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We’d like to take the opportunity of the elections to reflect together on where we want to take the Eagles next. So we invite anyone, and especially the candidates, to share their ideas, questions, suggestions and vision for the kin.
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Well, I have a number of questions to get things started ;-).
How do you think the Eagles should evolve? or not! Or which would be your priority? (growth in numbers with a focus on new recruits, reinforcing, developing the alliance, or…)
For what kind of things would you like to see (or plan to provide) more support? (leveling, deeding, instances and skirms all lvls, end-game T2 raids, etc)
What do you think of our democratic system?
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Hello Eagles,
I am running for the position of leader. I’ve held two or three terms as leader in the past…I actually can’t remember. In other words, I’m very professional and have an iron clad memory, which is why I should get the job.
One of the things that I love most about the Eagles is its diversity – we come from all over the world, we speak numerous languages, we range in age from 16 to the 70s, and we have different in-game priorities. I hope we can continue that tradition. So, what is my hope for the future of the Eagles? My first order of business will be to organize a survey to see how you think we’re doing and to see what you’d like to see change or added to the kinship.
Other things I’d like to do, if the Council agrees: begin recruitment anew; plan at least one social event a month as well as at least one pre-organized run a week; enforce kinship and alliance rules; and, revitalize the alliance. I also personally resolve to talk less (in other words, more) about Star Trek in kinship chat.
At the root core the Eagles is a social kinship, so I’d also like to ask each of you to consider participating in kinship chat a bit more, even if it’s just to say hello when you log in and goodbye when you log out. Since the Eagles also believe strongly in allowing players to play as they wish and what feels comfortable to them, this is just a request and nothing more.
Thank you to anyone who votes for me.
Gui
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Hello! I’m running for Council officer, after completing a term as in-game officer. We are part of an extraordinary kinship, and the only one that is democratically run (as far as I know). Collectively, we determine the values of our kinship as well as how we embody those values.
As I’ve become more involved in the “behind the scenes” operations of the kinship, I find myself thinking about various pathways we could take forward. At times, I’ve talked with a few kinnies about some ideas in kin chat. But I find myself wishing for a mechanism to find out what all kinnies think about Eagles and the future of the kinship. Creating that mechanism is a major priority for me if I join the Council.
Once we gather the concerns, ideas, and wishes of the kinship, we can start to move Eagles towards our desired future. Do we want to recruit more members, especially at lower levels, so we continue to support people on their journeys through Middle Earth? Would some kinnies like to develop their ability to lead instances by studying the mechanics of instances and practicing together? On the flip side, what can we do to keep the fun in playing this game?
Another priority for me would be to work with our webmaster to fine tune our excellent website. For example, there is a lot of useful information posted in our forums, such as Mirveth’s guides to legendary items. But it’s not easy to find! I’d like to create a way to round up such information so kinnies can easily find and benefit from all the advice and knowledge shared in the forum.
I hope you’ll exercise your vote in our kinship democracy, and that you’ll vote for me if what I’ve said sounds good to you!
Fly high, Eagles!
Ame
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Since the start of the kinship I’ve looked after our online presence. At first this was via Guildlaunch. We were all a bit disappointed with how that worked so eventually we set up our own website here at eaglesofthorondor.com. I host the site, I designed and built it, and along with Luri I manage it on a day-to-day basis. I’ve continued to do that for the past six months even though I’ve not had an official role within the kinship. My main focus, then, for the next six months, should I be elected to the council, would be to work on improving the website, making it even more helpful to kinnies. The forums are good, but we have a lot of information on the site that could be easier to find, and there’s additional functionality I’d like to build into the site. (I have just read Ame’s post. We could definitely work together on this!)
I live in England, so I play ST+5, which means running raids/instances/… with most of the kinship is impossible during the week. So my second focus would be to organise some European timezone events and encourage some of the in-game officers who play in my timezone to help out. One of the things I’d really like us to do as a kinship, and will work on for the Euro-timezone players, is run more training sessions. We did a few of these a year or so ago and they were really helpful. We have an amazing bunch of allies but it’s daunting to join a skirm/raid/instance/bb/rt that you’ve never done before with a group of people you don’t know that well. Participating in a raid at a slightly lower level with a group of people who you know and trust is a great way to build your confidence and prepare you for joining in when someone on TEB-TALK puts out the call.
I like where the kinship is at right now. I think we have a good balance of ages, skills, interests etc. I believe we’re primarily a social kinship with a core block of players who are particularly interested in playing as a group in instances or on the moors. I think having more members in the kinship would be beneficial but I believe quality is more important than quantity. We have a rule that anyone considering joining the kin must read and agree to our code of conduct—that’s very important to me.
