THE RAMBLING ROLLMASTER

Hey all.

Since this is my first report, I suppose I should introduce myself. I'm Tim Entar. I was given the job of Rollmaster so that someone would keep a special eye on our new members. Being old, cranky, impatient, perpetually annoyed and easily enraged, I was the obvious natural choice. :P

That's really about it. In my Rollmaster role, I'm currently basically doing what our Rollmasters did before the reb00t project. That is, I welcome new members, try to make them active, and otherwise try to help our excellent Summit make this Clan even greater than it is already.

Those who've known me longer than know will probably be surprised to hear that I won't be making these reports a general feature. Make no mistake, I love doing reports. Informing people about stuff is kind of my thing. However, we've got a pair of great Quaestors (and with Cethgus' recent appointment, two excellent Aediles as well) who already work very hard to give you all the information you require. Adding to it would be superfluous.

So instead, expect these reports to be a bit less frequent and more philosophical in nature. I'll tell you what I've done, and perhaps ramble on a bit on how I think stuff should be done. This might be practical advice, long rants, or just plain weird stuff.

And finally: No. Ask Tim will not be migrating here. That would make things easier on Sang, and anyone who knows me also knows that I'm morally opposed to making things easier for Sang. :P

Events OR, what Tim did this week:

So, what'd I do in the week since I've become RM? Obviously, I didn't bother to introduce myself until now, nor any plans. So I suppose that this'll serve as a 'catchup' for everyone who's not yet in the loop.

-I edited the DJB's official welcoming email. Not that it will really matter once we've got the grind-path. Am I the only one who wonders why the Hell we've managed to soldier on with spelling errors in our official, automated welcoming email for all new members? I guess it's mostly a matter of the fact that no one, including every single Rollmaster we've ever had, giving a damn about the stuff we've been force-feeding to our poor little newbs. Admittedly, force-feeding things to newbs is sort of Arcona's official hazing ceremony anyway, so I suppose it helps prepare them. :P

-I edited our own welcoming email, due to the old one being sorta sucky. I would send a torrent of insults and allegations of incompetence at whoever wrote it. Except the person who wrote it is me, and I'm strongly opposed to bitching to myself when there's so many other people waiting in line to do just that. :P

That said, our new welcoming email is a lot sexier than our old one. It's got all sorts of bells and whistles the old one didn't have (for instance, I discovered a little-known skill called hyperlinking and made use of it in the new email). There's still some things I'm not happy with -like our Competitions link. However, the resident code dude (AKA, his exalted Quaestorness, Celahir) has some solutions for that.

I've also sent the email to two of our new members.

-As our more astute channel members may have noticed, we've made some minor edits to our ops policy. Specifically, our Aediles are now always opped within the channel (frankly, having to op/deop them whenever the Quaestor arrived or left was starting to feel ridiculous). Our honored guests (The GM, DGM, JST, and Oberst) are no longer auto-opped, although they retain access. This was done to streamline recognition of the 'guys in charge'.

Naturally, this being a minor and well-intended change, it was immediately controversial. In fact, the change was apparently so momentous that it tore a gaping hole in space-time, causing everyone involved to act out of their regular character. Sarin sent a long lecturing email scolding us for our malicious attempt to undermine the fabric of the universe, I refrained from biting people's heads off, and Muz appeared to calm things down and signal he was perfectly all right with the changes. The only one who acted in-character was Dash, being the blunt, dutiful and snarky personality we all love so much.

-I created a reminder email along the same lines as our welcoming email, and then sent out a metric fuckton of those to our newest members (our APPs and NOVs) that I haven't heard of for a while.

-I wrote an email to the Summit, explaining to them all the changes as you've seen.

-I wrote our 'nice to n00bs' policy, which you can read below.

-I wrote a mini-guide to IRC use and put it on the Arcona website, to be linked to in our welcoming email.

-Your moms. Yes, all of them.

