################### Beginning of the meeting
[Introductory discussion welcoming the new Exec members and setting out the agenda for the meeting]
//Stefan begins by divulging Ani Soc State Secrets to his flatmates as he’s doing the meeting in the kitchen for reasons…//
Caius: Discusses current state of the library. States that we might need to find private storage, the library storage situation, as of the current moment, is still up for assessment as Chih, who currently stores the library at his house, will be moving at the end of the academic year.
Caius: Over the Summer we should be able to move the library to Westwood, however, we’re unclear on its future past that point.
Caius: Additionally, I want to bring up the possibility of doing an EGM. I want to do an EGM to fill out the existing roles, given that we only have 5 exec members either during Term 3 or Term 1 of the next academic year.
[General discussion about the point follow; Tomas and Tom agree stating their preference for a Term 1 EGM. ALL in agreement]
Caius: Moving on, we should consider a member role revamp. At the moment the member role seems fairly useless since everyone has it and it doesn’t get removed at the end of the academic year.
Caius: Suggests removing the Member Role at the end of the academic year from those who do not have active society memberships.
Tomas: I can do it later on. We can make it so, at the end of the academic year, someone loses it and then the bot can check whether the person’s membership is still valid. This is all dependent, however, on the SU API continuing to function as it currently does.
Caius: That’s fine, we’re not planning on doing anything exclusively to members at the moment, but it would provide us, and future Exec members, with the flexibility to do so if they wish.
Caius: The second topic I’d like to discuss is additional responsibilities. As you know, the Discord is basically the current society at the moment. Consequently, I expect current Exec members to act responsibly and up to the standards expected of Exec members. We have had previous Exec members who have perhaps fallen below the standard expected. As such, I expect this Exec to uphold those standards. A good general rule would be to talk to other people as you would in real life. For example, some members have been very negative towards certain people talking about specific anime. As exec, you should reign in any desires to push certain narratives regarding certain animes being of a certain conceptualisation. I don’t think there is a ‘best taste’, and as exec we should be more plural and understanding of other people. Given the relatively low numbers of the exec this year, if one member falls below the standard it could tarnish the reputation of the exec.
//Stefan threatens to stab people who trash talk his waifu or his drawings. I don’t think he’s joking… :vigneknife: //
Tomas: I assume this not being negative thing applies specifically to people; if someone says Sword Art Online is great, surely we’re allowed to negatively critique it provided its done so in a constructed way?
Caius: Yeah that’s fine. There is, however, a worry that given the online nature of everything, that if you type something that hints towards certain tastes or narratives towards certain animes that the society is not very welcoming towards certain tastes. I’m not going to hunt you down for saying that, but I am saying that you should be cognizant of what you say and the potential ramifications for that and that’s all.
Caius: Moving onto the moderation log, please use it if you see anything that’s problematic. This is important because if you see something which, as of your understanding of the rules right now, is problematic it will allow us to discuss it and keeps a record of it.
Tomas: Illustrates this point by posting a picture that states See it. Say it. Sorted.
[General Agreement]
Exec attendance to Events and Meetings
Caius: I expect attendance to events and meetings but let me know if you can’t. More interactivity in stream chat, especially if there is a hanging message
Caius: I will delegate the handling of the post-showing games to Tom since he is the most active on the Discord and most regularly participates, but Caius will retain control of AMQs.
Tom: That’s fine
Tomas: I think that we shouldn’t hold a games event after every event; given that there’s less of us now, doing three events a week is tiring and cumbersome.
Caius: That’s fine, we can also discuss other games too. Luke you wanted to suggest a game right?
Luke: Suggests ‘Fake Artist Online’
Tomas: This seems like a cool game to vary things up but we should drop one or two a week instead of three to prevent burnout
[General Agreement]
Caius: Additionally we could also do Jackbox – we’ve had feedback that people want more Jackbox games so let’s do that. Also, on a side note, please fill out the Society questionnaire. There’s no rush but its for my own understanding. If there’s any concerns I need to follow up on, I’ll DM that individual and message them about it.