We have discussed the idea of having a “benevolent dictator” like many other kinships have. I think the concept of the council is a very strong one and means that we can do more than if just one person controlled the kinship. Having been involved in the council for most of the past two years I have seen how hard it is for just one person to carry that load. You need a group to share the tasks involved and to have a clearer vision of what the kinship needs to thrive. I believe the Eagles’ council is something we can all be proud of.
Eagles, you have my harp/sword/website skills.
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Hi Eagles,
I’m running for office of In game officer. I’ve been with the Eagles since 2013. I’ve been a temporary officer before when the coursera class was being held and really enjoyed helping out. Some of the skills I would bring to the office would be that I’m very detail oriented which would help with keeping up with and updating the events calendar and I’m a writer in real life so I think that would help with the website side of the kinship.I love the diversity of our kinship and the way it is ran and would like to see that continue. The way the kinship is set up makes it fun for everyone who is involved and I wouldn’t change a thing about it. I’ve enjoyed meeting and becoming friends with players from around the world.
Things I would like to see develop is our alliance and growing the kinship but not to the point where it might get too big. The things I would like to support more of is leveling and deeding. Leveling and deeding are two of the things I enjoy doing when in game.
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Hello lovely kinnies!
I’m running for Council Officer again. As you may or may not know depending on how long you’ve been an Eagle, I’ve been on the Council for the past 2 terms and I have really enjoyed working with and for our kinnies to make the Eagles a place for everyone.
Along those lines, my priorities are to continue to make the Eagles a wonderful kinship that we can all enjoy and be proud of. Several folks have mentioned working on the website to better organize our knowledge-sharing documents. I’m absolutely on board there! (I could certainly use those docs!) I would also like to get more events going on a regular basis and work on our relationship with our allies. Most importantly, though, I want to make sure we’re supporting our kinnies where they are, rather than pushing them to play a specific way. Whether that means doing practice runs on big raids or giving advice and potions to lower-level toons, we as a kinship (and, specifically, as officers of the kinship) should provide what assistance we can to each other. We’re not just a random group of people playing the same game–we can be a mutually beneficial community of friends and allies. “Help others. Be kind. We’re a team!” :)
As far as our democratic system, I think it’s a great way to organize the kinship. Can it sometimes make things difficult? Sure. But it’s the best way to ensure that all kinnies can have a voice and get involved to the extent that they desire, which is kind of what I’m all about.
Have a wonderful day and please let me know if you have any other questions.
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Hello,
I’m running for In-game Officer. I’ve been with the kinship since the beginning of the first Coursera course back in 2013 (after that, I disappeared for almost a year since I started to play exclusively on creepside).
I really like the friendly and helpful atmosphere of the kinship, and I like to see kinnies doing different types of content. However, I think that the kinship really needs to do more group content. With that in mind, I believe that the kinship needs a small influx of members, so the groups can be filled.
Group content can be done for different levels, and they are useful for completing deeds, getting nice titles and decorations. So, as an officer, I will try to organize runs more frequently, depending if there’s interest on it.
The devs announced a new raid for this year, and I know that we have a decent number of lvl 100 members that are well-geared. How cool it would be if the kinship could beat this raid on level? :D after a lot of practice, that is.
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My fellow Eagles,
If I’m elected as supreme leader for life, I promise free cosmetic pets and kinship sized houses for everyone!*
In the event I’m merely elected as Council officer, I intend to do the following:
- Organise a social events committee to create more social events: parties,
story telling, historic walks. The committee’s guiding inspiration will be the wonderful events organised by our Neems. These will primarily be for the
benefit of our kinnies, but I will also extend invites to our allies so we can further strengthen our ties. - Aid the council in improving our recruitment process; I believe in quality over quantity.
I’ve held a council officer role before, and I can safely say that no one has died on my watch. Well okay, no one in the same raid group as me.
Joking aside, I think you’ll find you’ll be in very safe hands with our nominees.
Boring bits: ST+5 (Eurotrash) and the techie who keeps the website and vent
server alive.
XOXO
LURIIIII JENKYNS!
* Please don’t elect me as supreme leader for life. It’ll end badly. - Organise a social events committee to create more social events: parties,
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Hello all the campaigners. I have some questions.
– Saed is in the UK and wants to organize some Eurozone events. What about the rest of you, will you also organize events that us on the other side of the pond can participate in?
– Ame asks the question about growing the Kinship and Nim also discusses the alliance, another way of growing the extended links. There are some new very small Kins now on the new server who wish to ally with a larger kin. What do you each think of growing in this or any other way?
– Hagenti mentions playing on the creep side. I know some others do as well. Will you all be organizing events for creeps? Hagenti will you be playing more with the free people?
– Luri doesn’t want to be supreme leader for life. Do you think we can insist on it?
– This kinship is the best. If we all stick by our moto it will continue to be so. Mention of enforcing the Kin rules – how would you effect this?
