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Proposal - Modification to BOXES

Posted July 31, 2020, 3:42 p.m. by Sarah Hemenway (Vice President) (Sarah M)

Posted by Fleet Captain Adam W. (EGO) in Proposal - Modification to BOXES

(snip)

Ok… so let’s take Daniel’s table as the example. How long do we keep an obviously failing vessel active? Remember, XFleet was never and is not intended for long running vessels. The fact that we previously had some last as long as they did shows the issue at the core of the discussion. The previous incarnation of the Dauntless is a key example. It was or should have been onprobationary status multiple times and was kept active… even though it was obviously a failed experiment.

XFleet is a playground for ideas. But it isnt a stable for long running ships. By it’s very charter, it for experimental ideas that may not fit in the Main Fleets. And experiments can and should be allowed to fail. Its how we learn what works and what doesnt. If a ship is consistently falling behind, it should be allowed to be removed. Having to send out three, six, ten, or an indefinite number of warnings contradicts the nature of the Fleet.

This proposal takes into account that a ship has the opportunity to fall behind and recover. And it has the opportunity to fall behind and recover again. So how often should we allow this to happen? This proposal takes into account an experimental ship being below mandated activity levels a total of two out of three months. How is this supposed to be acceptable? So, if giving the SOX the subjective discretion to decomm the vessel, what if we said:

“Ships recieving more than two probation notices in a three month period will be subject to immediate decommissioning.”

It retains the black-and-white aspect that others prefer, takes away the subjectivity aspect, and is a clear and concise mandate for crews to expect.

James Sinclair
Supervisor of Experiments

What exactly do we gain by more swiftly ending a ship that people want to have continue?

I don’t really understand why people keep talking about X-Ships failing. Sure, they end, but to me a ship like the Dauntless that had 125 posts in the first five days of its existence was a great success and, at least at the beginning, it had qualities that made it unique. I also don’t understand what the basis is behind the belief that X-Fleet was specifically not supposed to have ships that lasted.

I’m still not really getting what the problem is. If the problem is that we don’t want to have the SOX to send out notices my solution does a much better job of solving that. If the problem is instead that people are keeping something going longer than an outside observer feels like they should, well, I don’t see how that is a problem.

Adam W.

The problem I see with the situation James has described (and Daniel demonstrated in his post here) is that an X-Fleet idea should be deemed “failed” if the only time there is active posting is in response to a notification or warning by the SOX that the idea is facing removal for lack of activity. At that point, it’s those activity reminders keeping the idea alive and in compliance; not the idea itself.

From reading through the discussion, I see that the idea is to include “under the SOX’s discretion” to allow for some fudge room if something weird happens and the whole crew can’t post for a while. I also see a very valid point that, as soon as you introduce a human element of discretion, there should be an appeal process because, well, humans are fallible and it can be difficult to determine what’s a “good” reason here.

I’d like to bring Joe’s proposal here into this conversation. It seems to me to be a unique way to solve this problem without adding the discretion element to it and while acknowledging that the SOX should not be expending undue effort keeping ideas running. I’m linking to Adam’s post because it’s the last one in the thread, but I also wanted to respond to it here to try to get us all on one page. It seems to me that, given X-Fleet ideas are so easy to start up, it’s fair enough to have them be easy to stop too. The 21 days sounds reasonable to me given it is the same amount of time we have set now, just without the warning.

James, perhaps you could give us some more details on what it looks like from your end when you “decommission” an idea? If you got the same idea back a month or two later, does the way you handle it make it easy enough to get that idea back up and running from where it left off?

I do think we need to discuss whether “long running” X-Fleet ships are a goal of X-Fleet or not, given the confusion on that aspect presented in the discussion so far, but that’s a separate discussion for a few months from now, so let’s try to keep this focused on the question at hand.

Sarah


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