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Happy Valentine’s Day/Single’s Awareness Day! (be still, my beating heart). MRT staff and members spent the day going over a lot of things today so let’s get right to it!

Mod Nom Nom Nom

We had one candidate get 2 nominations, _cosmon. Discord channels were created and discussion occurred. For the voting, he didn’t receive enough votes to be promoted. Final tally was 0 For, 5 Neutral, and 7 Against for his promotion.

In addition to _cosmon’s nomination, we discussed changes to the Open Moderator Process. Over the course of the system since November, we’ve had problems such as:

• Players providing their direct opinion about the candidate only (positive, neutral, or negative) without providing sufficient evidence or details.
• Players intending on providing their opinion first, and then adding evidence later. (Include your evidence in your initial statement to prevent inevitable questions from others about where the evidence is)
• Players providing “evidence” that is not relevant to moderator nomination criteria (ie: “nit-picking”)
• Players providing “evidence” that is actually not based on factual information (ie: speculation, “what-ifs”, “could-haves”).
• Players reacting impolitely and uncivilly to other players who do any of the above mentioned.

The intent of the system was to allow the public to discuss in civil fashion the candidates and give evidence to support their claims. Given the issues, many members and staff agreed that it would be a good idea to move nomination to e-mail only for feedback starting with the March GSM. Here’s how that flow will now work:

• Up to the candidate accepting the nomination stays the same.
• All comments will be added to the Moderator Nominations Document for people to see (similar to the GSM/ISM Agendas w/ comments)
• Staff will be doing minimal vetting of comments. Mainly to make sure low-effort comments like what we saw in Discord don’t get posted on the agenda. Please don’t make it to where we have to fully vet comments.

Discussion of candidate(s) can happen in normal chat such as Discord/Minecraft however staff can/will issue warnings should discussion go out of hand.

Oh, and speaking of warnings…

Let Me Level with You

megascatterbomb put together a very thorough proposal (which was approved) to replace our current warning system with a new “warning level system” consisting of 7 levels. With the old system, staff faced multiple discussions of what punishment was appropriate and therefore impacting response time to the actual issue. Another problem was what punishments staff could use for any rule violation. At the current time, we had single, double, and verbal warnings. Verbal warnings were used for minor offenses but staff didn’t keep very good track of it (aside from messages in #staff in discord). Single and double warnings were our only other ways of dealing with issues. When we polled at the last GSM, 50% of members present thought double warnings were the “ceiling” of what we could give at any one time. While this isn’t the case, the rules page didn’t help either. When dealing with multiple incidents, we couldn’t stack punishments. Mega tried to keep all of this in mind with the redesign.

Some clarifications about the levels:

• Each level would last for 2 weeks or 14 days.
• Any level can be issued at once so our options have increased by 2x.
• Warning times stack but temporary bans do not.
  • For example, if you are given a Level 5 warning, you would have a 2 week temporary ban but a warning level time of 10 weeks (2 * 5 = 10).

For level 6, offline reflection is a temporary ban that lasts until warning time expires (when member is able/eligible to submit a reflection letter). However, they are held at the level until the reflection letter is accepted by the admins. Essentially, they are “offline” from the server until they submit are within the time frame to submit a reflection letter.

With Level 3 being a 3 day temporary ban, staff increased the temp ban limit from 1 day to 3 days for mods to allow them to give out the ban, in the case that an admin may not be available.

Now, with all these levels, Mega gave staff some tips on when a certain level should be issued. These are “suggested” punishments. Bear in mind that staff are trying to learn the new system too.

We had a few other rule/policy changes from staff aside from the new warning level system…

Staff accepted a proposal from Chief that formalizes how staff deal with member requested bans (voluntary bans). Here’s the excerpt from the proposal:

Any member can request that their own account be temporarily or indefinitely banned by emailing the admins at any time and for any reason. These “voluntary bans” are treated just like the temporary or indefinite bans issued as a result of accumulating warnings, except:

• Temporary voluntary bans can be issued for any duration up to six months and do not come with automatic loss of Discord access.
• Any voluntary ban can be removed at any time by emailing the admins
• When a voluntary ban expires or is removed, the member will maintain the rank they held at the time of their request.
• Voluntary bans do not directly count against a member’s candidacy for moderator, however bans will be recorded for public viewing.

