Posted by Steven Sigle in Office of the President - Edict #5

Posted by Captain James Sinclair (Supervisor of Experiments) in Office of the President - Edict #5

Posted by Steven Sigle in Office of the President - Edict #5
Posted by… suppressed (4) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Edict #5
September 12, 2020

Some of you may have noticed that we have three ships in one fleet, six ships in another fleet, and some other number in the rest. Recent commissionings of new RP areas and decommissioning of old ones have left the fleets unbalanced and not allowed us to use our volunteers as effectively as possible with the limited time we all have available to contribute to the club’s government. With this in mind,

The USS Chimera is hereby relocated from the Infinite Fleet to the Pioneer Fleet.
The USS Viking is hereby relocated from the Infinite Fleet to the Meridian Fleet.
The USS Constellation is hereby relocated from the Infinite Fleet to the Black Fleet.

The Infinite Fleet is hereby decommissioned.

This brings the totals to a consistent six ships per fleet.

This will be effective immediately OOC, but in order to allow the COs time to notify their crews, TECH, please plan to complete these moves in approximately a week (on or around September 20, 2020).

Sarah
President

Hi everyone,

I’m so sorry for the delayed response on this. The movers arrived with all of my belongings today, which was fantastic, but it took up most of the day trying to direct them where to put things and to deal with everything along with that.

I’m carefully reading through all of your thoughts and your concerns and I’m going to do my best to summarize what I hear you all saying here, throughout the various threads going on. Please feel free to jump in if I missed anything.

• Why was there no Command discussion surrounding the decommissioning of the fleet?
• Why was a fleet decommissioned when we have people interested in serving as FComms who did not receive that position this term?
• How does this impact fleet identity?
• Why were the relevant COs not notified in a timely fashion?
• What about if we want to add new ships? Isn’t six ships too many for a fleet?

Why was there no Command discussion surrounding the decommissioning of the fleet?

As much as Rob and I would like to involve the membership in every decision that we make, at times, it rests on us to make difficult and potentially unpopular decisions in order to benefit the overall health of the club. This was part of the responsibility entrusted to us when we were elected by the membership.

I hear that people would have liked the opportunity to voice their concerns with the move and I understand that. I’m glad to see that you are taking the opportunity to do so now and I’m happy to address them and go through our thought process with you all. I can say that I haven’t seen one concern come up yet that wasn’t thoroughly discussed first between Rob, myself, and the other involved people in government. This idea has been in discussion for over eight months; despite that this might be the first time some of you are hearing of it, it’s not new and it is certainly not a decision being made hastily.

Why was a fleet decommissioned when we have people interested in serving as FComms who did not receive a position this term?

That’s a great question and I have a couple of answers to it, since getting people involved in government is a near and dear topic for me. Excelling as a Fleet Commander is one of the most difficult jobs in STF (if not the most difficult) and even doing a mediocre job requires a knowledge of the club and a personal toolbox that not many members have access to. This is one of the reasons I’m thrilled to see several AFComms this term new to the role; hopefully, that means we’re tackling at least the first part, if not the second. Unfortunately, though, this means that people who are enthusiastic and interested in working in STF government may not have the needed knowledge to truly excel at the position and, while ordinarily we would be interested in helping to bootleg those people up, we needed strong, experienced FComms this term to help stabilize activity levels and expectations for ships. That said, Rob and I are working hard to solidify plans to create more opportunities for people to be involved, particularly in how we handle the new member experience, and we hope to be getting those up for discussion inside the relevant departments soon, and then to the club as a whole.

What about fleet identity?

About a year ago now, concerns regarding the availability of FComm candidates came up and FCOMM was revised to remove the requirement that the FComm and the AFComm have current or former experience in that particular fleet. This was one of the final pieces that emphasized the idea of “fleet identity” or “fleet culture” and most people involved in the discussion were unilaterally in favor of removing it. This tells Rob and I that, while at various points in STF’s history, fleet culture was a big deal, it isn’t considered to be one right now. None of the three ships are engaged in sims that have anything to do with the “location” of Infinite Fleet, although that makes me curious how many COs out there are actually aware of where their ship is supposed to be per the map… a good question for a future fleet report, I suppose!

Why were the relevant COs not notified in a timely fashion?

Here is the timeline of communication with the involved COs:

July 27 and July 28: I sent a DM on Discord to two of the fleet COs and an email message to the third one to let them know that we were planning to decommission the fleet and to enquire if there was a particular fleet they were interested in their ship being a part of. I received responses to both of the DMs, but I did not receive a response to the email. Neither CO that responded voiced any issue with the plan (one, in fact, vocalized support of it) with regard to their current role-playing situation.

