[WHC EVENT] 2024.01.21 00:00 | WHC Friendly Pitchfork Rally: AKA Unofficial Townhall

[Anor Noban]

Wow—a lot of work! Much appreciated for the time and careful wording.

Pg 46 — ? for teaching SIX classes (is my guess for the egg)

[Cucumber Roll]

Great event and writeup. Reference/Link #21 is remarkably accurate and thorough. Good job organising that as well.

[Biwako Acami]

I admire the effort but what is with the character assassination of Conci? How did he contribute to the fall of WHC?

This outcome (effects of E-UNI 2.0 and not just the eviction) was an expectation from the bitter-vets of my time and my disappointment in leadership driving it was what led to my departure.

Edit: I hope the current leadership doesn't disappoint you in your revitalized efforts.

[Kamille Panala]

I admire the effort but what is with the character assassination of Conci? How did he contribute to the fall of WHC?

This outcome (effects of E-UNI 2.0 and not just the eviction) was an expectation from the bitter-vets of my time and my disappointment in leadership driving it was what led to my departure.

Edit: I hope the current leadership doesn't disappoint you in your revitalized efforts.

It's not character assassination when it's true. Also, this report isn't saying Conci contributed to the downfall of WHC. This report is from a meeting which largely helped people talk out thoughts and feelings about the eviction, but it also discussed issues with leadership and Conci's abusive behavior was brought up as a previous example of a director behaving inappropriately toward members.

[Professor Academiac]

Thanks everyone.

Was it the rick-roll at the very end under references?

Yes, that's it! Congratulations

[Biwako Acami]

It's not character assassination when it's true. Also, this report isn't saying Conci contributed to the downfall of WHC. This report is from a meeting which largely helped people talk out thoughts and feelings about the eviction, but it also discussed issues with leadership and Conci's abusive behavior was brought up as a previous example of a director behaving inappropriately toward members.

As someone who knew Conci for a few years its difficult to picture what he is being accused of here. Though I was not around for the last few. The wording in the documents do not make any of the grievances clear so I don't understand the arguments against him. It also doesn't help that its muddled in with Jack's deeds. Conci was known to be direct. Muting and banning is an administrative function exercised by management and he is hardly the first or only person to enforce it. The account is also marred by personal gripe mentioned by the author in 5.4.5.i. A heated argument with Laura I can believe.

[Kamille Panala]

It's not character assassination when it's true. Also, this report isn't saying Conci contributed to the downfall of WHC. This report is from a meeting which largely helped people talk out thoughts and feelings about the eviction, but it also discussed issues with leadership and Conci's abusive behavior was brought up as a previous example of a director behaving inappropriately toward members.

As someone who knew Conci for a few years its difficult to picture what he is being accused of here. Though I was not around for the last few. The wording in the documents do not make any of the grievances clear so I don't understand the arguments against him. It also doesn't help that its muddled in with Jack's deeds. Conci was known to be direct. Muting and banning is an administrative function exercised by management and he is hardly the first or only person to enforce it. The account is also marred by personal gripe mentioned by the author in 5.4.5.i. A heated argument with Laura I can believe.

I get that your time in Uni led you form a certain view of Conci, but for others of us we saw a very different side of him that was less than pleasant. The frustrating part of allowing directors to step down gracefully and "retire" as it were, is that there is no accounting for what all happened. The only way we have to make those grievances known and share experiences has been at these chats.

[Zeerse Solaris]

I appreciate the effort, but the output format is very unwieldy to try to understand the key points.

I can't help but comment on the reference to AMC, it was mainly a location to try to avoid miners being engaged in non-consensual pvp, isk making was a bi-product of the mining activity not the driver of the campus, so the mining for isk opportunities offered outside of high sec are not attractive to that membership.

I think grievance system is what is meant by justice system, I would liken most of the issues to those experienced in a work environment rather than criminal justice.

My proposed solution for many of the issues raised is that in the event of a future occasion, ultimate command decision authority is held by an on-field commander, that is handed over during the ongoing event to the next nominated on field commander when the first one needs to stand down. Those with higher in game permissions, set to and do as instructed by the field commanders.