Schedule
Caius: What’s definitely happening is the main series which is happening on Tuesday every week until Week 10.
Caius: In Term three, there’ll be at least one event every week on Tuesday, and perhaps additional events on weeks 1 and 10, although this is provisional and subject to change and any extra events people can think of.
Tomas: Mentions he might have exams on week 1 as CS students can have early exams.
Caius: On Week 10 we might do something too but we don’t need to release a schedule for Term 3.
Caius: We usually do have an Exec Choice on Thursday. At the moment I’m planning to continue exec choice as it is for the rest of term 2, and then term 3 we’ll do another round of exec choices. There are, however, numerous other options we can do if that’s problematic; we can have member choice events for instance, which we could do on Thursday; or themed events based on genres although this might be more pertinent for term 1.
Tom: Brings up one show three episodes for Exec choice as opposed to two episodes of two shows for the duration of the Covid-restrictions. This would be advantageous because it would make the events slightly shorter and they have been getting less retention.
Caius: A few people have suggested this, and I am open to it, but it’s still going to be pretty similar for the rest of the term. I think we should keep it for the remainder of the term.
Tomas: It would be easy to drop it for Term 3, as opposed to now.
Tom: Wasn’t the old format for T3 that people brought in there own stuff? Obviously this logistically is an issue though. We could have a members choice during in which Exec can still suggest what they want.
Luke: In the last Members Choice event, how many people nominated shows?
Tomas: We had four or five suggest shows, and then we filtered them down to four or three logistically. Attendance is likely to be lower though due to the exam cycle landing in Term 3.
Caius: Okay so in Term 2 at least we’ll stick it with three shows?
[All Agreement]
//Stefan yeets off to do laundry in the middle of the meeting???//
Caius: Saturday is an issue, however. We’re planning take this week off and I have essays due in Week 7.
//One day week into the role and already taking weeks off SMH.//
Tomas: I’m going to throw a movie on later today to test my internet connection. We have the slides, templates and music set up.
[General Discussion about which weeks to hold events on]
Caius: I want to do a quiz on week 10 but the logistics are slightly scary.
Tomas: I can probably make a quiz this time since I’ll have to stream it anyway
Caius: In that case, we’ll do the Stream on Saturday so that no-one misses out on an exec choice.
Caius: That leaves us with three weeks, factoring in the break into that.
Tomas: I wouldn’t mind doing another movie night
Caius: Yeah I think we should do another movie night, we’ve had some demand in the questionnaire for additional movies. The other two weeks; one we could do members choice? AMQ could also be moved to Saturday and that would mean we don’t have to do anything on Thursday.
Tomas: I do think dropping the Thursday event afterwards could be a decent idea. So if we just did Scribble/party games Tuesday and then AMQ Saturday. So we’ll do movie night/break next week, quiz in the final week. movie night week 9, leaving the two middle weeks.
Caius: I could just do AMQ every Thursday except 1 week where I do it on Saturday. If anyone has any other ideas let me know.
Tomas: The problem is Saturday would usually be karaoke or the social but we can’t do that, so we could just do another game night.
Caius: What should we do with the Minecraft server?
Tomas/Luke/Tom in agreement: Minecraft server should be destroyed- its been offline since January 16th and we’ve had no complaints that it can’t be found.
Caius: Okay but we can discuss that later. If we do a game night what are we going to do?
Tomas: It has to be a game of more substance than on Tuesday, but the issue is that it begins to filter people out based on what they do and don’t own and want to play. Therefore, we can do the drawing games on Tuesday events since everyone can join them and there’s no limits, and then games of more substance on other days.
Caius: That sounds good, and we’ll do the pancake day on this Tuesday.
Stefan: How about Brawlhala?