See you as soon as the server is up again, blame server maintenance for my long list of questions.
xx
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Nida,
Thank you for your important questions for the candidates. As you know, the leader isn’t able to enact legislation (yes, i’m trying to sound very official) without the Council’s majority approval, so despite my answers below, know these are only my personal opinions.
1. On the weekends, I often organized events that are during Eurozone-friendly times in my previous terms. And, just recently, I organized the majority of the alliance events that took place on Saturday, January 29th from 1pm-4pm, which is Eurozone-friendly. I will continue to do so.
2. Personally, I believe we need to strengthen the alliance as it currently exists before attempting to add more member kinships. I’m not alone in believing the alliance needs more attention as one alliance leader has already approached me on the topic when they found out I was running for leader of the Eagles again. A second has hinted, rather than blatantly said, that we need to do more things as an alliance.
Re: growing the kinship – I believe in this strongly for a few reasons
a) first one of the most common complaints I receive is that there aren’t enough people online that would like to group up even when using teb-talk. Everyone has different play style and that’s something we support and promote within the Eagles. Some people prefer group play, others already have a best friend or significant other that they can group with and some truly do like solo play best. I think our members should be free to play at their own comfort level. So, though there may be six level 100s online at one time, you may have only two that want to run anything because others prefer to solo quest/skirm or to fellow with their bestie, etc.
b) We also don’t have enough lower level toons to pair up with other lower level toons in the kinship to assist with fellowship quests, etc. Many of us will help out if available – which is great to help people advance to the next quest, but having a level 100 in a level 58 run doesn’t really help our newer players learn the instances or their classes – though it is good for showing camaraderie and building community. And, at times we’re not available or would like to do something else, leaving certain lower level members asking for days upon days for help with the same thing.
I also want to point out that I don’t think expanding the size of the kinship in any way deters us from achieving our goals. We have a solid process of handling infractions of the CoC. If someone is violating our CoC numerous times, they will be removed from the kinship (this should answer another of your questions, Nida). I think we can have both quality and quantity if we follow through with our procedures and make sure all recruits agree to the CoC prior to being invited in.
3. As I am not VIP, I can’t play freepside, so I’d be unable to do this. I do not believe we have regularly active players that play freepside at the moment, though some do on occasion. So, I’ll let them answer this question.
4. No one is allowed to hold the title “supreme leader” in the Eagles. Even if, by some small chance, the Eagles changed from a democracy to something else, I don’t like the title “supreme leader”. So, I would vote no on this. Just want to be transparent :P.
5. As mentioned earlier, we have a system in place to track violations of the CoC. On our website, below the CoC is a guide to actions council members will take should violations of the CoC occur.
I can’t believe I spent my entire lunch stuffing my face and writing this up. I’m such a nerd.
Gui
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Hi Nida, thank you for the questions. I like the idea of growing the kinship by having smaller ones join a larger one. I have to agree with Gui in the respect of strengthing our alliance first and doing more things with them. I don’t play creepside so I don’t see myself forming any events on it.
I plan to help organize more events for our euro kin members. Like Gui said though on this is it’s hard to get players to participate because of their playing style. I can speak for my own taste is that I tend to like to play solo because I like to challenge myself on the quests/instances but I do like participating in a group as well because I like helping others out. As for helping lower level members I don’t mind doing that because I have 6 toons which 4 are in the kinship and 2 to be added that range in level and skills. My focus for my toons is leveling and deeding at the moment. :)
To the question of enforcing the rules. We have a great set of code of conduct rules. As long as everyone follows them the kinship will be a great thing to be part. :)
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Hi!
1. Euro events: Short answer – yep! I’m mostly available to run events on weekends, so I’m definitely willing and able to make a majority of my events Euro-friendly times.
2. Alliance: I’m definitely not opposed to adding additional smaller kinships to the alliance, but I do think we need to work on our current alliance situation first. Once the alliance is back on a stronger footing, I’d definitely be open to discussing bringing new kinships into the alliance, though it does require agreement by all of the alliance leaders. I’m also fine with growing our kinship through recruitment, but I would like to focus on improving our internal situation (regular events scheduled, more kinnies interacting and sharing what they want, etc.) before bringing in a large number of new members.
3. Creep/Freep: I personally probably won’t do much in the way of creepside events, because it’s not really my thing. However, I absolutely support our kinnies if they want to organize these types of events and could possibly be talked into following along every once in a while.
4. Luri for Supreme Leader! ;)
5. As Gui mentioned, we do have a means of keeping track of these issues. We also take complaints from kinnies very seriously and do our best to investigate these issues. But basically, it comes down to making sure our kinnies know the rules and are willing to follow them when they sign on. We have good people here.