I would say there have been forewarnings of our inability to defend an eviction, I recall at least one badly organised and missed basics previous scenario prior to Uni 2.0, so I would caution against thinking that in the old days we were secure. At the time I am thinking of, no AAR was presented despite my asking repeatedly for one, I suspect because open criticism wanted to be avoided.

Although my knowledge is 2nd hand, the Jack/Brelly drama seems one-sidedly misrepresented. I was told members of that alt corp used non-blue/green alts to gank fellow unistas who mined their moons while the alt corp had free access to uni moons and used our buyback due to lacking the infrastructure to convert their ore into isk at markets.

I would say WHC had over time became more inclusive then when I first joined. There were times before upwell structures where you had small groups running their own POS out of necessity, then came the era of T2 doctrines which then became more accessible T1 doctrines. Personally from never really being a fully paid up WHC member, I have run several events/fleets out of WHC aimed at encouraging high sec people into them.

In the context of now being Production Manager you'll need to take all the above into account of that . However, I would say that before reading this one of my first acts has been to organise a Production team meeting to let them know what my thoughts and plans are, communication is key, and it should be open and honest.

[Professor Academiac]

I admire the effort but what is with the character assassination of Conci? How did he contribute to the fall of WHC?

This outcome (effects of E-UNI 2.0 and not just the eviction) was an expectation from the bitter-vets of my time and my disappointment in leadership driving it was what led to my departure.

...

As someone who knew Conci for a few years its difficult to picture what he is being accused of here. Though I was not around for the last few. The wording in the documents do not make any of the grievances clear so I don't understand the arguments against him. It also doesn't help that its muddled in with Jack's deeds. Conci was known to be direct. Muting and banning is an administrative function exercised by management and he is hardly the first or only person to enforce it. The account is also marred by personal gripe mentioned by the author in 5.4.5.i. A heated argument with Laura I can believe.

Hi Biwako! I'm glad you took the time to review the report. My secondary objective in hosting the meeting was to gather community feedback and perceptions. My obligation was to work with this dataset and report back to the community. I mentioned in the report that, unfortunately, some of the topics raised were personal in nature as they were intertwined with the issues.

It wasn't mentioned that Conci had anything to do with the eviction in any way. The issue was about community perceptions of abuse of power and lack of leadership intervention, and this came up randomly as an example. I didn't even intend or anticipate a discussion about Conci in the meeting at all to begin with.

My objective was not to assassinate Conci, on the contrary. I tried to defend him myself (despite personally having unfortunate conflicts with him similar to those raised by the community) because there wasn't time for anyone to do so in the discussion, and I truly value his expertise that personally helped me learn and grow, and his contributions to WHC and E-UNI as I stated. In my 3rd paragraph of the preface, you can see him listed as one of my unofficial mentors and models at WHC. But again, there were several clear incidents and this is the perception of the community. So these are perceptions shared by the community based on some publicly known incidents. As for mutes, in my example it's not a problem of muting, it's a problem of muting when it wasn't warranted, a sentiment shared by the Student Advocates at the time (some of it was to be fair, which I also acknowledge). If you read 5.4.6, I clearly state start by saying "In my humble, semi-informed, and potentially biased opinion..." acknowledging that this is personal and biased.

So, I clearly didn't intend any of this to be libel or character assassinations in any way. It's just a collection of perceptions and issues felt by the community that need to be addressed by Leadership, and that particular topic came up randomly and briefly as an example of one of the issues. I hope this clarifies the issue and I'm sorry if it came off as something that it wasn't intended to be.

[Professor Academiac]

Wow—a lot of work! Much appreciated for the time and careful wording.

Pg 46 — ? for teaching SIX classes (is my guess for the egg)

No, that's actually missing info. I don't know who did that even after asking around, and I really wanted to recognize them!

The easter egg was already found https://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtop ... 26#p961726

[Professor Academiac]

I appreciate the effort, but the output format is very unwieldy to try to understand the key points.......

I acknowledge that there is misinformation in the report. But again, that is the data I had to work with. These are community perceptions, even if they're not true. So, the issue indicates that there might be a problem in communication within the UNI.