Tomas; No I don’t play Ubisoft games, sorry
Caius: Is there any other games people might want to play? Among Us?
Tomas: Trouble In Terrorist Town
Discord
Caius: Did you know we had an online anonymous form for online feedback/suggestions?
Luke: I knew about it but its not very accessible. Perhaps we should create a specific channel for it to increase its visibility?
Tomas + Tom: We could do that but then we’d need to remove some other channels such as the Streaming Info channel as well as perhaps the project channel and the exec channel.
Caius: I think we still need to have the form there, especially in the covid era. People aren’t going to want to talk about issues they have on a public channel.
Caius: Changes to the rules – in our conversations on moderation people have brought up some issues, but nothing seemed to stand out as needing immediately changing in the rules.
Tomas: I think you could amend the rule that we shouldn’t post anything illegal under UK law, particularly relating to some controversies, but it’s a difficult one to phrase.
Luke: I think we should encourage Members to take more responsibility. There seems to be some people who bring up issues but never alert moderators to it, so I think we should adjust the rules to encourage Members to actually report issues when they see it.
Tomas: I think what Nilyara said sorts the issue – if someone posts something which legitimately makes a reasonable person who consistently turns up to our events uncomfortable, we should delete it.
[General Agreement]
Caius: Do you think people should have permissions to add people to detention roles?
Tomas: I think it makes sense to do it because otherwise it puts all the responsibility on those two people.
Caius: I am willing to do it but it requires a lot of trust, so I’ll do it but I’ll rescind it if its being misused.
Caius: In relation to Admin role, I’m going to add Tomas the admin role because he knows how to use the Discord the most.
[General Agreement]
Tomas: My idea is to remove Minecraft role and channel, also reformatting the ‘misc’ role. Its better to move the academic-help role up to general, with bot commands, giving mudae bot its own role, and removing misc. It would be easier in terms of simplicity as well because its weirdly lumped in with academic help and other things.
Caius: We should reformat the exec channel to suggestions channel as well. We can get rid of on-going projects too because no-one is using the channel anymore.
Stefan: Also we should make a role specifically for artists, encouraging people to make fan arts and posting them on MAL.
Tomas: I don’t think its worth doing due to the small amount of people who would use it anyway, and it would just look messy with additional colours.
Caius: I think the problem with the last two exec teams in relation to that issue is that there isn’t enough people interested in art or cosplay. Its good that you’re looking to encourage creativity but I don’t think we should add an additional role. If there’s anything substantive in terms of events you think could encourage creativity of this kind, however, then feel free to suggest them.
Tomas: Agreed, I think adding tacking on a drawing sort of event to the manga social would be a good idea and topical.
[General Agreement]
Luke: Whilst we’re sort of on the topic, how would we feel about each of the exec writing a review on either their favourite animes or a seasonal and then publishing it?
Tomas: I’m not sure how useful that would be. If you look at our member base, I don’t think our base would be the type to read long reviews that we publish. I think it would be better to have shorter discussions in the anime channel. Having said that, I think it could be a good idea to put it in the activity log.
Caius: I think it could be used as a reference point for other conversations but we should open it up to curated reviews from general members. I see the concerns on your part Tom but I still think it would be worth it; I don’t see there being any downsides per say.
[Agreement to introduce it and see how it works].
2021 Elections Endorsements
Caius: So we’ve had a request for an endorsement for Chih as societies officer. Does anyone have any opinions about this and/or want to object?
Luke: As far as the procedural side of things go, I don’t think there is any requirement for us to actively email candidates, but we would be under a duty to at least talk to and consider any society officer candidate who comes to us or requests a meeting.
[No-one objects to endorsing Chih and all agree to endorse Chih]
Mascot
Caius: How are we planning on utilising the society mascot?
Tomas: We’re still waiting on some things, right?
Caius: Yeah, we’re waiting on emotes but we’ve got the mascot right now.
