MAA Report - Satisfaction Guaranteed - Dark Jedi Brotherhood

Aabs continues his 100 Days Journey as MAA with a collection of much desired changes to various things, news from the future, a lot of Wiki work, and a round of applause for my staff.

Whew! I have been MAA for nearly a month now (I’m also at one month in my new IRL job, which means my real job and this job are basically the same) and working hard with my awesome staff to keep busy and get a lot of things put into motion. Let’s run through everything!

P.S. All of my reports graphics were made by BubbaX.

The MAA Saga

I realized I had a lot of small but important announcements to make here, so I’m putting this report together a few days early. I’m still working on a fictional piece to jump start what I want to turn into solid MAA fictional development for both the office and me. I will link the Discourse topic once it’s live.

Leadership: Rewards

Keep taking that Shadow Academy course I plug all of the time! We’ve pretty much settled on what the prize will be for the winning unit, but I’m still nailing a few details. No, it’s not a ship, but it will be something that your entire unit can display and use fictionally. My future competitions will be more individual, for the time being. We’re at 39 participants right now, which is low considering the course isn’t super difficult or time consuming. Clan Taldryan has a significant lead, but there’s still a week left to close that gap.

Meanwhile, Evant has started working on a Leadership: Competitions course for the Shadow Academy that will hopefully reach the public within a few months.

Local Tip Line

You nag. I listen. James, being amazing, assisted with a series of tweaks to Promotheus that include:

• When viewing Promotheus reports, there is a "Hide completed activities" button
• "Pass Order COREs" and "Earn a merit medal" are no longer required activities. Earning a merit medal has been moved into the optional list and the number of activities required for D/JK bumped to 11.

Let it be known that a much more substantial revamp to our Journeyman promotion system is currently drafted and getting feedback, so while that last rank is more difficult, the change is temporary. And I’m really excited for what’s coming down the pipeline.

James also tweaked events (the page you view when clicking on an award or promotion) to hyperlink the Target Member so you can check out their dossier.

I Am the Law

Taig is actually the Law, but we are running an audit on competitions to find those that were never judged (for whatever reason) and make sure people get their crescents. As always, email me with questions or concerns. Otherwise, there should be some old crescents going out soon.

This audit is resulting in a new MAA policy about competitions: organizers are given 30 days to determine placements and close out the competition; delay will result in an email inquiry; if the competition remains open without reason after another 14 days, the MAA or my staff will step in and determine placements. This policy will be written formally and added to the Wiki soon.

On a related note, sports ladders, love 'em or hate 'em, they’re a thing now. So we’ve reached a point where I will be adding a note to the competitions Wiki page about how sports ladder competitions should be run, awards, so on. I’m still working with various people on what works best, but this is on the docket.

Comply! Comply!

Speaking of 14 days, James and I adjusted the warning threshold for the automated AWOL checks from 7 to 14 days just to give people extra time to see the email and log into the website. The expectation remains one log in each month, but because the system is now automated I have been looking into things like the "40 member minimum" rule and considering what could be adjusted.

Upgrade Me, Baby

I have taken on the process of beefing up the MAA’s DJBWiki presence. This includes a Master at Arms Category that groups all the relevant pages. I’ve also been going through and generally updating a bunch of pages like this one and that one. I’ll keep on with this for the next month. Wiki work is something I enjoy, so I’m having fun.

Part of the update process included updating the upgrade tiers on a bunch of awards. Two causes for the changes: clear patterns and long term reliability. I added upgrades where multiple members have been maxing them out, and I removed a few upgrades to make the pattern between tiers consistent. You’ll notice that even though the pattern for merit medals is not obvious, I didn’t give each medal the same upgrades. No one will reach 30 Grand Crosses anytime soon, so there’s no reason. I haven’t made all of the below changes in the database yet, but I’m going to go ahead and announce them. Nothing changed prestige-wise.

• Dark Side Scroll/Scroll of Foundation: +60/100 tiers
• Seal of Loyalty: +5/10 tiers (looking at you, Halc)
• Cluster of Fire: -1250 tier; +5000/7000 tier (reach higher, friends)
• Pendant of Blood: +60 tier
• Dark Cross: -4 tier; +20/30 tiers
• Anteian Cross: -4 tier; +20 tier
• Steel Cross: -4 tier; +20 tier
• Grand Cross: -4 tier; +3/5/10/15 tiers

More Stuff, You Say?!

Yea, we’re keeping busy. Howie is still gathering evidence to restore dossier titles that are currently missing. If you’re missing one, let him know. Old GJWs, IGs, whatever. But you have to be able to prove you earned the title. Contact him.

James recently implemented the ability to email all Rogue members above the rank of Guardian. We’ve set a rule to never do this more than twice a year, if that, and the emails are easily opted out of. You can opt out now by editing your dossier settings. That said, the first "DJB Rogue Newsletter" will go out at the end of the month and include information about the upcoming Great Jedi War, restoring dossier stuff from pre-split EHDB members, all of our new gaming platforms, and more. I will post the newsletter on the front page as well so everyone sees what was sent.

Like my fictional update, this report is being put out earlier than expected so my staff is still compiling what we consider great requests. I’m going to highlight one, which is Ood Bnar’s promotion to EQ4. This is one of those requests where you check out the dossier, read the recommendations, and have no question as to its validity. Ood was deserving, but the recommendations also do a great job of laying out why. This is a great example of what we look for in an EQ4.

In the future, I will include a wider range of examples, and we are working on creating a database (as in Wiki pages) to highlight requests for all awards/ranks. This is one of our projects.

This graphic is misleading but I think it looks awesome. That sums up this Master at Arms report. I’ve had a great month, and I want to call about Evant, Rial, Teylas, and Howie for doing great work so far. Discussions about upper level awards and promotions have been thoughtful and respectful, and Evant is kicking ass with the competition audits. There is a lot more on the horizon.

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