Event Details

Event ID
255344
Target
General Seraine "Erinyes" Taldrya Ténama
Award
Ruby Scepter
Quantity
1
Non-site XP
19620 XP
Requested by
Headmistress Alethia Archenksova
Primary reason

Erin started bugging me in April looking for data analytics work. I gave her access to my Google Drive full of exported data from the site’s Unit Statistics Report and explained that I had tried in the past to develop quarterly unit health reports for CONs, but that the time investment was just way too much for me to keep up with it. I never expected to hear anything more about it. But within two days, Erin got back to me with the “Brotherhood Analytics Dashboard,” a Google Sheet that could read whatever Unit Statistics Report you gave it, parse the data, and quickly break down everything I used to have to calculate manually from a big list of individual events. Since then, she’s repeatedly had to update the dashboard, both to implement new feature requests (e.g. making it able to read several reports simultaneously to track changes over time) and to keep up with her changes to the site tool that provides the underlying data. It must have taken hours to put the base sheet together, and then shorter time investments over several months as I hit her with at least five different change requests.

Beginning with Q2 2023, I started providing Yammer with an overview of the club’s overall health, and then providing each clan’s CON and PCON with specific metrics and some suggestions that I hope will make their jobs easier. I’ve received thanks from either the CON or PCON of every clan, and had follow-up conversations with several of them. I provided a similar report specific to gaming activity to our Fist for Q3 2023. Additionally, as of October 2023, Bubba is using the clan health reports as part of his assessment and awarding for CONs. To say that Erin "helped" with this is doing her a disservice. I tried doing this sort of thing at least twice before but gave up because the time investment was simply infeasible. Erin's tool cut the amount of time I have to spend on these things by seventy-five percent. Erin's work hasn't just saved me hours of time, it is the only reason I'm able to do this project in the first place.

As mentioned above, after starting work as M:SCL, Erin pushed multiple code changes to the DB site’s Unit Statistics Report to pull information that was difficult to find before. At Bubba’s request, the new members information now indicates whether each member has authenticated to our Discord server. To help me dig into historical data, Erin adjusted the output to include members by PIN (so that name changes don’t skew the data) and to include defunct units. Other changes were more broadly useful. The reports now include all promotions, not just knightings. They provide data on every RP session and every ACC match. She keeps making this thing better, and then on top of it she has to go back to the Dashboard every time and fix it to work with the new data she added to the Unit Statistics Report exports.

In addition to be my own personal mini-James for data, Erin's taken on other M:SCL work including a request I originally submitted to James. For many years, the primary recognition for grading SA exams has come through the Scroll of Foundation. SoFs are awarded based on a formula that weighs both how many exams were graded and how quickly the grader took care of them; it also changes for courses, like the Test of Wisdom, that don’t have the standard 24-hour turnaround time. I inherited a cumbersome spreadsheet to calculate SoF awards, and they were supposed to go out only twice a year. Especially after the launch of XP, SoFs became the primary way I compensated most of my staff and I wasn’t happy with this situation. Erin automated this system and the site now gives graders that tasty XP as soon as they’ve earned it. For me, this eliminated an annoying task that ate up an hour a couple times a year. For SA graders, it means they get timely compensation for their work, even if the HM is totally checked out or can’t cope with the calculations.

Any number of our members could have stepped up to help clear James' endless to-do list. Erinyes did. She's not a web developer or a Ruby programmer or a programmer at all, but she made the effort to learn and everyone else is benefitting from that. Hopefully, her example inspires a few others, but in any event she deserves our thanks.

Alethia Archenksova
Headmistress

Headmistress Alethia Archenksova, 2023-10-26 21:10:27 UTC
Additional reasons

Changes to the DB codebase essentially benefit the entire membership, as it improves the quality of the codebase and, even if the changes themselves might only benefit a subset of members, it clears up the backlog of issues which means we can get to other issues that themselves might impact other members faster.

Erinyes was more or less thrown into the DJB’s git repository, which contains a codebase of over 10 years old that has over the years become a bit of a nightmare to get started in. Not deterred by the complexity of the code and its outdated documentation, Erinyes dove in headfirst, started getting familiar with the code, and immediately set out to add improvements, starting with bringing the “getting started” documentation up to date with the current state of the code. After that, she eagerly started going down the list of open issues that were in the low-hanging-fruit category but hadn’t been picked up until now, which is in my opinion the best and most productive way to get to know a codebase better. Ranging from various improvements to the unit statistics and leadership reports, adding reporting tools for the Envoy Society and Casual Gaming, through various smaller fixes to the site’s faction and award event pages, to automating the Scroll of Foundation awarding for SA graders.

How difficult and time-consuming these changes are to make greatly depends on how fast someone navigates the codebase, how many solutions you try before you arrive at a final implementation, and whether you encounter any hiccups along the way or not. Given the state the documentation was in and the discussions we’ve had on the subject, getting a working development setup must’ve already taken hours, and those first improvements to the leadership reports must’ve taken a lot of trial and error as well, given the complexity of some of the queries.

Erinyes, thanks for all the work you do, congratulations on Ruby Scepter!

