I’ll keep this month’s report short (for me), as I have a couple of timely announcements but, sadly, not a lot of Dork Crusade progress to report.

The New Member part of the HM household walked out on the Library Reference Desk portion and took the kid in the divorce. While that homewrecker Qormus absconded with my sweet Zuza, I’ve been on the rebound with a hot little number you may know as DBWiki.

Tortured metaphors aside, the Emissary mission is critically important for the future of our club and I think Qormus and his new team are fantastic people to have on the job. I think I speak for the entire Council when I say we look forward to supporting the EMS team in all the cool things they have ahead of them.

But before we get into the future of P:HM, I want to highlight three SA staff members. I have awarded the Savant: Service degree to Zentru’la, Zuza, and Eleceos. All three have contributed not only to published courses this year, but they’ve also graded dozens of exams each.

Now Hiring: Deputy Empress of Documentation

With Zuza moving over to P:EMS, that leaves the P:HM slot open. If you’re interested, make sure you understand the current Headmaster duties as laid out here.

Requirements:

• Fluency with Markdown and Wikitext. (By “fluency” I mean that if I drop a gdoc in either markup system in your lap for editing, you can do that, not that you have to be able to build insane templates without checking reference material.)
• Experience editing for style and content.
• Proficiency with Google Drive and the Docs family of web applications.
• Able to give the position sustained focus: daily presence on Discord, not already a Consul or Praetor or otherwise overemployed, and so on.

Possible Qualifications:

• Experience writing and/or editing to a style guide.
• Experience with technical writing or any other “explain a complicated thing clearly” writing.
• Experience with knowledge management, library science, information management, education, curriculum development, or any other “get people from clueless to competent” practice.
• Experience working on the Shadow Academy.
• Experience as an admin working on the DBWiki or another MediaWiki implementation.
• Experience with Discord server management, specifically knowledge management/how-to functions like Server Guide, Onboarding, pinned forum threads or FAQ channels, etc.
• Experience working with any other DC office.

Requirements are requirements. If you can’t remember how to Markdown format a link, if you’ve never so much as proofread an ACC post, if you are currently the Deputy Grand Master, then this is not the position for you. Possible Qualifications are not requirements. They’re examples of experience I know some DB members have that I think could be useful. You don’t have to have those, and you might have other skills or experience not listed that make you a great candidate.

Additionally, I want to be candid about two things and head off any confusion.

Those of you who read my comments on term limits (if you exist) are no doubt aware that I’m expecting to leave HM within the next year and that I will need a Praetor who can support that. That does not mean you will be the next HM. It does put you in a great position to apply for that job and all your friends will assume you’re a shoo-in to replace me, but part of your job as P:HM is to ensure the next HM will be successful, whether that person is you or somebody else. If you don’t want to be a Council member, you can still be exactly the person I’m looking for. On the other hand, if all you care about is being a Council member, please wait until one of those positions opens and apply to that. I won’t hire the next HM, Bubba will.

Looking at the qualifications above and the application, you’ll notice I don’t talk about your cool worldbuilding, experience running DB competitions and RP sessions, or your grand plans for how the ACS is going to redefine the Brotherhood setting. It’s not because I don’t care about that, it’s because that’s not the job. If you want to do cool ACS- or SA-themed competitions and RP sessions, awesome! Go do that! You don’t need me to hire you first. I’ve said yes to everyone who’s pitched running any sort of ACS or SA-themed activity since I took over. But my job now is to take the vast, rich, complex Brotherhood experience and make it comprehensible so that anyone can quickly understand what they need to understand to get the most out of their experience. As my Praetor, that will also be your job, and that’s where I’ll want you to focus.

Having read all that, if you want to apply, submit your application here. Get it in no later than December 16th.

Walking in a Wiki Wonderland

I’ve been slowly getting my bearings when it comes to overseeing our Wiki and our Wiki Tribune, but Bentre and I do have some announcements this month.

First, we’ll be getting back into the habit of awarding Featured Article and Wikipedian of the Month. If you would like to nominate an article for next month, you can either add it here or you can reach out to us directly.

Our Featured Article this month is one I didn’t realize we had until this month: Council Guardsman Accessories. We chose to feature this one for a couple of reasons. First, I think it’s a great example of wiki content: it’s too niche to justify a site menu and changes too often to be covered in the Shadow Academy, but is nevertheless the sort of information that should be documented somewhere. There’s a bunch of research and effort that went into this. But it also needs a little love: I know there are awardees who aren’t documented, and the introductory paragraph could probably use freshening up to align with the newest version of the GMRG.

Our Wikipedia of the Month won’t surprise anyone: Essik Lyccane. Essik has long been one of the foremost contributors to the Wiki, both in raw volume of edits and because so much of his work is on overall clean-up and improvement instead of just tinkering with his own content and pet projects. Give the man a round of applause.

Finally, I have two public service announcements.

People keep uploading art to the Wiki, which is excellent, but it’s important that we’re giving artists credit for their work. If you’re uploading something somebody else made, make sure you’re crediting them in the file description. For commissions, there’s even a fancy template you can use: {{Copyrighted Com|artist=}} and just put the artist’s name—or even better, a link to their page—after the equals sign.

Many people use found art under the Fair Use license. That’s fine. But you still need to credit it. I’m not going to go through the backlog of hundreds of uncredited images, but expect me to badger people going forward if I see uncredited images in the upload log.

Unsurprisingly, we’ve also seen a lot of AI generated art starting to pop up, and people have been scratching their heads over how to mark that. I’ve added a new license type, AI Art, to cover any images you created using generative AI. The license will automatically categorize all those images.

Second announcement: please don’t add things to the DC policy categories if you haven’t talked to the Councilor in question. Updating wiki documentation is great. I appreciate people doing it and want them to keep doing it. But pages marked or categorized as official policy need to actually be official policy. This doesn’t need to be a tortured process, just send them a PM or email.

Closing Remarks

If you have questions about P:HM or, really, anything, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m back home visiting family through the weekend so I may be a bit slower to respond until Monday, but I will do my best.

As always, if anyone sees any errors in the course notes or exam questions, please submit them through the form. Scrolls of Foundation are a nutritious part of a healthy XP diet.

And, of course, I am always available at [Log in to view e-mail addresses] or archenksov on Discord.

Academy Changelog

DB FUNDAMENTALS
Essentials 102: Progress
- Updated to include honorifics and remove outdated reference to order-based rank names
Essentials 104: Structure of the Club
- Updated to reflect the HM/EMS change and the current Tribunes
Essential 105: Member Conduct
- Removed references to “Dark Council”
Activities 101: Fiction
- Disabled a question that could be correctly answered multiple ways (Noobi)

LEADERSHIP, LAW & COMMUNICATION
Leadership Proposals
- Graded exam emails now include the member’s answers

LORE
Alchemy Studies
- Removed a duplicate question (Donny)
Regions of the Galaxy
- Fixed broken images (Korvis)