Members are asked to not excessively request voluntary ban placements or removals.

Given the approval of the new warning levels, voluntary bans are kept separate from warning levels. Staff will add a new tab on the Member List that displays all voluntary bans.

Staff accepted a proposal from Cynra requiring admin approval to regen entire towns. This proposal formalizes a process that members, who want to regen a town or area of significant development, have to submit an email to admins, detailing why and where they want the regen.

kyyl_ submitted a proposal to add on how we judge towns for ranks, mainly clarifying the how we count franchises in build counts. After lengthy discussion, staff settled on the following:

Franchises built by other people don’t count towards scale in town promotions.

Credit to KittyCat11231 for final wording

Franchises still count for town ranks in other areas such as ambience and other areas but we consider the town mayor’s builds when looking at the scale aspect of town promotions.

Asphalt Heaven

We had a handful of transport projects proposed this GSM. Glad to see members building up infrastructure around the server.

I got proposed a road (B805) between Jeb and Moleville and it was approved.

HarborRandom852 proposed a road between the A92 and their town of Miu Wan, designated B988, which was approved.

kyyl_ proposed a network of A/B roads through Oparia and other reaches of the MetroNorth. This was approved so kyyl_ will have a fun time of roads, roads, and more roads. These roads are the following:

• A1 through Oparia will be re-designated as B185.
• A “new” A1 will be constructed to bypass Oparia and then extend the A1 across the bay.
• B180 will extend from the A1 bypass, through riskinus’s unnamed town and end at notshort925‘s town of Cardinal Bay.
• B190 will go from A1 into New Mackinaw (owned by EliteNeon).

_fwis proposed the B921 and a canal to Lake 4. The road was accepted with slight modifications to the route. The updated routing has the road going around the bay (instead of across) and using the road near the unknown town.

The canal below was accepted but changed to follow the river. _fwis will be expanding the river to allow for vessels to traverse the river.

Sasha9076 proposed a small reroute of A980 to include Ada_Virus’s town along the Western Line. This was accepted.

AIX (Aurora International Airport) was proposed again by TeamAurora. From the last GSM, staff mentioned that they needed to finish:

• B889 (completed)
• A84 (still in progress)
• Build a town in between Carnoustie, Skogheim, Kaloro City (Wallace and Augusta were founded but currently both unranked)

Given the status of the following above, staff denied AIX citing that the A84 needs to be completed (mainly within Aurora) and that Augusta should increase in size (roughly, councilor standard).

New Plugins!

We considered a few plugins at the GSM. Most are paid plugins but given the community support of getting them, donations will be used to pay for it. Head Database had overwhelming support from members and will be tested on Beta.

A discussion was held on whether we should consider plugins that require resource packs or other client-side modifications. Many of staff and community wanted a near-vanilla experience. This narrowed down the few vehicle plugin possibilities to Vehicles.

After installed and trialed for a bit on Beta, a survey question will be posted by Frumple accessing how the community feel on possibly moving those plugins to Main.

Events? No, The Events!

We had an event funding proposal from Wipeout111 to fund an asynchronous game show, The Events. Wipeout has said the main season will start after Dalt’s The Great MRT Build Off. For a glimpse of the format, Wipeout said this:

The Events will be split up into 1-week blocks of time known as “sections”. Each section will start with an assignment, move to a secondary assignment, and end with an elimination.

