And you often do Lj.

I have been away and am back now.  I dont usually tell the forums of my comings and goings, and I have no intention of starting for your benefit Lj.  I coordinate with the GMs and I let TeamNF know and that is adequate thank you.

The minutes were posted and made available.  The actions were noted here and we are working on those.  The updates being the first stage.  The Fleet Leader area was delayed as covered by Randy, but we are hoping to get it done in January. 

I didnt have a 20-day break.  Just because I dont post does not mean I am not here.  Moreover, I even managed to do some things whilst away, just not everything.  And no I am not going to start telling you when I am here and when I am not.  The support system is adequate to cope and has done so on many a time when I have not been here, so no need to change that.

As for the agenda, we gave plenty of opportunity for people to ask questions during the meeting and when there were no more we closed it off.

That meeting was anything but productive Vick.

The support system coped, the response from the Devs could have been better with regards to event problems and I have provided that feedback up the chain, but that is another story.

I am not going to start detailing my availability on these forums. Also, even when I am away I invariably answer emails and PMs regularly anyway and quite often can keep track of the forums as well.  As for my time in-game, that is more than adequate or SDE would be the first to question me on it.

I am frustrated the Fleet Leader area has not appeared yet, as I see that being a useful conduit for more information flow.  I will be pressing that again after the weekend.  I will also review agreed actions this weekend and see what else we can move forward on, alongside continuing work on a public version of the Mod Manual for SDE to consider releasing. 

hate to say it Vick but LJs arguments are valid

The TeamNF changes will be covered in the public version of the Mod Manual once SDE approve it for release. 

Unless I am going to absent for a protracted period of time and be totally out of communication (which is extremely rare) then I am not going to publish my availability.  If you need to contact me email and/or PM will normally generate a reasonably quick response irrespective of my availability to get in-game.

Any outstanding agenda questions from the last meeting can be posted on the Fleet Leader forum area and we will be do our best to answer them there.

Communications on these forums need to be a two-way street.  I personally put up with a lot of trolling, foul-mouthing on the old Fleet Leader forum and to be frank a lot of naieve, misguided and unwarranted comments/attacks that would not be tolerated on a lot of other game forums - a fact that has been pointed out to me by several people over the last few months.  I do put up with it to try and maintain some freedom of speech over what is debated and discussed, but I know the resulting atmosphere puts a lot of other team members off from engaging, as it does a lot of players. 

There are two ways to move that forward, 1) We could come down hard on this and stamp it out, or 2)  some of the doom-sayers, trollers and to be blunt abusers, could try giving the team and other players, especially new ones, a bit of a break.  I would obviously prefer the second option.  I would prefer an atmosphere where people thought about the impact of their words and accusations before they pressed 'post'.  An atmosphere where even the newest player is welcomed and valued for joining in as opposed to being chastised for daring to post anything and made to feel unimportant.

This was a point discussed at the Fleet Leader meeting and not surprisingly it remains unresolved, because there was no agreement on moving one way or the other.  So once again it falls back to TeamNF to try and tread the middle ground and take the attacks.  However, I am starting to lean towards giving the supporters' comments a try and going very hard over for a while to make the point and change the atmosphere the hard way.

In terms of SDE contact, Randy has done exactly what he agreed to do with the updates and and I know he pays attention to the forums, replying when he needs to.  I also hope he may be able to engage a bit more on the new Fleet Leader area, as it will be more focused issues and probably less overall content to track.  However, it is unreasonable to really expect him to have the time to sit and reply to every single thread, engage in all debates or even try and Moderate the forums in some way.  To do so would damage his core output, which would in turn reduce the support available to players that need it, which is untenable in the extreme.