of the site. We have made great strides just in the last few weeks by learning how to better communicate with each other at all levels of membership. That said, we have some structural changes to introduce that we feel will be in the best interest of the Tower and help to increase our effectiveness as a community and allow us to grow organically as we anticipate the new TV show.

Please know that we thought long and hard about these changes before bringing them to you. We have discussed these changes with each affected department to ensure everyone is on the same page as we move forward to make our community stronger and prepare for the future.

• We have decided it is time to retire the Dept of Mods & Ops
  • Spam has become nearly non-existent due to some changes by the Technology team
  • Current Events was the forum that needed the most support, and the shift to the new Ideological Forums has alleviated this need
  • There is not enough coordination needed to require an entire department
  • There will still be moderators for each forum
    • the Membership Admins who are consistently in certain forums will become moderators for some forums
    • We will have a few Floating mods who will be mods for the Discussion Halls, Book Discussions, General, etc.
    • Floating mods will be shifted to the Department of Technology under a new Master of the Watch position described in a section below
  • Mafia Admins will become Game Masters and be shifted to the Department of Community Outreach
    • Additional responsibility: Mod for Frivolous Fun, make sure there are some active threads in there
  • The Spam forum will be moved from Mods forum to another admin forum so all admins are able to respond to issues in their respective forum (please continue not to Report in private forums)
  • Shifting from a culture of "moderation" to "mediation" in order to facilitate better communication among the community
• Forums & Forum Owners/Mods
  • Execs & Officers are Super Moderators, and can moderate every forum.
  • The general idea here is City admins focus on the city forums, SM admins focus on the SM forums (as currently), JM admins focus on the JM forums, Librarians focus on Library forums, Floating Mods & Super Mods focus on Discussion Halls/General.
  • We are working on formal guidelines for what is expected and will provide a list of who will be responsible for what when that is finalized.
• Changes to Dept of Technology
  • New Master of the Watch position to be created
    • Non-rotating admin position, hiring post coming soon
    • The new Floating Moderators will report to this person.
    • Discord ops will report to this person
    • Master of Chat role will be retired, as this person will essentially also be the Master of Chat/Discord.
  • IRC will be retired as an "official" chat venue, though it will not be closed
• Changes to Dept of Membership
  • New Tower Mediator position to be created
    • New non-rotating admin position for Department of Membership
    • Mediation system will allow for Tower Mediators to lead members through conflict resolution in an effort to improve communication
  • Updates to the disciplinary system
    • We are updating and revising our discipline system to improve the way violations of site rules are handled
• Costuming Team
  • We will be introducing a costuming team to the site to support our updated Vision.
  • The general idea is to create guidelines for Wheel of Time cosplay, shawl tutorials, etc.
  • We don't have any details for this yet, but will post an announcement when we do. We are focusing on the other changes before introducing this new team.

We are working on the logistics of all these changes, and will begin to implement them in stages. Keep an eye out for more info as we work through these changes!

*Note- I like to lock announcement posts to keep informational threads clear. It does not mean you can't discuss the information presented- please feel free to start a discussion thread in General.