July 2020 GSM Results

The MRT is now 8 years old! Every year we comment how it’s hard to believe how long we’ve been around, but it’s true. Thank you to everyone for continuing to visit and make the MRT such an awesome place!

We had our July GSM a few days ago, and here’s what happened!

Staff updates

We are excited to welcome daltdisneyland to the staff team! Dalt will be serving as a trial moderator and learning the ropes for the next few months. Please give him a warm welcome aboard as you see him around!

With Dalt’s promotion and going forward, we want to provide a little more information on why we made the offer and some of the nomination statistics. Our policy will be that, for candidates with at least two nominations, we will release the rank statistics for the nominators (meaning staff versus non-staff). If a candidate is promoted, then the names of any staff who nominated that candidate will be released. So, for this meeting:

• Two candidates each received three nominations from members.
• One candidate received one nomination from a member and one nomination from staff.
• Dalt received one nomination from a member, and was nominated by chiefbozx from staff.

Furthermore, we want to give a bit more information about any new offers we make. We generally ground our decisions in the qualities of a moderator listed on the ranks page. In Dalt’s case, two things stood out to us:

• Conflict resolution: in a recent flare-up between the Republic of Epsilon and the Federated States of the New World, Dalt proved to be quite useful in easing tensions and helping resolve the conflict before staff stepped in.
• Leadership and communication: Dalt has been incredibly successful in running the Survivor event series, as well as the Pride Month float building contest. Both of these events have a lot of logistics and require quick thinking, good communication, problem solving, and conflict resolution. While staff have been helpful in running these events, they have largely taken a supportive role while Dalt has been acting as the primary host.

We also discussed two internal procedures: one concerning the 1:1s that we mentioned at the ASM, and one concerning the town and player endorsement process for Citizen, Councillor, and Mayor. While staff may continue to write books for endorsements, they will be asked to place a sign (and, optionally, their head) somewhere in the town hall to confirm endorsement. Town mayors are therefore asked to ensure space is available for endorsement markers to be placed by staff.

Finally, town mayors who annex and absorb other towns are asked to notify staff so that our records can be updated. The same goes for splits, though town splits are incredibly rare.

Thank you to everyone who submitted nominations for the moderator team – as always, these conversations were valuable and productive to have. As a reminder, nominations don’t carry forward, so members are asked to submit new nominations if the candidate they wanted to see promoted did not get an offer this time around.

MPO Liaison position created

To help alleviate the chances of future drama or major incidents arising from MPOs, AP_Red has accepted a role of MPO Liaison. AP will be an observer in MPOs, with the purpose of monitoring for any kind of large conflict or drama and helping resolve the situation within the MPO before it spills into other channels.

Generally AP will ask to join any MPO which has ten or more members, but he will have discretion of which MPOs need to be monitored (for example, inactive MPOs will likely be ignored).

As always, MPO leadership teams are reminded that it is their responsibility to notify staff if any conduct breaks the MRT rules, and that any attempt to cover up such rule-breaking could result in administrative action, including formal server sanctions (warnings or bans) or dissolution of the MPO.

Copyright reminder

In response to a question submitted by a member, all players are reminded of the copyright agreement posted on the wiki editor and uploader. It is a violation of copyright law to redistribute copyrighted material through any medium, especially through the wiki where files can be easily uploaded and downloaded.

While there are a lot of nuances with intellectual property law, especially because we’re an international and fully digital community, we do want to point out a few things:

• Anyone who has knowingly uploaded something to the wiki (images, PDFs, edits to pages, etc) that is protected by copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property law is asked to remove such content immediately.
• The safest option when creating a company, event, or other entity is to create something that is either original, or use material that has been placed in the public domain.
• If we receive a takedown request under the Canadian Copyright Act or similar legislation, we may be required to take a number of actions, including but not limited to removing the infringing content and issuing formal sanctions against the person(s) who uploaded it.

As always, members may contact an admin with questions about this policy.

Other community issues

• We have published some updates to the Rules page, as well as a new Policies & Procedures page, to make them easier to read. Information on the Policies & Procedures page is not checked on the membership application, but we think it will be quite useful for members.
• The #serious channel in Discord no longer has an NSFW flag on it, so all members can once again use it. Members are, however, cautioned that the #serious channel contains very personal conversations, as well as potentially triggering content including suicides, mental illness, and assault. The channel is meant to be a support resource, with the understanding that conversations that happen within the channel stay there.
• We have made a couple adjustments to the definitions of the GSM and ISM calendar, and have published the dates of GSMs and ISMs to the master events calendar for all meetings through October.

Transport projects

• The MRT Lakeshore Line and Expo West Extension 2 have now been opened, and all stations that were not reserved in advance are now available for claiming.
• The Western Line South was approved, with a possible modification near WS4.
• A canal between Lakes 46 and 47 has been approved.
• Extensions of the A510 (renumbered to A405), A54, and A6 roads have been approved.
• Construction of the A45, B432, and B987 roads have been approved in full.
• Construction of the B22 road has been partially approved. The jump from the mainland to the first island in the route proposal was a bit too much for our liking, so we’re okay with building the road out to the peninsula and then connecting to the islands with a ferry. If the town on the islands develops significantly enough, we may reconsider allowing a bridge or tunnel at a later time.
• BluRail has been granted permission to bypass SW3.
• FooteChicken has been granted permission to build a rail line near the Jungle Line South and bypass a number of inactive towns, with the caveat that the line should go underground through the jungle biome.

Events and IATs

• We have approved full funding for Survivor 4, TAR 11, and the third MGA season.
• Sonamu and Nutella House have both been transferred to MIKE24DUDE.
• SW18 has been transferred to ModernArt.
• PtldKnight has been granted permission to annex A25 for Waterville.
• The town of Meritt Lakes was requested by frogggggg, but was denied due to the submission being low-effort and lacking a good reason. We can reconsider this item if it is proposed with more thought put into it.

The next meeting will be a General Staff Meeting on August 9, 2020. Until then, please check out the Events Calendar for all of the latest happenings. We’ll see you around!

<3, Chief