• An assignment may be a challenge, puzzle, or set of instructions for participants to follow that can last anywhere from 1 day to the majority of the section. Each assignment will contain prizes and advantages for one or more participants outplaying their acquaintances.
• Similar to assignments, secondary assignments may consist of a wide range of contents but will have more focus on social connections and games between contestants. While not guaranteed, prizes and advantages may be earned during secondary assignments as well.
• Each section will end with an Elimination. This may be done through a challenge pulling strings from the section or a challenge and voting combination. In case of the latter, ties will be decided by another round of voting or from an advantage earned earlier in the section. Every elimination will eliminate at least 1 contestant from the season with the results being announced on the night of the last day of the section in ET.
• Prizes & advantages may be earned in both assignments and secondary assignments and may be spent on secondary assignments and eliminations. Each advantage & prize will be announced before each assignment and/or secondary assignment when necessary detailing how it can be earned, and how it can be spent. They may serve a wide range of uses, such as progressing the plot, helping a player or group of players, or hurting a player or group of players.
• To end off the season, a live race filled with puzzles and challenges will occur between the finalists, which may be 2 or 3 participants depending on cast size. The winner of this race will win the entire season. The Events will last 4 sections with 1 live finale.

Funding was fully approved so if you are interested, talk to Wipeout!

In addtion, Sasha9076 requested a warp hub exemption to help him set up Great MRT Riddle. Staff have increased his /homes temporarily to allow with his planning/setup.

Next staff meeting will be the February ISM on February 28th at 7PM UTC.

My cat has demanded more snuggles and to spend more time with him so I will go do that now.

– Sese

Oh hey! ISM was today and bonus, an ASM too!

ASM Updates

After the ISM, we had a quick ASM. First one I get to write about so here we go!

godzilltrain has stepped down from his administrator role on January 28. A link to his resignation can be found here:

The title of Staff Meeting Coordinator (Chief’s title apart from Head Admin) is being removed since Chief/Frumple have already split the duties between themselves.

megascatterbomb has re-assumed the title of City Ranks Coordinator (Godz’s former title) as he has prior knowledge of running the system.

sesese9 (oh hey, that’s me) will assume the role of Press Secretary. I’m officially in charge of writing up da propaganda for GSMs/ISMs. In addition, I’ll be doing the Q&A next GSM (hehe).

And now, onto the ISM news!

On the Road Again

Quite a few roads were proposed this ISM and they were all approved. Here’s the rundown:

B9 (Starcubed)

A892 (CodyHM and fwisamongus)

A980 (Sasha9076)

I Sea You There

We also had a few water based transport projects proposed this time.

sixhundredcats has been approved for a seaplane base in Chansee on either Lake A or B in her proposal. If she uses Lake A, staff would like to see it expanded to make it more realistic.

time2makemymove‘s Lake 18-Elecna Bay Canal has been approved.

It’s Free Real Estate

I mean, not really but here’s the Inactive Asset Requests that we received/reviewed.

Racer395 has been approved to take over the B38 (both in finishing the road and extending to his town of Harmony Grove). However, we denied his request to IAT the town of Draton. Racer can request an IAT again in the future, pending Harmony Grove grows more.

time2makemymove has been granted full control of SkyTrans. Originally sent in as a caretaker request, staff deemed it would be easier to have 1 point of contact to deal with SkyTrans.

Go West!

VickiTori has opened the Western North Extension. 2 stations have been granted to:

• WN38 -> cosmon
• WN49 -> CyAmethyst

The rest of the stations have either been allocated to pre-existing towns or are open for claiming.

A La Carte

autobus22‘s proposal to move WN11 a little to the west was approved. This was approved and Chief will work with auto on making it happen.

Skelezomperman requested funding for a Spleef Tournament in Mons Pratus. This was approved. Skele has already opened signups through Discord in #event-announcements and will occur on February 21, 2021 at 7PM UTC

And that’s all, until the next one, see ya!

-Sese

We are excited to announce two housekeeping updates, based on the January GSM items, subsequent testing, and some agenda items for the February GSM:

• Our first post-Zeta full-world Dynmap render is complete! Thank you to Mega and Frumple for testing this out and running it locally, to save us time and allowing WorldEdits and the like to continue. The map has been rendered based on a snapshot from January 10, so any changes made to the world since then will need to be rendered again, however we now have a full 3D render in addition to the flat render.
• We are changing the GSM and ISM agenda release schedule. We have posted links to the February GSM and January ISM agendas in Discord. Going forward we will release agendas as soon as they open for submissions. Note that this does not impact moderator nominations: those are still due at 19:00 UTC seven days before a GSM, and we’ll publish those when all candidates have confirmed or declined their interest in the position.

