Posted by Admiral Joe P (Librarian / TECH Chairman) in Proposal: New way of measuring and displaying a ship’s speed

Posted by Vice Admiral Daniel Lerner (Personnel Director, EGO) in Proposal: New way of measuring and displaying a ship’s speed

SNIP

Will slow posters be placed on a fast ship and fast posters be placed on a slow ship?

No.

A ship’s speed - how frequent it’s players are expected to post for threads and sims to move along - is absolute. A fast ship is a fast ship for a reason. A slow ship is a slow ship for a reason. A player should only be joining those ships if they expect to post that fast or that slow.

This is to measure how busy an individual ship is - that is, how many posts need to read every time you log in. I may be someone who can post ever 3-4 days (or more) but each time I log in, I don’t want to read too much. Or I may be someone that can only post once every 6-9 days, but I love to read a huge amount each time I do log in. This provides that additional information.

Which is then used to do what? Sarah has contradicted you (whether deliberately or not) on how this information is planned to be used by the Personnel Department.

How will this work with current PDept policies?

The current polices state the following:
-If someone says they will post infrequently, they are placed on ship that specifically allows for that infrequency; otherwise they will be contacted and probably placed on a slow ship
-If someone says they will post slowly, they are placed on a slow or medium ship, with preference to the slow ship
-If someone says the will post average or regularly, they are placed on any available ship, with preference to a medium ship
-If someone says they will post frequently, they are placed on a medium or fast ship, with preference to a fast ship

(Why don’t we just have a strict policy of slow-to-slow, medium-to-medium and fast-to-fast? Because due to a number of factors we may not have an available ship at the requested speed.)

A number of other factors go into to determining what ships are available, as set out in the polices. Often, at the end of that exercise, there are still multiple ships available (what we internally call “ties”). We then have a lit of increasing “tie-breaking rules” until either we are down to a single ship or we flip a coin or apply some of our own common sense. (If a ship has to be passed over due to bad health, that can only be done by the PDir, and a number of things flow from that decision.)

For a number of reasons I’m not going to get into here, it is not unusual to get to the “flip a coin” these days, at least on main fleet ships. If we are going with our common sense, and we were asking the new member how many posts they want to read every time they log in (a lot, a small amount, it doesn’t matter), we can take it into account at that stage.

In addition, as the current policies are becoming less and less relevant these days in STF (I think I formalized them sometime in 2007-2009, and they have never been updated since), we plan this term to do a public review and update on them. This new measure may take a higher role in the formal “tie-breakers” (or maybe even determining ship availability at the start, although that seems unlikely). Having an idea of the numbers - both what new members are saying on the application form, and how many ships fit in different categories, will certainly help with development of any revised policy later this term.

So… nowhere in here is the question “How will this work with current PDept policies?” actually given a clear answer. There’s 4 paragraphs about what the current policies are, one sentence where “oh maybe we could use it in this really narrow way”, and then a fifth one saying that all of those policies are, like, really old, so we should have new ones.

But then absolutely no examples are given as to why the policies are less “relevant” or why we need to make things more “relevant.” Topics which would actually be really important and interesting to talk about directly. By mentioning the fact you think policies need changing and then completely avoiding talking about that in any way at all makes this discussion of this specific proposal needlessly confusing and difficult. It makes it sound as though that there is some larger vision or plan that exists which we don’t get to see yet, until we give you the thing you want now. That’s a very frustrating kind of conversation to have, because it means we aren’t really sure what it is we’re being asked to approve of.

I think if you guys have a plan or a vision or an idea of what you want to do, you should say plainly what that is before asking for specific, detailed changes like this. If you don’t have such a plan or vision, then it it’s really weird that something so specific is deemed as necessary when everything else is nebulous; it makes it impossible to tell of this is needed to do what you’re trying to do, because what you’re trying to do is unknowable by anybody else if even you don’t know it.

Joe

I really don’t have a vision about what the new policies will be, because that discussion/debate hasn’t happened. I know you and Adam are suggesting that I (or the PDept) are proposing this because we have a vision for a new policy, but as I keep saying, that’s not why it’s being proposed. Or, more precisely, the role this new feature could play with improving current policies and that discussion is only a partial reason this is being proposed.

I believe this helps current members. I’m one of those members - not as the PDir, just a regular member who sees the value of this. I’ve been advised other current members believe this will help them as well when looking for new ships. COs have mentioned it will help them determine if they are a quiet ship or a busy ship. Some members in this discussion think it will be a useful objective measure, when combined with others, in assessing ships (which means it might come up in reports). I’ve mentioned that it could be useful when the Academy needs to find a ship that’s best suited to a graduating cadet. None of that has anything to do with the PDept placing new members.

So I’m vague because I don’t know what the new policies will look like. There is no vision, other than a general agreement that we will need to review the policies that have become out-of-date. But the idea of having a set ship speed and how many posts each ship has has been something I’ve been thinking about for about 12 months - beyond just in my role as PDir - and I was advised this was probably a good time to make the proposal.

Again, other than what it is involved with actually implementing it, I honestly don’t see the downside, and I know from personal experience this well be a benefit.

Daniel