Posted by Fleet Captain Jennifer Ward (Fleet Commander, Meridian Fleet) in Open Session - April 2023

Posted by Captain Katy Darrah (CMM) in Open Session - April 2023

Posted by Lucas Foxley in Open Session - April 2023
Posted by… suppressed (8) by the Post Ghost! 👻
To begin- this is a thread where no idea is too stupid to say and anyone is not just welcome but encouraged to throw out their thoughts for Command.

Based on the most recent reports, and your own experiences, what are your ideas for the club’s future?

-President Sage Pennington

There’s definitely a lot to unpack in the other posts, so I’ll reply here. Here are my ideas/suggestions which may or may not relate directly to the reports:

1) Strict enforcement of AWOLs for CO/XO/GMs throughout STF.
2) More resources for CMM. Board hasn’t been updated in nearly two years, STF social media isn’t very active, and there aren’t any events planned. There should also be more than 1 person on the team, each focusing on different areas (Community Engagement, Workshops, Marketing, Recruiting). Maybe regular updates from CMM?
3) MOTD Templates. Some people just can’t code for their life. Maybe have a few to choose from to make life easier?

-Ray

To add to this point but just a minor nitpick , MOTD s should be reviewed if they are compatible with mobile devices. I’m not sure if I’m the only one who uses a mobile device but just in my experience some of them are just difficult to use. The default one works very well on mobile.

• Ava

I’d suspect that some of the problem is that a lot of the people who control the MOTD’s (CO’s, Cabinet, etc.) have been around long enough that they are not posting from mobile. Especially since prior to Exodus, the site was not very well optimized for mobile. I can only speak for myself, but I’d say 75% of the time I’m at a computer, another 20% I’m at my iPad, and only about 5% am I posting from my phone. So when I do post from my phone, I skip the MOTD right away because I’m there to post quick and get out.

But this is something that we need to be thinking about more as we keep moving forward.

Steve

I like the ideas of optimizing MOTDs. The only problem I can see is that it’d squish a lot of the visual elements on PC browser, but I’m sure that can be fixed. Another question I have, and this isn’t meant to be condescending or anything, is why are you reading the MOTD anyway? To my knowledge they aren’t updated that frequently, just scroll passed it, or, better yet, hit the “view posts” button most COs are now (thankfully) putting at the top.

Katy

HUGE disagree here. MOTDs are still important and should be regularly updated. I stay on top of Sentinel and Sojo’s. I do have a ‘read note’ button at the top because sometimes yep, you wanna just skip it, especially on mobile. However, when looking at ships, new members do read that. I read them when I’m considering joining a ship and it’s a big mark against it if it’s way out of date.

This is based on my experience on the Saracen. When I visit the page on mobile the custom MOTD changes the default aspect ratio (probably to a fixed ratio) which makes the whole thing wider. So it’s harder to scroll around on the page a hit the correct buttons, and the navigation buttons become unreadable. I have found a workaround (I bookmark the post list) However, it is just my suggestion as newer people might want a better mobile experience. The presentation is bad and that could put some people off. Ideally, the width would change with device (I don’t know how the code works but if it’s anything like html / CSS it’s possible)

• Ava

Opens Saracen page on mobile.... blinks
Now I see what you are talking about, that page is definitely not optimized for mobile. I tried jumping to a different ship to look at one that is, and it was easier to just go back to the home page then to try and click through the menus ha.

Katy - If it’s done correctly, the elements aren’t squished on a PC browser. Take a look at the Challenger as an example. The banner auto resizes based upon the browser you are in.

Steve

Fair enough. And while I’m not discounting that the Saracen’s MOTD could be better suited to mobile, I believe that the buttons above the roster cannot be moved. So just…scroll passed the MOTD? As I said before, MOTDs (In particular the Saracen’s) don’t change that often. And when/if they do, it’s information the crew should likely already know, i.e. sim updates, crew changes, etc.

Though I’m curious, have you reached out to the CO in question and pointed it out? It’s likely that some (like myself) would select an MOTD design that’s fine on their primary/only platform (in my case, computer, with a 27in monitor) that isn’t fine for someone else. If you reach out, the CO in question might be willing to fix it as to them it might not be a problem they knew about.