Nice to N00bs, a policy OR where Tim talks at great length:

Muz, as everyone knows, writes gazillion-word novels that can be called reports in the same way a Star Trek DVD collection can be called a movie. While I have the legendary patient of someone who is in fact not very patient at all, I've taken the trouble of reading it all and providing you with an accurate summary:

Our member retention sucks. And I don't mean 'sucks like a vacuum cleaner'. More like 'sucks like a black hole if that black hole was also Sang's mom'. Yes, that bad. Muz has of course then attached a whole series of proposed solutions I think are questionable. For examble, #db. It's a cesspool of idiocy. Every time I go in there I can feel my brain oozing out of my skull. And banning swearing won't stop it. In fact, it'll make things worse, since an important trait of swearwords is that they can make idiots shut up and stare in horror at the words on their screen, if only for a while. This, in turn, reduces the instances of grey matter leaving the skulls of those people not yet lobotomized by hanging out there in the first place. #db won't start improving until the DC starts recognizing that 'a channel that accepts DJBers acting like idiots' and 'a channel that paints a favorable picture of the DJB' are in fact contradictory goals. Of course, they're in a bind here. Our rules mean we have to be tolerant, after all, so I can sort of guess the problem they're having.

Of course, there's also some good stuff in the report. The grind path, for example. I've heard some grumbling against it, with or without reason. In my own opinion, the whole thing could very well turn out to be a good idea, provided that said path won't just function the way the Test of Lore does now (i.e. most people pass it, but then they get stuck at Protector or Guardian or wherever the grind path ends). If it manages to teach people to get online and actually involves them rather than just turning the first few ranks into single-player mode, the grind-path could well be a god-send, unorthodox move or not. And of course, there's lots of things that can be done improving our mundane DJB infrastructure.

Where was I again? Oh, yeah. I don't agree with every single one of Muz' conclusions. But the essence of his report is correct and important. Having one member in a hundred reach DJK is not enough. Not by a long shot. As such, I'll be trying to improve that.

And of course, the people I expect to help me most are you. :P

Now our own policy on this is simple. Everything we've done so far has been aimed at trying to get our new members online more. That's the point of the exercise. Drive them to #arcona and get them to say 'hi'. Of course, if it works, that means we'll have a lot more unfamiliar faces around the Clan Channel, soon. And that means that we're all a bit representative of Arcona.

Now, I'm not the DC. I don't believe that hearing four letter words will instantly scar our fragile little Apprentices into complete uselessness upon seeing it. In fact, I emphatically believe our Clan culture is for everyone. All it takes is a bit of acclimatization.

Of course, there's an especially important role in this for the Summit and Arconae, being our principal leaders and the members who have done us most proud over the years. But if we want to make people enthusiastic for Arcona the way we are, everyone should help. This doesn't mean you have to be on your best behavior whenever a new member enters. It just means that, whenever someone new wonders into the Clan, you should try to avoid combining your powers to become Captain Douchebag. Instead, be helpful. Throw them a PM to say hi, offer help if you've got the time, and generally help people become enthusiasts for Arcona. There's always someone online to help, and remember: if a new member comes online and you're nice enough, they'll probably want to return.

Hence, try to make these members comfortable. After all, making new members comfortable and active is one of the primary jobs of a successful leader...and I know that I, for one, will be keeping my eye on people who manage to be exceptionally successful at it. Help our newbies, and I'll help you. :P

Today's xkcd: Yeah, I know. This'll again be a bit of a surprise, as I no longer have my standard Culture Ship stuff. Partly, this is out of a desire for change. Moreso, however, is that I was running out of awesome names. Hence, I'll now start referring to random xkcd strips, one per report, giving a link each time, and stealing the title from it for my report.

Here's the first: xkcd.

Conclusion OR more rambling:

There's an Equite and Elders ladder. At least one Arconan complained loudly there was never anything Equite-specific. There is, now. Go sign up. :P Also, an ACC coop ladder will be there soon. Once it is there, find a partner. Then go sign up. :P

Also Dash, Sang, and myself have rescued our dignity by turning the last of our RoS ACC opponents to paste, thus ensuring the final score is 2-1 rather than 2-0.

Okay, long report. But that's it. Next one will be shorter (I hope).

Cya’ll online,