For those who are considering nominating someone for Moderator, please submit nominations for the February GSM by 19:00 UTC on February 7. Several players have preemptively declined the position or been vetoed in previous cycles; those names are in a pinned message in #nominations-general in Discord or in the master member list.

Thanks all!

<3, Chief

Happy new year, MRT!

Hope you had a fun end to the eventful year that was 2020. I know I did, haha. Anyway, it’s time for the stuff that happened at the January GSM!

MRT’s Neighborhood

Starting out on Community Issues, we discussed current feeling/thoughts on the warning system. Staff wanted to gauge opinion on whether we should overhaul the system. Many members and staff wanted to see a proposal so Mega will be working on a draft for a future GSM so stay tuned.

Mega put forth a proposal to add a cooldown to candidates that are repeatedly nominated for staff.

If a candidate’s nomination is rejected 2 times in a row, then a 2 GSM cooldown will come into effect.

Godz proposed adding the debug stick to the server. Beta server activated it and showed there is a possible abuse of setting walls to be invisible. Unlike barriers where you can see outlines, you can’t see an outline with an invisible wall. The permission has been enabled for staff so if you want to use the debug stick, ask a staff member.

EliteNeon proposed increasing the AFK time limit to 60 minutes. This was denied as the server has enough performance troubles as it is (thanks Minecraft devs) and the AFK limit serves to kick inactive players and reduce loaded chunks. Staff asked members if we should lower it and was vehemently opposed by members.

Mega and Frumple will be doing some testing on their computers to see if they can possibly run the dynmap render of the New World locally and transfer it to Zeta, avoiding a maintenance day to do a render. If this doesn’t work, we will make an announcement and update when we plan to do the render on Zeta.

Keeping on, keeping on

Starting out the GSM, Frumple had a few comments on the year and addressed concerns about whether he would shut down the server following the events of October 4th and other minor arguments that have flared.

The server lease has been renewed for 1 more year. There are strings attached, however:

• As many may know, the staff haven’t been running as many events recently. This is mainly due to IRL commitments such as work, university, etc. We still make time to help run the server but our time is much smaller. That isn’t to say events are fundamentally dead. Many members have stepped up to the plate with different events. We love to see that and would encourage more of that.
• Expect better server accountability. Given all the changes that we have tried to make as staff, we hope this has made it easier for you to bring any concerns to us.
• For the sake of his well-being, Frumple has decided to shrink his presence on the server. That isn’t to say he’s going away. He still runs essential tasks for the server, guiding staff, and helping with disputes.
• Try to learn skills to get along with others
• If a player is clearly not reasonable and not willing to listen or understand, don’t be surprised if Frumple indefinitely bans them.

I would recommend to read the full statement linked below to read Frumple’s exact words and for more details.

Updates! Get your Updates!

On Monday, January 11th, all MRT services will be down at 5PM UTC (9AM PST). Expect it to be a few hours as we will be doing the following updates:

• Servers
  • Main Server will be switching from AMP to Pterodactyl.
  • Paper and plugins will be updated on Beta after successful Beta testing.
• Wiki
  • Mediawiki update to 1.35
  • UploadWizard extension will be added.
  • Some updates for mobile viewing will be done.

New Mod!

We considered two nominees for moderator, Echohue and MC_Protocol. Out of the two, Echohue was promoted to moderator, following a successful majority For votes. Congrats, Echo!

Now that we’ve had the moderator nominations underway for a while, we’ve wanted to give some feedback on the quality of the nominations that we’ve seen. There have been long nominations (such as 10 pages for one candidate) and short ones (like 1 page). We don’t have a length requirement however we encourage you to take a good look at your nomination and make sure it gets your points across in a clear and concise manner. In addition, make sure your evidence backs up your points for why that person should be a staff member.