Key points: If you look at the Table of Contents, you'll identify the main issues raised in the meeting in the Notes chapter, and an even more brief set in the TLDR chapter.

AMC: Noted, thanks for clarifying.

Justice: I wouldn't say it was phrased as a criminal system. You can call it anything. Human Resources, Student Case Management, etc... and every organization has that. The key is mutual oversight. Also thanks for the suggestions. I by no means propose that the UNI should follow my exact set of suggestions to the letter. Those are ideas that came to me and recommendations in collaboration with Gibson, predominantly relying on his expertise. This shouldn't be OUR personal recommendations, but a starting point for a discussion for the whole community, and ideas by members of the community at large with different experiences and knowledge are most welcome and should be considered.

AAR: There were valid reasons for the delay, but recommendation to address this issue is outlined in the report.

Jack/Brelly: Thanks for providing that perspective. I am not aware of the specifics and I worked with the info I had.

WHC Accessibility: Yeah that's also analyzed in the report. There are unfortunately some restrictions that need to be in place for the protection of these members, otherwise they won't enjoy their experience. We also host frequent Noob Nights to give newbies as sense of WHC before meeting the requirements.

"...communication is key, and it should be open and honest." absolutely agree! First thing I mention in the TLDR

[Luxxianna Seraph]

Wow. Just. Wow.

That's a lot.

I'm going to first say I'm very surprised to be Included on the names of those to be recognized (Alabaster is my current uni too) because I am sure people are quite sick of me . But thanks to whomever put me there. I'll voice that I feel real bad because a lot of my initial morale raising was "we just gotta get some cap pilots in then we'll undock with caps and ferox support umbrella and they'll be done for" ... which turned out to be totally false hope. Ah well.


Beyond that, it's insane the amount of work you put into this Prof, and I'd like to envision this is why I haven't seen you around - you've been head down working on this instead of unlocking haven't you?

I didn't get to attend because it was during my time with my family, but I'm glad to hear it went well.

The only feed back I'll add is the Justice system is a very lofty and venerable sort of goal... it's way more work than I'd ever be willing to put into a video game... but I won't deny there are tons of people who do want to put that kind of work in and for that I salute them.

[Professor Academiac]

Beyond that, it's insane the amount of work you put into this Prof, and I'd like to envision this is why I haven't seen you around - you've been head down working on this instead of unlocking haven't you?

Congrats on the community recognition!!

Yes I can finally play again.

Regarding the Justice System I'm sure many are willing to put that effort if, hopefully, Leadership agrees and it's implemented, however it may end up looking and whatever the labels are. And if it's done with enough delegation, the workload shouldn't be that much except maybe in the initial phase of forming it. Gibson and I hare willing to work with leadership to discuss this recommendation.

[Biwako Acami]

I digress. I still see nothing in the document or said here to change my opinion of Conci but everyone is entitled to their own. I initially wrote up a wall of text that would serve as a better defense for him as I recall distinctly that Prof was absent for a time during the Conci's initial year as Director when he did a lot for E-UNI/WHC. But eventually I didn't think pasting it here would sway any opinions either.

E-UNI leadership is just like that of any other corporation in EVE. For leadership it is not very hard to put their foot down when they want things done their way, even if hurts others, since it is their power to use/misuse/abuse. Exodus of great players has always been caused by some form of discontent with leadership either overreaching or not doing enough. And I'm talking about years prior to this movement so this is old news. It is also hard to lead a group of people without taking action (sometimes strict action) when they do things to divert the culture/focus or generally are out of line.

The main reason I was pedantic about Conci's deeds was because there are worse stories. Your accounts of him only portrays him as a regular Joe if you've been around and heard or seen what else has occurred. What could go wrong if you give more power to more individuals right? It may sound hunky dory for formative years but someone will misuse/abuse the system again; some blatantly and some covertly. At least, Conci was too direct to be a snake.

On a side note, it was hilarious to see Pink Kondur mentioned. Pink was very reliable during my tenure and had access to the caps and campus funds through me. It is hilarious but sad that Conci didn't find someone to replace him for a while.

Again, I admire the effort directed at fixing things. I disagree with the approach lobbied here but I'm not a stakeholder. I sincerely wish you all the best at this attempt.

