Greetings to the populace of the East,
Now that the Reign has been ongoing for a while, We wanted to take the time to answer a few questions that have come Our way. The first is about the pollings.
We feel very strongly that We should not overburden the East Kingdom scribes with an unreasonable amount of work as the Kingdom is still recovering from the pandemic. This led to a self-imposed number of scroll-bearing awards. We keep a close eye on this number, and doing so has certainly led to some hard choices. This is also why We have a policy to not accept scroll-bearing awards recommendations on the day of an event. If people have done things that are worthy of recognition from the Crown, write them in by submitting a recommendation here. We are more than happy to take the day of recommendations for token awards. For data, please see the previous Signet reports here.
As part of our selection criteria for pollings, the populace should know that We prefer to give only one scroll-bearing award to an individual per reign, except in extraordinary circumstances.
In addition, Brennan and Caoilfhionn’s pollings are still valid for Us to look through, and We did. If people were polled during their reign, We’re not polling them again for related awards. We are trying hard to have people recognized who might not have been in a while, for various reasons.
Are We always successful at this? Does this process result in an award for everyone brought to Our attention? No. The East is large, diverse, and has many people worthy of recognition, and We are trying Our best to balance the needs of multiple populations across the Kingdom.
While there are other reasons why someone might not make it on a poll, We want to assure the populace that We discuss each and every recommendation that comes in – often doing follow ups with people as needed before coming to any conclusions – and that the award submission system works well.
Next, We’d like to touch on the Court summons process. This is something that We saw from other kingdoms and reached out to people there to see how well it was received. In general, the feedback We took from that process was that it was well received and greatly reduced the occurrence of friends / housemates / members of local groups missing awards that were scheduled. To be clear, the awards scheduler and her deputy are doing an excellent job reaching out to the contacts for award recipients. The Court summons is for the larger crowd.
Doing this also lets Us check in with people’s preferred names, pronouns, and titles for the summons. It also lets Us know which people would like a smaller gathering for recognition than a large court, which We are very happy to do. We see the Court summons as a step towards greater diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in the Kingdom.
We’d like to thank everyone who sent Us feedback about the Court summons process, and you are always welcome to email your thoughts to us. We don’t do business over Facebook for many reasons, but work to respond to all emails in a timely manner.
Probably the most common feedback We received beyond “Thank you for doing this” was “How come there isn’t an opt out clause for people who like to keep the surprise?” Our reasoning is that there would be a fair amount of commentary on anything new, and We wanted to give the experiment a good six months of data running as is. We did make a small change on how the summons are posted to social media based on the feedback. Our intention is to compile all of the information We received and give it to Their Royal Highnesses, for them to decide if they want to continue, modify, or end the experiment. We felt that it was important for Us to collect a fair amount of data for that discussion.
The East Kingdom has a lot of wonderful people deserving recognition, and We feel grateful and humbled by the trust the populace puts into Us, to celebrate those accomplishments.
In Service,
Matthias and Feilinn,
Rex and Regina