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Thank you for the questions Nida,
Last year (was it last year? Sorry, not the best with dates), our kinship and the alliance organized a couple of events for monster play, they were very popular at first but as time passed, just a couple of kinnies kept attending and the events stopped. Nowadays, our tribe is mostly inactive, so I don’t think I will be organizing events for creeps in the near future.
I have 6 chars on the kinship, but I don’t PVP with them since I’m not VIP. My focus, at the moment is on levelling, deeding and group play.
Hagenti
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Questions! Yay for getting involved in the demoocratic process!
1. Well, I don’t think I need to answer that one.
2. Gui has already laid out her intentions to strengthen the alliances, which mostly addresses that question. I think the alliance is a practical way to expand availability of players for doing group runs. It doesn’t actually build the Eagles itself, other than by having some alts join us from alliance kinships. Otherwise it’s down to a recruitment process to bring in new kin members. By being a great kinship we will see new members come to us and stay with us.
3. I don’t play creepside but I’d support kinnies who want to and I’d participate in the occasional trip to the moors.
4. Please don’t let Luri be supreme leader ;)
5. The Code of Conduct and response to infractions is pretty watertight. I think encouraging a supportive environment where we help each other out, allow everyone to play in the way they like best, and provide some regular events where kinnies can get to know one another is the best way to keep the kinship strong. And when it fails, we use the response to infractions that we’ve already laid out.
Hope that answers your questions, Nida.
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Thank you Hagenti and Saed for answering my questions. It is very helpful to have these answers. Everyone seems to be in agreement with where the kin is going and how this will be achieved. I have never been part of a democratic kin / guild / group or even company, it is very refreshing.
I agree with you Saed, Luri shouldn’t be supreme leader :). I have never played creepside. With other games I played I hated PvP mainly due to groups ganging up on solo players. I would like to take a peek just out of interest. I would need someone to hold my hand though.
Apart from some minor differences in how to grow the Kinship / Alliance there does not seem to be major differences of opinion. I wish you all the best.
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Hello. Eagles you all know me as Sliverwing and thorwind iam running for in game officer. but I have about 9 alt of different classes and rank, mostly for crafting but lvling them slowly. I would 1st like too thk sead for helping me get on too website. as far where the eagles are headed. I belive what others have said stengthing ties with allies and slowly bringing in players who fit the kin. I play on est time but on my days on off.I would help with oversea groups too.Ive been playing for 7 1/12 years so Ive seen a lot about the game, I would like too see us do t2 raids and group more too. I don’t play creep side much so not help there I take freeps there once awhile. The best part of this kin is the social aspect. people are very friendly and helpful and I belive that makes us one of stronger kins on arkenstone , no matter if elect or not iam here too help others and learn new thing about the game and myself. I would just like too say in closing you are the best and fly high eagles best regards slverwing
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I wanted to wish all candidates good luck and share with you a few ideas from my experience as officer, and also from the research I’ve been conducting for my ethnology project (still an ongoing reflection).
First, on the recruitment topic: I did a census and there was 52 different players (not characters – I took alts into account) logging in at least once in the past 8 days. It’s a large number. To give you a comparison, a study I found about WoW (complete census of 5 servers a few years ago) established that 90% of the guilds there had less than 35 characters (and not players, they had no way to identify alts from the same player). So this makes me think that growing even more might not be the first priority, but we still need to do some recruitment to compensate for natural attrition. To ensure players find enough people to group up with when they need to, I think the best way is to reinforce our alliances.
Our player base is very diverse, which is our strength and also might make things more difficult for you, future officers and leader. It’s a strength because large and diverse kinships have the most chance to survive and grow (always according to this survey). It can be difficult, because it means catering to the needs of very different playstyles. But I think, reading your posts, that the diversity of future officers reflect well the diversity of the kin as a whole, and it’s the best way to ensure that everyone has their voice heard.
That’s why our democratic system works best I think. It’s a participative democracy, which means that if you’re not happy with something, not only you can make your voice heard, but you can also take things in your own hands, and do something to make it better. It’s also an essential system to ensure the survival of the kinship in the long term, so there are always new members and new ideas invigorating the kin. Sclerosis because of inactive leadership is the most common reason for guilds to disappear.
Through the conversations I had and the research I’ve done, I encountered two different visions for the role of an officer, overall. First, officers can be seen as a kind of reward for past accomplishments. Second, officer role can be seen as a duty, more akin to volunteer work. The 1st vision is often linked to a more military-like model, the 2nd to a model based on associations. My own vision, and I think the one most adapted to our kin, is the 2nd one. But at times, I felt like I wasn’t legitimate enough as an officer, based on the 1st model. Ideally, maybe officers should embody both models. But we’re not living in an ideal system, and make do with what we can and where we are now is the best way to achieve something.
So, many thanks to all candidates for taking an active part in the Eagles. It’s great to see so many kinnies willing to spend time and energy to make our kin better, in every way possible.
And sorry for the long read!
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