Ascendant James Lucius Entar, 2023-10-25 16:00:31 UTC

Erinyes was able to create a report that addresses the various data-points the brand new Envoy Corps needs to make sure that the system we created: a.) works and b.) continues to work. To do this, we needed to be able to see key metrics such as the breakdown of unique roleplaying activities a month (started/closed), the amount of rank-ups per month, the spread of ranks in each trophies, the amount of words written, who our top roleplayers are, and Clan-by-clan breakdowns.

These datasets were something I was trying to manually track, email-by-email, and by doing a ghetto lookup query in Discords search filter. We are now able to easily track unique participants in RP activities, and I can generate it to a specific time/date range, which helps when considering pauses in the system. This data also helps us make sure that members aren’t progressing too quickly, or too slowly, through the RP trophy ranks, creating a better overall user experience for members. Without data, we would be making guess work. But now, we have concrete data reporting and numbers to support the long term health and success of our supplemental roleplaying society.

Erin did this very quickly, and I wish we had this kind of data prior to trying to create the proposal for the Envoy Corps in the first place. Thank you for all of this work.

Exarch Marick Tyris Arconae, 2023-10-25 16:02:11 UTC

Erin proactively provided multiple customized data pulls for Casual Gaming Queue and supported platform data. After the war she provided a detailed document with analytics for what games were played, a week to week breakdown, and unit breakdowns providing raw numbers, percentages and useful graphs.

Leaders having not only the right data, but data in a useful format is critical to the function of any organization. Erinyes’ ongoing support for the Fist staff through customized gaming data helps us identify trends and future platforms for adoption. Furthermore, her detailed breakdown of the GJW gaming data helps me craft better vendetta activities for our members. On behalf of the gaming community thank you for your support.

Champion Rajhin Cindertail, 2023-10-25 16:08:04 UTC

Erin was engaged, discussed solutions based upon my requests as a Consul, and was able to accommodate both data and site improvements.

This information enabled me to have fact based conversations with my Summit based upon trends in the clan's performance. This led to changes in competition structure and types based upon the activities the clan members were engaging in. This also enabled me to share the metrics with the Clan (see Kamjin's Annual Reports) and saved me a ton of time pulling data to do quarterly reviews.

Erin, thanks for stepping up and being so easy to work with!

Master Kamjin "Maverick" Lap'lamiz, 2023-10-25 16:17:16 UTC

When Koda stepped down prior to the Great Jedi War for personal reasons, a large void was left open for us. It could potentially have been an extremely rough time, especially for me as a fresh Consul having been thrust into the station with the shortest of notices, and going into my first war at the helm. But, in full support of my retired Pecan, I was ready to face it head-on with as much confidence and gusto as I could manage.

Without skipping a beat, Erin offered to take the position if even temporarily to keep us at the pinnacle of our game and help me learn the ins-and-outs of GJW-time leadership. Her contributions to how it had been run in past years when she was Consul, showing me when to push the members and when to lax back some, the specific areas that the summit should focus on while also having fun and contributing themselves, all of it was absolutely invaluable and directly contributed in what we managed to accomplish as a team. And for that, I am forever grateful.

I honestly do not feel we would have been nearly as successful as we were in this war had she not been there to directly mentor and help me along my path of growth, even working together with me in contributions even when it pushed her own limits. Since joining up as my Pecan, she has made significant contributions outside of her mentoring and leadership. She has made substantial edits to over 25 Taldryan wiki pages, still working on a Taldryan Military wiki-edition rework, in addition to having worked directly with me on planning out our now underway armed forces expansion which is still being constructed. She also helped with the clean-up and pre-implementation of our upcoming storylines, helped drive activity through roleplay participation and gaming to get other members involved and excited, and the various other administrative roles expected of her.

Even when things get busy, she always faces it with enthusiasm and does everything she can to help ensure the success of Taldryan; because she truly cares. This is especially evident as, since her last recognition, she has participated in 150 gaming activities, with a staggering 1,794 Clusters of Earth and 662 Clusters of Fire, 55 various competitions with 15 crescents coming from them, of which 17 of those competitions were from the Great Jedi War which earned her first TWO Gold Novae of her career and an additional Silver Novae. She has also contributed almost 18,000 words in roleplaying across 5 sessions and an additional 2,200 across 3 different fiction with an additional 46 Clusters of Ice.

Lastly, Erin, I want to thank you directly. For everything you have done since I came to Taldryan those several years ago, up through now and what you continue to do. You are a true example of what it means to be someone who is invested in the future and survival of Taldryan. If you didn’t already have the Taldrya title, I would be recommending you in a heartbeat. Instead, since you do, I’m proud to support doing this for you.

Thank you Erin. From the bottom of my heart, and on behalf of Taldryan.

Supreme Chancellor Cassandra Oriana Tyris, 2023-10-26 04:23:52 UTC

Erin seemed to come out of nowhere with a slew of new improvements to the site and, as everyone else has discussed, our ability easily to track various statistics over time. One other thing that hasn't been addressed is her work on updating and unifying the old About Us and Join pages. Thanks to her, we now show prospective members a single and much clearer picture of what exactly we do here. Thanks, Erin!

Lord Dacien Victae, 2023-10-26 19:17:48 UTC