Hello all,

Here are the results from the recent General Staff Meeting. The recording for public portion is available here.

Changes to City Rank Candidate Batches

After trying out monthly candidate batches, we are noticing that it has become increasingly difficult to gain sufficient votes from staff due to people being busy or lazy. This has resulted in the deadlines of the most recent batches being extended to the end of the month. Therefore, in order to mitigate these issues, we will be doing the following:

• Staff will be encouraged to keep their feedback detailed, but concise. Bullet-points are preferred, or the “Narnia format” where the reviewer states what they liked, what they disliked, and what can be improved upon in the candidate city.
• We will continue the monthly batch schedule for now. However, staff voting will instead take place during the whole month with promotions always done on the 1st day of the following month.
• Starting from the next month’s batch (#18), Premier candidates will be actively voted upon at GSMs, with any promotions announced after the GSM. Any Premier candidates should still submit their cities to the City Rank Promotion Request Form as normal.

A reminder that the current batch (#17) will conclude on Saturday, September 30th with promotions expected on Sunday, October 1st. Be sure to submit your city for consideration of the next batch (#18) by September 30th!

Wiki Announcements

We have a few of items and reminders to announce with regards to the MRT Wiki:

• We have noticed that there has been a recent spat of page-editing wars on the wiki, particularly on user pages. This is a stern reminder to everyone that such disagreements do not belong in a public venue such as the wiki or Discord, and that you should not escalate the situation by joining into the argument. Instead, notify a staff member immediately and they will deal with the situation. Any players engaging in further page-editing wars on the wiki will be served with warnings.
• We would also like to remind everyone that the intent of the wiki is for everyone to collaborate on pages and to ensure that the information on there is as accurate as possible. Players do not “own” wiki pages (except for a user’s own Talk page), and they should not be requesting other players to stay off their pages or denying others of edits.
• Thomasfyfe will be re-working the front page to make the Editor’s Hub more prominent there. The Editor’s Hub shows a list of pages that could use some additional attention from the community, by either being created in the first place, or with additional information and content. Please check out the hub and help improve the quality of the content on the wiki!

In-Game Changes

A couple of changes have been implemented on the Minecraft server:

• Players who have been AFK for longer than 1 hour will now be automatically kicked by the server. This kick will also apply to visible staff members.
• The /speed command has been enabled for [Trustees] and above. Note that the maximum speed for non-staff has been capped to 50%. This means non-staff doing /speed 10 will go at 50% of maximum. Staff members are granted permissions to bypass this limit, with /speed 10 for them going at 100% of maximum.

TPS Issues

After the main server was updated to Minecraft 1.12.1, we have noticed occasional occurrences where the TPS drops to severely low levels. These drops don’t affect normal activities like chatting or building, but does affect entities and redstone propagation. After some investigation, it was discovered that the drops were caused by certain items being placed into hoppers and chests. Two instances of these bad hoppers/chests have been found and have been since removed, one of the lab world, and one of the MRT Mail Centre. However, there may still be additional areas that could cause further TPS drops. If you notice any further severe TPS drops while on the server, please notify staff immediately. Thank you for your patience and understanding while we continue to investigate this issue.

New Moderators + Criteria on how we choose staff

We are pleased to announce that we have promoted two players the position of [Trial Mod].  Congratulations to the players below!

• mine_man_
• _HeavenAngel_

Also, jphgolf4321 has been re-promoted to full moderator status after a 3 month probation period.

Finally, I have added a new section to the Ranks page that explains the process of how we choose new staff members, and lists qualities that we look for and avoid in staff candidates. Please read this if you have ever wondered why you or other players haven’t been chosen for staff.

Roads

• B752 (proposed by Seshpenguin) connecting A76 west to the town of Pixl has been approved.
• B4 (proposed by Just_robinho), a ring road encircling Marblegate has been partially approved. The western section and parts of the northern section have been approved.
• B52 (proposed by SubmergedSubway) connecting the towns of Sanctuary Hills and Belmill has been approved on the condition that the road be renamed, as there is already an existing B52 road.
• A80 (proposed by the UC Roads Committee) connecting Waterville with the A90 has been approved.
• A8 Extension (proposed by the UC Roads Committee) from Vegeta into the northwest has been approved.
• B1903 (proposed by CAMNMM) connecting A78 to the town of Oasis Sands has been approved.
• A50, A507, and A51 (proposed by chiefbozx) in the vicinity of Schillerton and Whiteley has been approved.
• An unnamed B-Road (proposed by LithiumMirnuriX) between the cities of Janghwa and Kolpino has been approved.

Projects

• A proposal from autobus22 to extend RaiLinQ into the city of Paixton has been approved.
• A proposal from Soso123 to build the Freedon Silverwood International Airport has been deferred, as we require more details on the exact location of the airport.
• A proposal from suppoe to repave the Central City roads with black concrete blocks has been denied, on the basis that this player lacks the WorldEdit powers needed to effectively change the roads, and that we do not want to change these roads at this time.
• A proposal from chiefbozx to build the Schillerton Cannon River (a canal) has been approved.
• A proposal from camelfantasy to widen natural rivers in the vicinity of the town of Kanto has been partially approved. The rivers immediately north and south of the town (marked in red in the proposal map) may be widened. Another proposal will need to be sent later after the town has expanded in order to widen other rivers in the area.

Auctions

• A request from 34lynx72 to own Downsview (ZS21) has been approved on the condition that time2makemymove is consulted beforehand and gives his approval.
• A request from mervynang to own C47 has been denied. We advise that mervynang contact tooturntjulia, the actual owner of the nearby town at V28, before resubmitting a request.
• A request from MIKE24DUDE to own F4/I4 has been approved on the condition that massive landscarring in the area of F3/I3 be fixed.

Next GSM Date

• The next General Staff Meeting now has a concrete date! It will be held on Saturday, October 28th at 7 PM UTC.
• Also, for the November GSM afterwards, we are planning to hold this meeting at a time that is most convenient for our members and staff who reside outside of the American and European timezones. More details will be announced as we get closer to that date.

That is all for now.

Thanks,
Frumple