Skele proposed adding a general rule around sharing private messages in public. This was accepted. The website will be updated soon with this text:

Do not share private conversations to a third party without the consent of the person(s) in the conversation. The unauthorized sharing of private conversations is illegal in some jurisdictions in addition to being an unethical violation of privacy. Because of this, it is not okay to leak private conversations without permission even if it is done outside of MRT services. If something that happens in a private conversation requires the attention of Staff, do not draw attention to it in public; instead, discreetly email the details of the incident to the Staff.

From Here to There

Aurora International Airport (AIX) & Shared Airport Discussion by CaptainObi/Johngi/JavaIsBetter/DintyB/Needn_NL/ModernArt (Aurora Team) was denied. There was a very healthy discussion over the proposal to build a large shared airport in the NW near Carnousie, Kaloro City, Skogheim, Lakeborough, and Norwest. Staff thought it was novel idea to build one large airport for the area vs multiple tiny airfields however the main concern was over the spacing/intergration of the towns in the region. For Aurora, they agreed to build up more infrastructure and found another town in between Carnoustie and Kaloro to help bridge the gap between Carnoustie and the rest of the region. Also, staff split out the A84 (and approved it) from their plans to help their integration plans as seen below. JavaIsBetter will be heading up the road construction of this A road. Aurora posted their discord in #auxillary-discords so any member can view/give feedback on the AIX progress. Given that this is the first of a kind, this GSM served to help discuss expectations/standards of how to judge these projects. In the future, we hope that AIX becomes a standard of how we will judge similar regional proposals.

Delvin Street Pedestrianization by EliteNeon was denied. The proposal that was sent in didn’t give a compelling argument to change the current design of the street in the area. Staff also asked Elite to remove the 2020 US Election Board from his plot since the 2020 elections have concluded in the States.

A15 + B287 by mibu1223 has been approved. Here’s a map of the roads for context.

B417 by Avaneesh2008 has been conditionally approved with staff guiding construction. There were some concerns over the proposal to stick to 1 elevation versus going with the terrain so we will keep a close eye and help Avaneesh as he builds it.

Auchendale Inactive Town Bypass by i____7d was approved. [Obligatory insert “newrail flr go brrr” joke here]

Make it Rain

We had a lot of events that requested event funding. Can’t wait to see them in action!

The Great MRT Riddle by sasha9076 was approved. This will start end of January/early February.

Get to X Tournament (Name Change Pending) by Avaneesh2008 was approved. We did ask Avaneesh to update the name as the description of the events taking place aren’t in the spirit of Get to X. This event will take place during January and February so stay peeled.

SuperTuxKart Rapid Racing by underscorepie was approved. Last session went well and pie decided to return with another session. This one is set for January 23rd at 7PM UTC.

London’s Pub Quiz: January 2021 by LondonThameslink was approved based off the success of his past sessions. We did suggest to London to shrink the amount of questions due to concerns over the length. If you have any feedback from past sessions, make sure to share it with him too!

The Great MRT Build-Off by daltdisneyland was approved. Dalt’s planning to air in February so keep alert for a ping in Discord.

Can I have this?

The GSM saw a lot of Inactive Asset Transfer requests:

• Sweet Sand Dunes (requested by Noahrebl_) has been denied due to concerns over wanting to redo his current town. Staff encourage him to focus on that town for the time being.
• Orel Airways (requested by time2makemymove) has been denied due to concerns over trying to just get a gate at the airport and that he didn’t try to contact the original owner, MishkaMan. The only asset of the airline was a gate at Kolpino City. If Mishka doesn’t reply by next ISM, time can resubmit.
• Insula Montes Lanark-Laclede Express Station (requested by HarborRandom) has been approved.
• Voltorb Kinetics (requested by Hightech_TR) has been approved on the condition that he doesn’t charge for the designs as he didn’t create the designs originally.
• Villedyn (requested by decorminecraft) has been denied as the town was already given to Camelicano in August 2020.

