MAA Report Time

News

The MAA-administered DJB-wide AWOL check is still in progress! Scholae Palatinae and Plagueis are up for the next two weeks or so. When you receive the email, you absolutely must reply to maa.awol [at] gmail.com with your name, PIN, and a simple message of “I am active.” Absolutely no special exceptions will be made for anyone in these checks. Yes, that’s right; I don’t care how old school you are or whether or not you have the Clan name, you have to respond or you will be removed to the rogues. I’m asking for one, single, extremely short email. There is no excuse for any member who wishes to stay on the active roster not to do this. Please read below for details on this process.

I can now announce who my new Praetor is. Please congratulate Anshar on his appointment as the new Praetor to the Master At Arms! I had a lot of great applications and questionnaire responses but in the end I felt that Anshar’s was the best. Thank you to all who applied.

Policy Updates and Clarifications

I have said this before but I need to say it again. If you are planning on rewarding someone with a promotion or a medal, do not tell them about it prior to it being approved. There are a few reasons for this: 1.) I may deny it and now both you and I look like huge jerks; 2.) I may remand it for editing and people get antsy; 3.) Half the fun of getting rewarded is that it’s a surprise and makes you feel good. Don’t take that away from your members. Lastly, I don’t want to be pestered by members asking me to process their medals – oftentimes when those medals haven’t even been submitted! So keep your lips sealed until the stuff gets approved. It’ll make things better in the long run.

Also, please remember to indicate Clan our House leader approval when you submit competition requests!

Let me say a few things about the MAA AWOL checks. I plan on running these no more than once every 6 months and they will almost always be run in the staggered manner that I have used for this initial round. I am making no exceptions for veteran members so we can get an accurate count of how many active members there are in the DB. This also helps us implement the dynamic House/Clan system; so if a Clan drops below 40 active members, it goes on probation. I do not expect any Clan to dip below 40 members in this first round of AWOL checks so no worries.

Please note that a Leave of Absence will count as an automatic response to the AWOL check provided that the Leave of Absence is valid. Keep your Leave of Absence reasonable: do not go on a leave of absence for a year; just go rogue. If your Leave of Absence expires, I will not count it so don’t abuse the Leave of Absence system.

I realize we have several members who are in the military and some of them have been deployed overseas. If you’re going to be completely incommunicado while gone, don’t just sit on the roster inactive: just go rogue. I will AWOL you if you don’t respond to a check regardless of your status.

If you get rogued, don’t freak out. Just request a transfer back into your old Clan. I approve these types of transfers quickly and without question. Going rogue will no longer result in you losing your Clan title so there is little downside to just going rogue instead of sitting on the roster AWOL.

Projects

Medal Revision Project: In progress

MAA AWOL Checks: In progress, finished in a few weeks

Promotion Requirements for Journeymen: Released – no recent changes

MAA Policy Project and Administrative Cleanup: In progress

Staff

Anshar = new Praetor. May God have mercy on his soul.

Ask Kaek

Someone asked me a week or two ago about how I deal with changes in Clan membership in the middle of one of the MAA administered AWOL checks. So, for instance, if new members join a Clan in the middle of the AWOL check, must they respond to the check?

The answer is no. At the end of the check, I add newly joined members to the total and they are not removed. I consider ‘joining’ to be evidence of activity so I don’t need an email from a newly arrived member to confirm that they are still active. Transfers in and out are handled as they come.

Please send me more questions!

Closing Remarks

I have nothing to rant about this time out, believe it or not. I have quite a few projects that are nearing completion so…be prepared :P

Dark Jedi Master Syn Kaek

Master At Arms

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DJM Syn Kaek (Sith)/MAA/Dark Council

AK/GC-PoTP/SC-SoH/AC-ToSC/DC-GP/SN-BL/Cr-8A-2S-3E-5T-3Q/CF-SF/DSS-BL/SI-AuL/SoL-BE/LS-AuL/S:-9M-3R-1C-2D-3Do-4Dk-1Rm-14P-1U

{SA: MVN}