Greetings everyone and welcome to my #38th Report as Grand Master of the Dark Brotherhood. Phew, talk about a post Star Wars Celebration Hang Over! Regardless, it was a great time and one that I look forward to recreating against next year in London! A lot has gone down since report #37 and here are the updates!

Administrative Data

1) Tarentum: I placed Clan Tarentum on probation on the night I became Grand Master. This probation came with the removal of very good leaders and a few hours of very contentious communication between myself and several members of the Clan. Fast forward three months and I am pleased to state that Tarentum has performed exceptionally. They have had the largest membership gain within our club, ran 28 competitions, and more impressively they have had the highest ration of member participation within competitions (more on that in featured projects). I am going to remove Tarentum's probationary status and assuage their fears of a June closing. Congratulations guys and great work!

2) Valhavoc is a Dark Adept. Valhavoc has served his entire 12 months as an EQ4 on the Dark Council. During this period he has organized 47 competitions, co-organized 36 additional competitions, graded 179 SA courses, posted over 76 original threads on the news page, and responded to an additional 164 news page threads.

Outside of the objective numbers, Valhavoc has rewritten the Rites of Combat and adjusted CF values on multiple occasions to ensure an impossible mission of attempting to balance CFs across our gaming platforms. He has developed and submitted a new PvP and PvE medal system that will be announced to the club on 14 May 2015. Valhavoc has also rounded out his project work by detailing a new dbb0t gaming system in #db gaming with the SCL (project finished by the Fist on 10 March 2015).

I took Val's time in rank and compared his activity against 11 other EQ4-DA promotions (using some of our more famous/notorious members) and found that not only did his activity compare favorably, but that his time in rank was more often that not longer than those who came before him (6 x times longer than one promotion...).

As I wrote my recommendation, it dawned on me that Grand Masters set very different tones for promotions to the Elder ranks. I'm extremely confident that Val to DA and the other Elder promotions in the past few months have been consistent and well within our historical norms. I'm exceptionally comfortable promoting any high performer within the Elder ranks. I'm less concerned with preconceived notions that people have to sit at ranks for years vs epic productions. Also...it is factually inaccurate to say people need to wait years for a promotion. :p

Congrats Val!

3) The position of Wiki-Master-Tribune is open for applications. All interested applicants should submit an application to Mav and I no later than 21 May. We retain the right to make a selection prior to that date, so don't wait until the last minute.

PVE and PVE Gaming Medals

1) A year ago Valhavoc submitted a proposal to Muz and I recommending a separate medal for PVE and PVP awards. I shot this proposal down and said that it was stupid. Now, that I am a year older and much wiser, I asked Val to look at a PVE medal. I'm happy to say that he did not quit and has submitted a proposal to Mav and I for the splitting of PVE and PVP awards, a plan to back date the award, and a strategy to make the implementation occur in as painless as possible manner. What does painless mean? It means that we will not strip credits or prestige from anyone during the conversion.

2) The PVE/PVP medal plan will be submitted to the Dark Council and Clans in the next few hours. Feedback is greatly encouraged, but I will caveat that by saying that some of the things on the proposal are going to be untouchables. Namely, my decision to award DJB teams vs non DJB teams as a PVP medal. I thought this was a no brainer and will not budge on it. Not everything, to include the valuation of the CF, needs to remain based on games from when I was in high school (ps...that was 20 years ago).

Featured Project: Stats and Bots

1) Stats: The GM/DGM are number junkies. I don't know how to do the math or make the equations, but I'm pretty damn good at analyzing the data. This has led to some new features in the administrative page creating downloadable XLS that show DJB leadership metrics (reports, news posts, medals, ect), our new Objective Promotion Page (shows a ton of captured metrics for the member at their current rank), and it has just resulted in Mav and James creating a DJB Unit Report that breaks down activity per DJB Unit for a defined amount of time (Membership gains, competitions run, competitions participated in, Knightings, awards, ect).

I'd like to thank James, Kalen, Mav, and Monty for making these tools that have benefited our administrative running of the club.

Here is a look at the simple, but effective tool.

2) Bots: Valhavoc and James have come to the testing phase of dbb0t's new gaming capabilities. For those of you who remember the gaming days in the EH, a b0t ran and kept track of multiple gaming competitions that would take place on mIRC. This came along with commands like !startevent (!startsarinsxvtnightofmisery), !joinplatform (!joinxvt), and !report <their #wins> <opponent #wins> [competition_id]. All of those commands should be familiar to a lot of you. The best part, dbb0t will automatically submit the scores to the website.

Expect to see testing soonish.

Conclusion

Once again, phew, it has been a busy several weeks. I'll resume my standard weekly/10 day reporting format and ensure all of you are staying up to date on what is going on with the projects within our club. I'd also like to take a second to thank Yacks for putting me in for an AC recently. GM's don't see a lot in terms of merit medals and I highly appreciate the token of gratitude. Thanks Yacks!

Lastly, I want to end with a few points about gaming, cheating, and cloning. Don't do it. This wonderful website of ours is amazing at helping us detect members who derive some sort of pleasure from scamming a Star Wars club for fake medals. As we have mentioned in past reports, the good dude/dudette rule should always apply. Try to live by it.

Have a great week everyone!