Next staff meeting will be the ISM on January 30th at 7PM UTC. Can’t wait to see ya then!

– Sese

The final staff meeting of the year is now behind us, so let’s take a look at what happened.

New Moderator and updates to the voting procedures

At the end of the last GSM we made some tweaks to the voting procedures for new moderator candidates. Specifically, a candidate will be promoted if at least two-thirds of the cast votes are “Yes”, and the candidate is not vetoed by Frumple. Staff must be prepared to defend any vote, but especially if voting “Neutral”. Note that a veto is different than a “No” vote; Frumple can vote “No” without vetoing a candidate completely.

With those changes taking effect at this GSM, we had two candidates:

• Needn_NL, who we also reviewed back in November, was not promoted as the final vote tally was 5-5-0 (5 Yes, 5 Neutral, 0 No).
• Skelezomperman was promoted with a final vote tally of 9-1-0.

Skele’s term has now begun and he will be learning the ropes over the coming weeks, so please be patient as he gets settled to the new position. Additionally, even though the Trustee Meetings are not an official server activity, they are a beloved component of GSM days for many members, and according to Trustee Law Skele will identify and announce a replacement presiding officer for the January GSM. Congratulations to Skele and welcome aboard!

Community issues

• We discussed a proposal to post project approvals in #notifications like we do with rank changes and asset transfers. We decided against this as we think this would cause too much confusion, especially with airports. Project coordinators are free to continue posting news in #media-announcements or through the existing media and wiki channels as they always have.
• We discussed a proposal to increase the “4K” rule to 6,000 blocks, but ultimately decided not to adjust the rule. Having the limit where it is provides good accountability on projects. We did make improvements to this procedure a couple months ago to limit the chance of a waiver request being delayed, and there is still no time limit when construction has to be completed.
• The “Franchise Rules” section of the rules page has been relabeled as “Private Commercial Property Rules” to better align with how the rules are applied.
• We are updating our policies surrounding asset transfers when a player is indefinitely or permanently banned, to give them an opportunity to express their wishes on asset ownership before releasing assets to the community for IAT claims. Effective immediately:
  • A player who is indefinitely or permanently banned has 14 days from the date the ban is issued to email staff a list of transfer instructions for any assets they held. This is commonly called a “will” and may list desired new owners for towns and companies. In-game money cannot be transferred. Transfer instructions should be sent to the all-staff (staff@) email, not just to admins.
  • Deputy mayors can immediately assume control of their respective towns through the existing Deputy Mayor Succession process. This request can be overridden if the banned player submits transfer instructions within the 14-day period after the ban is issued. As such, deputy mayors are advised to either hold off on succeeding mayorship, or at the very least waiting to start any significant projects, until the 14-day submission period has expired or they have been explicitly named as the town’s new mayor.
  • If an indefinitely or permanently banned player does not submit any transfer instructions at all within two weeks of the ban being issued, or only submits instructions for some of their assets within the two-week period, any remaining assets (except for Old World towns) will become eligible for IAT.
  • Players who are temporarily banned, either by request or due to accumulating three warnings, are not subject to this policy, even if their temporary ban is longer than two weeks.
  • Posting a will on the wiki is not an official submission in and of itself, however if it’s up to date, a banned player can simply state that the will on the wiki is accurate and should be executed (or, even better, simply copy and paste the text of the will into the email sent to staff).
  • TL;DR: Indefinitely and permanently banned players have two weeks from their ban date to email staff a will (wiki pages don’t count). After that, anything not stated in the will becomes eligible for IAT as usual. Deputy Mayors can immediately take control of towns as usual, but can be overridden by a valid will.
• We received a request to add a sub-clause under General Rule 11 (the “Belligerent Dissent” rule) or Most Important Rule 3 which would state that conversations must be taken to private messages upon request. We don’t think this is appropriate and instead urge members to contact staff if an argument is getting heated in chat or if you’re unsure about a situation. Please resist your natural urge to insert yourself into heated arguments – if you’re a bystander, your best bet is to contact staff, especially if you’re not trained in conflict resolution or de-escalation. Several staff members do have professional conflict resolution training, so please let us know how we can help.