[Professor Academiac]

I digress. I still see nothing in the document or said here to change my opinion of Conci but everyone is entitled to their own. I initially wrote up a wall of text that would serve as a better defense for him as I recall distinctly that Prof was absent for a time during the Conci's initial year as Director when he did a lot for E-UNI/WHC. But eventually I didn't think pasting it here would sway any opinions either.

E-UNI leadership is just like that of any other corporation in EVE. For leadership it is not very hard to put their foot down when they want things done their way, even if hurts others, since it is their power to use/misuse/abuse. Exodus of great players has always been caused by some form of discontent with leadership either overreaching or not doing enough. And I'm talking about years prior to this movement so this is old news. It is also hard to lead a group of people without taking action (sometimes strict action) when they do things to divert the culture/focus or generally are out of line.

The main reason I was pedantic about Conci's deeds was because there are worse stories. Your accounts of him only portrays him as a regular Joe if you've been around and heard or seen what else has occurred. What could go wrong if you give more power to more individuals right? It may sound hunky dory for formative years but someone will misuse/abuse the system again; some blatantly and some covertly. At least, Conci was too direct to be a snake.

On a side note, it was hilarious to see Pink Kondur mentioned. Pink was very reliable during my tenure and had access to the caps and campus funds through me. It is hilarious but sad that Conci didn't find someone to replace him for a while.

Again, I admire the effort directed at fixing things. I disagree with the approach lobbied here but I'm not a stakeholder. I sincerely wish you all the best at this attempt.

Actually, you are an important stakeholder. As someone with expertise running the WHC, I dearly value your opinion and perspective, even if I don't agree with all of it completely. It's true, I took several long-term hiatuses due to IRL reasons when Conci was first appointed Director. Here's my last interaction with Conci being a Director and you being a Manager before I had to go on leave and coming back to stuff hitting the fan. I created this meme for the "new HA Doctrine" that never came to be. And when I came back, as a former friend and colleague, he treated me like an absolute piece of $**T. However, It wasn't me that brought him up, it was other community members who did so.

I agree that Directors need to be assertive about their decisions. But I disagree that they need to abuse/misuse their powers to be assertive. Nothing is further from the truth. You can be assertive about decisions, explain why you made them, and let the opposition pound sand. But you can't just disrespect the opposition and avoid even providing the most basic set of requirements of reasonable respectful justifications for your decision, especially if it's unpopular. Want to mute me? Great. Do so, it's your right as Officer/Manager/Director. Just provide justification. When Student Advocates say you didn't have the right to do so cuz I didn't violate any rules, don't double down. And don't rely on the CEO to protect you when you make poor decisions. Hence, why we need a better Student Advocate system. If you fail to do so, then you're petty and are afraid of what I have to say. It's as simple as that.

Also, simply because UNI leaders acted terribly in the past, we should accept slightly less terrible decisions unquestionably. We should aspire to be better than bad. Terrible shouldn't be our baseline.

And yes, you're absolutely right. There are probably worse stories than Conci's. They just didn't come up in the meeting, unfortunately. I wish they did. I wish Conci's example didn't come up. But it did.

As for Pink, he was actually one of my models too, just like Danny for example. But equally, he fell from grace. I mentioned him as an example from personal experience. I don't care if he had access to all E-UNI assets and he didn't violate that trust. That's the basic minimum you need to achieve as a Unista. It was clear that he acted in ways that aren't all that immune from critique, my simplest SRP request after having had conflicts with his friend Conci was rejected by him for the prettiest minor technicalities like "lacking sufficient description in the SRP request" when I provided 2-3 lines of a full description of how I actually lost my ship. This is when HE WASN'T EVEN IN THE UNI! Imagine how freakin ridiculous that is. You can be the most trusted person in the universe but still act in questionable ways when you take petty things personally and abuse your power to exert unwarranted vengeance cuz your friend's ego was hurt.

Anyways, thanks again Biwako. And sincerely, if you have a wall of text that you would like to share in defence of Conci, I would absolutely welcome it. Like I said, I only defended him out of necessity since no one else did, and I'm biased. So please, feel free to do so.