Posted by Vice Admiral Daniel Lerner (Academy Commandant / Supervisor of Experiments / Procedures Guru) in Discussion - Proposed Changes To Current AWOL Policy
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We introduced a lot of ships when the membership numbers swelled. But while no one complained when it was time to create ships, members in Command found there will always be people upset or angry when it was time to reduce those numbers (see above how we started to have a sense of entitlement to our positions). “Yes, ships need to be reduced, but why my ship?” “We just need to allow players to create more characters.” “Let’s lower the GM standards so we can have more GMs!” (that was a ‘fun’ one!), and so on. Dissenters might be the minority, but they were a vocal minority. And so what should have been the normal state of affairs (increase ships and fleets with more members, decrease ships and fleets with less members) took on an unfair political aspect, and was now seen by some people as a sign of defeat or lack of success.

I cannot begin to express how absolutely frustrating I am when I am told we will only decommission a ship as a “last resort”. That was never supposed to be the case, the club is dying as a result.

So we end up with ships we can’t maintain, and cabinet positions we can’t fill (so we keep filling with whoever will volunteer regardless of experience, resulting in less accountability or understanding regarding in why we cannot maintain these stretched number of ships. COs don’t turn away a player who already has 6 or more characters, and then are surprised when that player is burning out and not posting on all of these different ships. GMs are stretched to the limit. And ships become more and more vulnerable to the few players who cannot post and are burning out, and are desperately trying to recruit from an already stretcher membership to try to keep their ship “healthy” and not vulnerable to decomm.

We are all avoiding what needs to be done. Reduce ships. Reduce fleets/FComms.

Instead, we are left with this proposal. Keep a stretched out membership, and unsustainable number of ships and fleets, and just let the burnt out members post less.

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When the club started breaking 100, then 200, then 300 members, we responded accordingly. But as we went down, we have refused to respond.

We have the ships and cabinet size for a club in excess of 150 members. I stand to be corrected, but I think our club is 60-80. That’s not going to grow anytime soon in a major way, but we can stabilize it from shrinking. And to do that, we must make ourselves sustainable.

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Daniel Lerner

Approximately three hours after I wrote the above, Edict #10 was introduced decommissioning OP42 (because it had looooong past the point of sustainability - the ship should never have been allowed to even get this far in a club that needs to shrink down already). In Edict #10, the edict starts with the language “…with a heavy heart…”.

The language in Edict #10 is part of the problem that needs to stop! It continues a false political narrative that the club having to keep the number of ships proportional to its membership is a “bad thing”, a thing to “be avoided at all costs”, and must be an “absolute last resort” (all example of language I have heard used. This is one of the reasons we have gone so long without reducing our ship numbers on a site-wide basis, and just left it at one-offs who were so bad no one could blame anyone for it. (By the way, yes I was a president during the relevant period - but I was a terrible prez for other reasons - my RL time commitments destroyed my term which didn’t help the problem we are now in.)

Daniel

I agree with the “wording issue”. I can’t think of a single bill or legal document that has personal sentiments in it. Since we’re using American examples in the speeding post, let’s use the Declaration of Independence. It doesn’t begin with “It’s with great regret we leave England and become our own country…”

It seems silly, but I think Edicts, as legal government documents (within the confined and definitions of the site) should simply be statements. And since commissioning and decommissioning have been happening for thirty years on the site, it should be perceived as normal.. not a traumatic thing. Though in willing to bed, every time a decommissioning or commissioning period arrives, folks always freak out.

The site survived thirty yrs doing these things. They should just be done as a matter of record and “timing”.

Meli the Mobstress
Captain Komodo Dragon