Big House System Update!

[Aschente]

Hi friends! There have been a fair amount of changes to the house system in my most recent terms of LE senator that have happened quietly in the background that I feel should have some light shed on them. These involve some organization changes, along with a new venture I'm hoping will help revitalize the house system and draw in some new activity! Without anymore delay, lets dive into what's changed! For those of you less interested in the details there will be a TLDR at the bottom.

Lets start with addressing the stewards discussion that came up a little while ago. The relevant discussions can be found here if you aren't familiar. But essentially, there were no legally defined guidelines on how stewards were to perform their duties prior to this discussion. This was addressed by the council soon after the issue came to light, but I will draw attention to it now for those who have not seen that it was resolved. It was done with an amendment to NS-324-2, specifically Article 2 Section 3c (with a small tweak to 4a) detailing what stewards are permitted to do and what they are not permitted to do. This was done in a vote documented under NS 343-2. If you have any questions about this please feel free to DM me. Attn. Sorya , Escanaba , Thedairos .

You may have noticed that I pinged thed in that last one. This is due to House Founder Tasmanian Isles CTEing last month. I was able to reach out to them however, and though they will not be returning at the moment, he agreed to my suggestion of appointing Thed to lead the house in the meantime. Congratulations Thed!

Moving on from the stewards, lets touch on some of the organizational things going on in the background. First on the list is the newly created House and Generations archive. You may have noticed that the main House/Generations sub forum has been cleaned up! This is due to the formerly named "retired houses" archive being expanded to accommodate the rest of the contents of the sub forum and introducing a touch of organization. If are curious, you may visit the archive here to see the new archive. Special thanks to Markanite and Hakketomat in aiding me in implementing these changes!
Additionally, the pins have been lightly reorganized in the main sub forum, and more interestingly the House Guide has been updated! There are a few new sections within the guide and its order has been rearranged to be a bit more organized between the two functions of this sub forum. The only new section I will not here is the Who leads the Houses? section, as the next two major changes are a bit more exciting and deserve their own paragraph. (If you have read this far well done!)

This last thing is the big one that I have been dragging my feet on pulling the trigger on this for a while for a variety of reasons. Namely being nervous about its reception and life disrupting me. But I shall delay no longer!
Last month the council voted to pass my proposed law I had originally started writing to correct some legal stuff with the house Cup and Shield to bring it more in line with the way the competition is currently run and to match it with what was in the house guide. But after some long thinking It turned into a massive overhaul of the house competitions as a whole, paving the way to its final form of NS 344-1:The House Competition Act.

This law accomplished several things at once. It addressed the above concern about law/guide mismatch and corrected a few other details about the competition legally speaking. But it also changes the competition by finally bringing the House Scepter award into law and thus making it an official competition that counts for house points! The Scepters requirements were also altered to make it a bit more balanced, you can find a description of how it will work going forward in the updated House Cup, Shield, and Scepter Competitions. I will note however that house points from the scepter will only be acknowledged going forward and cannot be counted retroactively. The House Achievement plan has been updated to reflect this.
The CSS competition aside, the act also brings forth a new monthly event to be run under the newly established House report! The House report was created to solve a problem I have been picking at, which is how to draw non recruitment related interest to the house system. The report theoretically accomplishes this on two fronts. First off, as defined in the law it will be cross posted on both the forum and the discord (probably in a shortened form due to character limits and such) to attempt to reach islanders that found us outside of recruitment through whatever means, and because of the new monthly game that comes with the report! This is the bit that I am most excited for. It is an open ended contest that is left up to the discretion of the sitting LE senator to determine. It can range from all sorts of things to IO game competitions, to discord based game nights, or just a simple puzzle. But the best part is that it doesn't require WA, so anyone in a house is allowed and encouraged to join! These various contests will run at timeframes within the designated month as the LE senator sees fit to run. The only requirements is that everyone gets a chance to participate! The winning houses of each monthly contest will receive a house ribbon that contributes to the point system outlined in the House Achievement plan, which has been updated to reflect this addition. Lastly, The house report also introduces the "featured house" section which will alternate thru all the houses in each report (first monthly then bi monthly after all houses have been featured once)
I plan to unleash the report portion of these changes starting in July, so keep an eye out for that!
As an afterthought the competition act also served to combine some of the fragmented laws into one complete law to make looking into the legal stuff for this easier.

So to recap (and to make a TLDR)
Steward stuff

• NS 324-2 has been updated to define steward responsibilities and limitations
• Thedairos is the new steward for the House of Tas

Subforum organization

• House and Generations Archive was created
• Pins reorganized
• House guide has been reorganized and updated
• House Achievement plan has been updated

Changes made by the House Competition Act

• Cleaned up the House Competition laws and combined them into one record
• Wrote the House Scepter award into law
• House Report Created
• Monthly House report competitions created
• House report competitions give house points
• First house report will release next month

Alright! Well that wasn't an insane amount of stuff to read right? Thanks for sticking with me through it. Please feel free to reach out to me via forum message or discord DM if you have any questions/see any errors!

Pinging the current house population

SPOILER: Click to show

Markanite:
Markanite ; Aschente ; Control ; Zaberaz Hapang ; Kanta Hame ; Emoticonius ; Demeters Children ; MrHermit

Louisistan:
Louisistan ; Lenlyvit ; Jabberwocky ; Eastern New England ; Wischland ; Margaux ; Dorab ; Haivon ; Mat She ; SaneSauceLand ; Adratos ; Shang Xian ; Valentian Elysium

Wordy:
armatha ; Belistien ; Escanaba ; Flying Eagles ; Hawalius ; Kortexia ; Lower Columbia ; Marxist Germany ; Paffnia ; Pianaville ; Porflox ; Horacellum ; Republic of Tikistan ; Shy Guy ; Silvedania ; Tacta ; thecheesepuffislands ; Woonsocket

Ananke:
Ananke II ; Smugglers and Mercs ; Randomain ; Firstaria ; 13 Court Gaurd Squads ; Kanaia ; Klopstock ; Surdra ; Sorya ; TBone Steaks ; Canadian North California ; Kyrizstanislav

Aersoldorf:
Aersoldorf ; Palman ; The Candy Lane ;Hakketomat ;thepeninsular ; Brusilovia ; Tangaroan Islands ; The Union Empire

Echolilia:
Echolilia ; HN67 ; The Federal Direct Democracy ; The Federation of Zul Islands

Tasmanian Islands:
The Tasmanian Islands ; The Soylent Green Party ; Krystalveil ; Thedairos ; Wille-Harlia ; Liberdon ; Kohnhead ; Gonggong ; Xanthorrhoea

[Aschente]

Also I wrote this whole thing without making any nbsp errors and I'm pretty proud of that not gonna lie

[Thedairos]

Wow these are amazing changes, thank you for all this effort, Asche! I'm excited to see the house reports kicking off soon!

[Markanite]

Amazing effort Aschente, thanks so much for all that you are doing!

[Aersoldorf]

Very nicely done