Tomas: I’ll place it on the website and I’ll also change the bot image to the mascot unless we added it to the welcome channel.
Tom: That’s true, we could get rid of the logo and just use the mascot.
Caius: About the emotes, we don’t have a specific time-frame. Chase is quite busy right now and there’s no rush, but I’ll chase them up on it.
Tom: Mentioned he’d asked E-sports soc to change our logo on their list of other societies’ servers to the mascot sometime
Reminders
Caius: 9 people said they want more pings prior to events, whilst 6 people said they don’t want any more. I think a good middle ground would be to have a ping at say 5 hours to the event, as opposed to two hours. What do you think about it?
Tomas: I don’t particularly mind, I know people care about pings but I don’t have too much of an issue with it.
Tom: Yeah, its always on the same day so people should know. My vote would be just keeping it as it is.
Luke: My vote would be for doing two pings; I think we should do it for term two and then we can reassess after Term 2 depending on any feedback we get.
[General Agreement]
Caius: We’ll add one earlier too that. We’ll talk about when the precise timing will be privately
Main Choice voting!
[Exec members describe their nominated shows and passionate debate ensues. For the sake of brevity, only the results of the voting at each stage will be recorded]
Stage 1
Alderamin in the Sky: (0)
Angel Beats!: (0)
Ao Haru Ride: Caius and Stefan (2)
Asobi Asobase: (0)
Danshi Koukousei no Nichjou: Tom, Caius, Stefan (3)
ef: A Tale of Memories: Tom, Caius (2)
Haibane Renmei: Luke (1)
Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note: Stefan (1)
Mob Psycho 100: Tomas, Tom, Luke, Stefan (4)
Ookami to Koushinryou: Tom, Caius, Stefan (3)
Paranoia Agent: Tomas, Tom, Luke, Stefan (4)
Sakurako-san no Ashimoto ni wa Shitai ga Umatteiru: 0
Sarazanmai: Tomas, Tom (2)
Serial Experiments Lain: Caius, Luke, Stefan (3)
Silver Spoon: Caius, Luke (2)
SSSS.GRIDMAN: All (5)
Uchouten Kazoku: Tomas, Tom, Caius, Luke (4)
Stage 2
Ao Haru Ride: (0)
Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou: (0)
ef: A Tale of Memories: Tom. Caius, Stefan (3)
Mob Psycho 100: Tomas, Tom, Luke, Stefan (4)
Ookami to Koushinryou: (0)
Paranoia Agent: Tomas, Tom, Luke (3)
Sarazanmai: Tomas, Tom (2)
Serial Experiments Lain: Caius, Luke, Stefan (3)
Silver Spoon: Caius, Luke (2)
SSSS.GRIDMAN: Tomas, Caius, Luke, Stefan (4)
Uchouten Kazoku: Tomas, Tom, Caius, Stefan (4)
Stage 3
ef: A Tale of Memories: Caius, Luke (2)
👑 Mob Psycho 100: Tomas, Tom, Luke, Stefan (4)
👑 Paranoia Agent: All (5)
Sarazanmai: Tomas, Tom, Luke (3)
Serial Experiments Lain: (0)
Silver Spoon: (0)
SSSS.GRIDMAN: Tomas, Caius, Stefan (3)
Uchouten Kazoku: Tom, Caius, Stefan (3)
Stage 4
Ef: A Tale of Memories: Caius, Luke, Stefan (3)
Sarazanmai: Tomas, Tom, Stefan (3)
👑 Uchouten Kazoku: Tomas, Tom, Caius, Luke (4)
Final Stage
👑 Ef: A Tale of Memories: Caius, Luke, Stefan (3)
Sarazanmai: Tomas, Tom (2)
Final choice
👑 ef: A Tale of Memories
👑 Mob Psycho 100
👑 Paranoia Agent
👑 Uchouten Kazoku
(Meeting ends/It all returns to nothing…)
• Written by Luke