August 31: The FComm of Infinite Fleet sent an email to the three COs letting them know of the change and where the ships were going.

September 11: I wrote an email to each CO, introducing them to their new FComm. At least one new FComm responded to the email, reaching out to the new CO.

My understanding is that there was other conversation between various people about the move, but I was not personally privy to that and so I’m not including that here. Additionally relevant, the Cabinet was made aware of the plan on August 18.

I’m certainly open to feedback about how this could have been improved, but I will not tolerate any further discussion about whether emails were sent. I’ve seen sufficient proof that they were sent; whether or not they were received or read is a different story that I don’t believe needs to be discussed here. I’m not sure what information the President needs to pass along to a ship’s crew outside of working with the CO directly and I’d love to hear more about what people are looking for here so that I can see how those concerns can be addressed moving forward.

What about if we want to add new ships? Isn’t six ships too many for a fleet?

Six ships was traditionally the size of a fleet at one point and it offers a nice breakdown of the FComm primarily reading and reporting on three ships and the AFComm primarily reading and reporting on three ships (of course, FComms may choose to break it up differently). Ships tend to have fewer posts now than they did previously, so it certainly seems manageable and none of the current or former FComms had an issue with the workload.

If there is a compelling proposal for a new ship presented, we will certainly discuss and cross that bridge when we get there. No plan comes without drawbacks and that is certainly one, but we feel that the benefits currently outweigh this drawback. Additionally, there are several other club-wide issues that need to be critically examined before we add any more ships.

This is not entirely relevant to the post at hand, but I do want to make something very clear: the GM shortage is a much more critical issue than simply writing it off as not relevant because a particular GM might be interested in a proposed idea. We’ve all seen how external factors can unexpectedly and drastically influence a person’s available time for STF and this is not a situation under which I would commission a ship as it would be simply unfair to the rest of the crew members to have the potential success rest on one person.

Phew, let me know if I missed anything. It’s been a really long day!

Sarah

Could you provide some more detail on the reasoning you, and the previous administration I take it, have for the decision? What are some of the benefits you see this having for the club?

Nathan

I’m also wondering what the benefits are. Maybe I missed something, but the only real benefit I see explained here is that it allows us to have strong, experienced FComms. Which makes perfect sense if we have four strong, experienced FComms available and in position and then the quality of available FComm drops off after that. I don’t see that being the situation though. To me the reasons why not are more evident than the reasons why.

Adam W.

I agree with Adam, there are far more pros to keeping a fleet intact than removing it. I also must say a lot of people keep going lately “It’s just an edict, it can be changed.” or “It’s just a charter it can be removed.” but the point is these actions shouldn’t just be done with the idea of we can always remove them. They need to have concrete backing of why it will help the club, and the pros must outweigh the cons. To do so otherwise is just to do things for the sake of doing them, which I am not a fan of.

~Steven Sigle

I agree with Adam and Steve that there are far more positove reasons to keep the fkeet than to decommission it.
The President’s response is somewhat problematic to me as well. You said: “I can say that I haven’t seen one concern come up yet that wasn’t thoroughly discussed first between Rob, myself, and the other involved people in government. This idea has been in discussion for over eight months; despite that this might be the first time some of you are hearing of it, it’s not new and it is certainly not a decision being made hastily.”

If this was being discussed for over eight months, that discussion should have involved Command, specifically the CO’s of the veseels and the previous FComms during that period. And once the government had determined that decommisioning was the course they wished to pursue, that should have been brought up to the Command at that time, not dropped on the club membership without warning or consideration.

James Sinclair

I would like to point out since James highlighted this here from Sarah, I was never once informed this was even a serious idea. My entire term we were under the impression that the plan was to move another ship to the Infinite fleet.

Even in that situation it wasn’t quite done the way it should have. There was a forced move to infinite that the CO was unaware was even an option. Back then it felt not everyone was fully being told what was going on in terms of moves and changes and it seems now the same regrettable situation is happening again.

People are just asking for full transparency. Right now it feels in almost all things only a few people know half of the story and all few other people know the other half and no one is talking it out.

All of this could have been very easily avoided if we just kept open communication and tried not to keep things behind the scenes like we had something to hide.

Steven Sigle

I have to agree with Steven, while yes, I know/knew in advance, the question was posed to me as “IF you had to choose” not “we’re doing this” and it was from our CURRENT VP, not Sarah as VP last term, or from Steve last term, but Rob. That’s why I’m wondering if “last term” is kinda inaccurate, considering why would they wait until the VP and Prez changed, to ask, or why the COs who were affected not even fully informed LAST TERM.

Katy