Posted by Vice Admiral Sarah Hemenway (President) in Discussion: Encouraging Fleet Report Submissions
Fleet Report Revision - October Report Conclusions

Looking through the feedback that Rob and I have received both here, in email, and in Discord, here are some conclusions based on the first month of the trial.

• People were confused on how to utilize the existing report form to complete the new, guided questions.
• People who were on top of submitting fleet reports did not enjoy getting consistent follow up reminders.
• COs should be held responsible for ensuring all of the reports are submitted for their ship.

Personally I think there’s a better shot at getting more responses if a handful of fleet commanders are responsible for getting these people to submit these than if we make 24 people responsbile for getting them submitted. But even if this is the route we go then it’s going to be hard for a CO to police this until they have visibility to know if the reports are submitted.

• There should be some kind of objective data to go along with the subjective responses.
• In general, the quality of the reports seemed to go up or remain the same.
• In general, the response rate seemed to not change much.

The following features (beyond just new questions) were requested:

• Fleet report submissions should provide an email confirmation message so that people know that they went through.
• COs should be able to view whether his/her XO and his/her GM have submitted a report.

The following action items are outstanding that would be helpful to this discussion:

• Figure out what to do with the highlighted ships, posts, and players. I have mentioned this to CMM (perhaps they can be featured on Facebook or in the newsletter) and I have asked FComms to figure out how to highlight this information on their MOTDs starting in December. Would someone be willing to compile a list of all of them from all of the reports?
• Compare the response statistics from last month with the historical ones that Daniel compiled. Daniel, can you do this?
• Continue discussion on what objective measures could be included automatically by Exodus. Nathan and Adam, could you come up with a list of objective measures that might be interesting to include, including the calculation logic, by mid-December?

I’m happy to discuss this on the board or off. I don’t think I have that much to add so I’ll contribute it now. There’s different possible ways to do an objective measure. Good ones are intuitive for people reading them to understand. To me the most intuitive is total posts in a month per ship. As has been mentioned already we could also add the average total posts per month of a ship that speed and if desired break that down to total posts for each posting limit on the ship. Another intriguing statistically measure is one that Matt B. proposed in 2018 that broke it down to posts per character per month. As I recall automating it for this version of the site presenting challenges for him, so that’s unlikely to be an option unless Matt says it is.

If we do automatic an objective measure, it’d be nice for it to be available to the CO’s, XO’s, GM’s, and fleet staff once a month ends in addition to being included in the report.

Adam W.

• Directly reach out to COs, XOs, and GMs to have a unified assessment of their experience with the new questions.

---

With that in mind, I’m going to send the following via email to FComms for the November report cycle:

Following the reviews of last month, here is the plan for the November 2020 reports.

We will be using the same set of questions that we used last month. Please clarify in your initial report reminder that the answers can be entered in one of the report boxes and the others can be ignored.

COs:  How is your ship looking overall? What was your favorite moment/post on the ship this month (include a link if possible!)? Name one thing you want to improve on the ship for next month.

XOs:  How are the DHs and the JOs doing? Is everyone active and participating, both in the main sim and in any side sims? Who is the shining star this month?

GMs:  Summarize the sim plot so far as if you were providing it to a new member joining the ship. Who was the biggest contributor this month to driving the sim forward?

For your fleet report, we would love to hear the following information in your overall comments for the fleet: How are the fleet COs, XOs, and GMs doing? Is everyone active and participating, IC and OOC? What ship is the shining star this month?

Please follow this revised reminder calendar. Note to whom each reminder should be sent.

• Thursday, November 27, 2020:  Send an email with the questions information and reminding people of a due date of Saturday, December 5, 2020.
• Tuesday, December 1, 2020:  Send a follow up email reminder only to people who have not submitted reports or who did not send them in the correct, new format.
• Sunday, December 6, 2020:  Send a follow up email only to people who have not submitted reports or who did not send them in the correct, new format. 
• Thursday, December 10, 2020:  Fleet report due in Command and submitted through system.

As I mentioned in Command, in mid-December, Rob and I will be reaching out directly to COs, XOs, and GMs to get their feedback on the process. We would also like each FComm to have a plan for how to incorporate the highlighted posts, players, and ships on your fleet MOTD. I am happy to help with technical aspects or to link you up with someone else who can.

---

• Sarah, President