Katy

I am 100% a mobile user and I agree with Ava. We should be thinking about the compatibility of MOTDs and the site in general with mobile. The site is already decently mobile friendly, I have no problem navigating, posting, even doing admin stuff like updating MOTDs from mobile. The only big issue for me is long outdated MOTDs that are really mobile incompatible and everything overlaps and looks bad.

I think telling Ava to “just scroll past the MOTD” is a bit dismissive of the issue. She is probably already doing that? And it’s a bandaid fix. Something we can do for now, but might get annoying in the long run. I was a member of Saracen as well, and the MOTD there is actually one of the better ones, for me it just forces view as desktop so I have to scroll in and out to see anything, but it definitely could be more mobile friendly. Chimera and Olinski have the issue with things overlapping. Some others I think do too but I’m not gonna go look at every ship.

~ River

That was what I was getting at with squishing elements in a previous response. And on the topic of MOTDs being updated–I believe every update is still something that everyone on the ship itself already should know. I’m failing to think of something on ANY MOTD that would be put there that everyone on the crew doesn’t already. Going off the most common things:

CO/XO info: Either previously known, not incredibly important to need to be read more than once, or it’s information like contact info which can just be reached through a user’s profile.
DH orders: either distributed IC or OOC, generally done IC then summarized here.
GM/Sim summary: Only really useful for a person coming onto the ship mid-sim. And even then, only just barely, as reading posts may give a better summary, and/or the GM just gives a periodic update on the board.
Posting limits: Can be found elsewhere, and also generally known by most crew after a while.
Vacancies: Can be found elsewhere (or should be at least), not useful in the slightest for about 90% of the crew.
Useful links: These are helpful…in all of a handful of situations. Most of these are either specs (useful very rarely for non-GMs), links to the discord, charters for Alt-RPGs, and/or links to the master roster. Very few ones that are generally useful
Ship summary: Not really important at all for anyone on the crew already.
News: See DH orders/sim summary box. All of these items (on the ships that maintain their news fields) are already known by the crew.
NEs/secondary characters: Nice to maintain, not often used (hence the nature of the characters in the first place), not something the average player is going to notice often anyway.

Some of this information is required. But as I kinda got at above, 95% of it is useless to the average player. Why, as a science DH do I need to know my orders again when they were given to me IC? Why do I need a recap of major events that I just attended IC?

You see my point in “just scroll passed it”? For a player already established on a ship the information is redundant, and even moreso for a player established in the club as a whole. I don’t need a discord link if I’m already there, though a new player might, obviously. I’m already embroiled into the plot with my department, I don’t need to re-read what we’re supposed to be doing. I don’t need to see the AWOL limit, nor check the master roster to see if I’m AWOL, I can simply scroll down to view the main roster (scrolling over if I’m on mobile, the roster itself will scroll).

I guess my point is that, even updated, the MOTD isn’t really that important.

Katy

I have to disagree. I read the MOTDs and I find the information helpful and useful regularly. I am not a GM but I use the ship specs. The charters for ship specific rules, orders to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything and to know what others are doing, useful links, awol limits it is a quick reference that I use a lot, and yes the CO and XO messages may not change but I like seeing them. They may not have useful information to you, but that doesn’t mean some of the rest if us find it useless. Do they need to be better utilized, yes.

Some of the other issues I see mentioned like updating and compatibility…Whoever said templates YES PLEASE. I don’t know HTML so it takes me a long time to just edit simple things. Forget rewriting and designing a new one. And yes I am going to show how inept I am here…I didn’t know there was a difference for the coding between desktop and mobile. I would have NO IDEA how to fix that. So templates where we just fill in info and the coding done? That would be amazing and really helpful. Also I get that is a huge undertaking for anyone as a volunteer thing as well.

-Jenn

A good MOTD also increases the attractiveness of a ship. There have been times when I refused to visit a ship’s page because the MOTD was too bright and hard to read. Now imagine a new CO or FComm takes over; they’ll have to start from scratch. Templates created by STF could be both mobile-friendly and easy to use, all the while still allowing someone who knows how to code the opportunity to continue creating their own.

-Ray