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Monthly Update - July 2018

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2018 1:37 am
by Alex
Hello everyone!

For most of us, summer is upon us, and with that, warmer weather and family outings. As such, sim activity was down quite a bit this past month, with only a few sims averaging more than one post per player. Because of that, the PFA has elected to only award one Sim of the Month award for June, as shown below. As part of this discussion, and because of other factors that I will mention, we’ve decided that we would like to consider some changes to our monthly award system. But more on that in a moment.

As a reminder to all of our members, but especially our commanding officers, the Pegasus Fleet Admiralty and staff do our best to stay in constant communication with you to let you know the latest that is going on around the community. That being said, we need your help as well. I know monthly reports can be tiresome to fill out, but please be sure to take the time to fill them out and let us know what is going on with your sim. We use these reports to help us know we can do better, and to determine where we can help. It’s not just paperwork for the sake of paperwork. I’d also like to remind everyone that monthly reports are mandatory for commanding officers, and per Pegasus Fleet policies, we can issue demerits for missed reports. I want to mention this because we’ve had a number of missed reports the last few months. If there is any reason why you are unable to submit a report on time, please make sure you get with us to let us know.

In addition to the monthly reports, our staff members, especially the Task Force Commanding Officers, will often reach out to their commanding officers to share information and request feedback. We are doing this to help our community grow. There have been times the last few months that a handful of people have not been responding to these emails. Although they are not mandatory like the monthly reports, a simple response to the staff member acknowledging that you’ve read and understood the message goes a long way. I know we’ve all been guilty of that from time to time, myself included. But let’s all try to make an effort. Good communication is the key to a successful community, and I’d love to see Pegasus Fleet continue to grow.

Speaking of TFCOs, I’d like to welcome our newest member of the Pegasus Fleet Staff. Please welcome Commander Yoraan of TF56! Commander Yoraan, or @Cmdrlanc on Discord, has been serving as the most recent commanding officer of the USS Galileo, which has been one of our most active sims. He brings a lot of enthusiasm to the position, and I’m looking forward to working with him. Officially he took over as TFCO of TF56 a couple of weeks ago, so by now you have probably seen emails or chat messages from him. Welcome to the team, Commander!

In other news this month, Admiral S’iraa has been hard at work. We’ve had a number of prospective members visit us this month after speaking with him, some of which have joined some of our sims. So welcome to all of our new members! To further our recruiting efforts, Admiral S’iraa will be speaking with Commanding Officers about their sims in order to better understand what sims are looking for in terms of characters, positions, and general posting expectations. COs should be on the lookout for those messages. As I mentioned above, that feedback is very important for helping us bring new players to the Fleet. So please be sure to give it your full attention.

Admiral S’iraa has also been going through the Fleet website in an effort to update our information and content. Currently the focus has been on the wiki, and while only a few updates have been made so far, there are more coming. The main focus here is to update our pages with the most current information, including staff listings, sim listings and character rosters, and the character bio pages. We’ll also be updating ship lists and making plans for a more consistent rotation of the featured article. We may be reaching out to players and commanding officers for more information on their sims and character bios. Keep an eye on the wiki for more updates.

The last thing I wanted to mention this month is the monthly Fleet awards. This is not something that only came up this month, but because of the lower level of activity in a lot of sims, it helped revitalize the conversation. Off and on over the last few years, the PFA has considered making changes to the current monthly award system. Currently, the Sim of the Month awards are determined by the total number of posts for a sim, divided by the number of players. Sims are ranked by the posts per player average, with the highest average winning gold, the second winning silver, and the third winning bronze. The exception to that rule was added a couple of years ago. A simming winning a Sim of the Month award is ineligible to win the same or lower award for the next month. So a sim winning gold in May cannot win an award in June, although the silver winner in May can still qualify for gold, but only gold. Since Post of the Month is determined by a poll, and the entries determined by CO nomination, that restriction was not used. These awards earned a sim a corresponding number of points that was to be used in Sim of the Year consideration. Gold is worth 3 points, silver 2, and bronze 1. Post of the Month also earned that sim a point.

The inherent problem with this system is that it only awards a sim for its level of activity. In theory, a highly prolific sim could win multiple awards purely by publishing a large number of shorter posts, while a sim preferring to run at a slower pace, but with longer posts focusing on deep character development, can be overlooked by the award system. Should activity really be the only factor to consider when determining the Sim of the Month? Not every writer enjoys the fast paced event driven sims, while other writers don’t enjoy the slower paced character driven sims. Because of that, it’s been difficult to find a way to really quantify a score system that is fair and unbiased to all sims. One proposal is to still use a three award system, but award one for activity, using the posts per player average described above, one for quality of writing, and one for development, such as growth or contributions to TF stories. There’s still a lot of refinement that needs to be done, including how these other awards can be measured, but we wanted to raise the idea to the fleet and get your feedback. After all, this Fleet belongs to all of us. We want to make this an enjoyable community for everyone, and to us part of that is making sure that we are able to give recognition to all of our sims for the great stuff that they’re doing. The current system has its flaws, and it’s about time we start looking at fixing the system in a way that we can all agree is more fair. So please don’t hesitate to let us know your ideas. I plan to discuss this topic at our monthly meeting, so if you have any ideas, please feel free to attend and discuss them with us. If you are not able to attend, but you do have some ideas, don’t hesitate to let me know and I’ll make sure your idea is shared. I can be reached on Discord @AlexM, or by email at pfco@pegasusfleet.net.

This month’s meeting will be held on Sunday, July 8, in the #meeting channel on Discord, and will start at 3:00 pm EDT. The meeting is open to all members of Pegasus Fleet and any guests. If you know anyone that’s interested in joining Pegasus Fleet, please invite them to join us. The next meeting will be held on Sunday, August 12.

As always, Live Long and Prosper
Alex

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Sim of the Month Award
Gold Sim of the Month - USS Galileo

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Post of the Month Award
May's Post of the Month goes to:

"Different Stripes" by Commander Alexandria 'Alex' Harper & Captain Calvin Myers (USS Century)

For the June Post of the Month, follow the link below, check out the nominated posts by clicking "[READ HERE]" next to each nominee, and vote for your favorite.

Voting will close on Saturday, August 4, so be sure to make your voice heard. Commanding Officers, be sure to remind your crews so that we don't miss anyone.

Cast Your Vote Now!

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