Transport projects

The only transport project we reviewed was a request to update signage on the A90. This was approved without objections.

Events

We received four event proposals this time around.

• Funding for the MRT Winter Games 2020/2021 in Dand has been approved in full pending final confirmation of dates and times.
• Funding for a new game show, Lingo, run by autobus22, has been approved in full. (Reminder to Auto and others: as you plan your events, it’s really helpful to have a note at the end of your proposals that states the maximum budget for the event – it’s okay if you give out less!)
• The AviOff Building Competition, submitted by noahrebl, has been approved with reduced funding: all prizes will be 10% of their original proposals. This funding is held until we receive, by email, a copy of the judging criteria (ideally the exact text that will be given to judges) and a final confirmation of the date and time.
• The Winter Olympics has been denied funding due to concerns over lack of communication with the host city and a history of last-minute planning at previous Olympics (this proposal was received 6 minutes before the cutoff time for the GSM). airplane320 may resubmit this event at a future meeting, provided the proposal is submitted jointly with the host city and its mayor (in this case, Vulpicula), and the event is planned out completely before submission.

IATs

We received three IAT requests and approved all of them, though each with different notes.

The IAT of Dandenong (C2) to EliteNeon was approved in full; Sese has volunteered to assist in land regeneration and integrating the town into nearby Benion.

The IAT of FreeAir has been approved in principle, though owing to the complex nature of FreeAir’s ownership structure, we are doing this in a two-step process. EliteNeon has assumed ownership of the airline, but is not cleared to merge it into Clipper just yet. Anyone else who wishes to make an ownership claim to FreeAir, and has evidence to back up their claim, should contact staff by 19:00 UTC on Thursday, January 7 (the agenda submission cutoff for the January GSM). If no such claims are received, Elite will be free to merge the airlines at that point. However, if claims are received, we will process those at the January GSM.

Finally, the town of Chalxior (L1-L2, ZN33-ZN34) has been transferred to kyyl_, voiding a Deputy Mayor Succession claim lodged by ModernArt during the meeting. This is an unusual decision, so I’ll go into our reasoning – while Modern’s Deputy Mayor Succession claim would have normally taken priority, we decided to void it for three main reasons:

• Late submission: Modern’s objection to the IAT was received well over an hour after the GSM had started, when we normally expect IAT objections and other comments to be received by the standard start time of 19:00 UTC. Modern has stated he has been experiencing technical issues with his devices, which we acknowledge is frustrating, however he had repeatedly been on the Minecraft server and has regularly had an “online” Discord status in recent weeks, especially after the agenda was published.
• False claims in email: Modern’s email claimed that kyyl_ had made no attempt to contact ModernArt to privately come to an arrangement after an Inactive Town Bypass proposal was denied at the November ISM, and that Modern had never been notified of kyyl_’s intention to do work in the area. Both of these claims were disproven with evidence submitted by kyyl_ in the original IAT request, and left us with the sense that the claim was submitted solely to block kyyl_ from receiving the town rather than an honest request.
• History of inactivity and abandoning towns: Modern has a long history of receiving or starting towns, and then either becoming inactive or abandoning the town. As Chalxior is a key transport hub (with the start of the Lakeshore Line and the main gateway to the northern portions of Wards 1, 2, 8, and 9), we preferred ensuring that the town’s mayor is an active member, so that even though kyyl_ has indicated changes to the town itself will be very minimal, transport connections can still be made and given proper oversight.

That’s all!

Please check the Events Calendar for information regarding community events over the holidays. While there is currently nothing official planned, there are a lot of member-organized events happening between now and the end of the year.

While they will look different this year, we know that the holidays are an important time of year for a lot of members and staff, so there is no December ISM (it would have been held on Sunday, December 27). The next staff meeting will be a General Staff Meeting on Saturday, January 9, with moderator nominations due at 19:00 UTC on Saturday, January 2.

Have a happy, healthy, and safe holiday season.

<3, Chief