[Hartwood] Fighters attendance/ event functionality rant.

[Danielle Bevan]

As someone who has tried very hard to keep people informed, and been very frustrated by my apparent inability to do so, I took some time figuring out how to respond to this.

I think that people who have moved here from other shires may be struggling with how we communicate, and their expectations of the roles various media plays. This is not a small shire, nor is it a close-knit one; the geographic distances mean that we do not get to all hang out once (or several) times a week for various activities such as A&S, Bardic, Heraldic consultation, or dance. Word of mouth doesn't spread. Conversations cannot be had face-to-face. Because of this, we require a method of communication that allows for -conversations- to happen, not simply announcements; discussion is the main purpose of this particular forum. I would love to discuss plans for the games night with the majority of the shire over a sewing night, but I can't, so I open the conversation here -- because if I don't, no one outside of Courtenay gets a say. That isn't fair.

It should be understood also that this forum is our only official one. The website is static, the facebook forum is completely unofficial (We aren't even permitted to link to it off the website until we get a media policy in place). This is the place one comes to for the what when and where. I have mentioned the email list to one of the Nanaimo fighters when I was down there and shared the link; I had hoped the information would be spread. 

For the last several events, repeated reminder notices have been sent out so people would have to do less digging, and these notices HAVE included the full info of What, When and Where. The truth is that there often isn't an 'end' to the planning stage; things develop, things change. Sometimes we can't wait to send out notifications until all the wrinkles are ironed out. There often is no final copy until days before the event. The important thing is that any notice does in fact contain all the information required to attend an event -- and we have been trying very hard to do this.

I'm very sorry if I have wound up confusing people rather than being helpful; it certainly was never my intention. Your idea is a good one, but can't really be implemented because of the lack of any 'final' copy -- on the other hand, we could try to append 'Discussion' and 'Copy' to posts to differentiate between the two, despite the fact 'copy' may not be final. 

Try, because there is a lot of people to indoctrinate with a new custom. (Which doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.)

~ Danielle (Who will someday learn to 'reply all' to these things, she swears) 
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