What would help the Temple Be A Better Place? Suggestions please...

As a moderator, I constantly remind myself that we discuss issues here, not people. I agree that personal beefs should stay within the realm of PMs between individuals. I also believe that privacy should be respected until there is need for public action.

As for accountability, I would suggest that we as members and Knights announce publicly that we have issued a complaint to Council and why, without pointing to specific Councillors. We're all pretty smart here, and as a group we should be able to tell the difference between a personal grudge and an actual concern. Council, in turn, should publicly acknowledge that a complaint was made and tell us if and how it is being addressed, even if it is being ignored.

For those that don't know, anyone can ask a Councillor, Security Officer, the Council Secretary, or Clergy member to make a formal complaint about anyone else. These are taken seriously, recorded, and passed to the appropriate people to address. Perhaps as officers, we just need to do a better job of letting the wider Temple know that complaints are investigated and share when they are resolved and how. We do, however, have to balance this with privacy concerns and simple respect for the feelings of others. We are supposed to be empathetic, after all.

One of the problems, Brenna, is that so much goes on out of our sight that we don't really have a way of giving the examples you seek. For example, I was reading a journal entry recently where someone was denied knighthood without giving them pointers on how to fix whatever problems existed. The idea that "we'll know it when we see it" is bunk when it comes to knighthood, in my opinion, and there should at the very least be a rubric of examples to better prepare the wildly disparate teaching methods for their students.

We're in a position where we know things are happening, but we aren't sure exactly what because that transparency we've asked for doesn't exist. Hence the asking.

That's actually really helpful thank you, because that's a concrete example.

That's something that we can actually look at and discuss and figure out better ways to give more specific feedback and suggestions if a knighthood is not yet an option.


I would however say that someone's knighthood trial and process is out of public view because it's a personal and private matter. And I doubt anyone would want to see their apprenticeship etc discussed somewhere for public consumption.

My point was that I accidentally happened across that example. It was a happenstance click on the forum to a thread i've never visited before that let me know I wasn't alone in thinking that was nonsense. Without the luck of that random click, I'd have thought I was the only person that thought that way because people here don't complain effectively often enough, and this whole "progressive mystery" might work for secret societies, but it's a little crap for preparing us for what we're facing.

The last time we asked for transparency, we were all but mocked about how boring the posts would be, but I maintain that there are things going on behind the scenes that I'd argue we should know more about and don't, and don't even know to ask about them because we don't know they're happening.

If a problem is seen to exist, just ask I guess.

Council tries not to go on about the requirements for Apprenticeship too much, so that the Apprentice don't focus on the prize more then the journey. It's meant for the Teaching Masters mostly so they can exert some structure into their efforts by having that minimum set of requirements. I think all that used to be in the FAQ.

The base requirements exist besides the prerequisites are I think currently a certain number of points within an Apprenticeship (100) and maximum scores per lesson (ideally 5, but can be higher depending on size/difficulty if broken up), and the minimum timeframe (6 months). So an Apprenticeship should be at least 6 months and have about 15-25 marked lessons. But that is just the minimum, and ideally an Apprenticeship would be much more then the academic application and ticking boxes of minimum requirements. Having said that, they are 'required' and not meeting any of them is likely to be a 'keep going' type of response. But you are right, if all mandatory requirements are met then there is a discretionary element given to the Council in casting their vote to grant or deny Knighthood. I guess that bit is between individual Councillors, the Apprentice and the Teaching Master. It's hard enough getting a full picture when there are only two sides to a story, but triadic relationship add another dimension sometimes!! As mentioned on that example it might come down to things which are personal with any one of those three category of participant.

I understood your point, but if the person had come to us and asked for more specific feedback we'd have given it. And not within the public eye either.


You might recall that the council (before my time) DID take the call for transparency seriously and began doing regular reports, which no one read so they stopped.

We keep having these discussions over and over and get no where closer to resolving it. No one can tell us exactly what it is they want made publicly accessible.