This is YOUR Temple!

Aceboizor wrote: I would think it in TOTJO's best interest that the temple's actions be agreed upon beyond the current "council majority" (which, by the way, is only four votes, as opposed to the thousands of Jedi present on our forums.) The final decision may rest with the Council, but the guidance for that decision ought to come from the rest of us here in the community.

I agree that democracy is best. But I trust that the council try their best to work for the good of the majority and take our views into consideration. I think that our views filter through to them more than it might seem. I can't see a practical way of involving the whole community in decisions - the forums would just get clogged up with threads about policy and such things. The only vaguely sensible ways I can think of would be to involve all those of the rank Knight and upwards in discussions, to have a larger council so that the majority vote required is bigger, or to have a kind of larger sub-committee of well-regarded (perhaps elected?) members to represent the views of all and help inform the council, in the same sort of vein as school student councils.

But...as I said...I trust the council.

Aceboizor wrote: It is also my understanding that a number of our Council members were given honorary titles of mastership, and not all have completed the basic temple training required for rank. As much as I adore the members of our council, I do not think it fair nor acceptable that the leaders of this community are given exception to the rules this temple thrives by.

This is a difficult one...whilst I agree in principal, I also agree that those who show outstanding service to the Temple ought to be able to have this recognized, just as achieving Masterhood through training apprentices is giving service to the Temple. I don't know if there is any kind of policy in place for how this happens...but I assume that any Knight or Senior Knight, whether they are on the council or not, could be considered for honorary Masterhood. If this is not the case then it really ought to be. What feels slightly wrong about it is that in recent months it has become a LOT harder to reach the level required for Masterhood. I kind of feel in a way that those who have been granted honorary Masterhoods ought to be required to complete the degree programme, at the very least, as the rest of us have to do it just to attain the rank of Senior Knight and it is a HUGE amount of work. (Edit: by this I mean after being awarded the Masterhood, not as a pre-requisite). As far as I'm aware no-one has ever completed it, as until recently there weren't enough lessons available to actually make up 400 credits.

Aceboizor wrote: #2 - Presence. After attending the Jedi Gathering in Logan, OH this past weekend, I was surprised to discover that TOTJO was considered the "turtles" of the Jedi community, meaning that TOTJO Jedi have a tendency to stick exclusively to our temple forums without branching out to the rest of the community (beyond our turtle shells).

I wonder if perhaps this is partly down to the fact that our site seems to be so much more active than most. I have considered branching out and visited other sites as an unregistered guest, but compared to TOTJO there often seems to be very little going on. I'm not saying that means that we should restrict ourselves to our own site, but I don't think that it's as simple as that we're all just being unsociable :laugh:

V-Tog wrote:

Aceboizor wrote: I would think it in TOTJO's best interest that the temple's actions be agreed upon beyond the current "council majority" (which, by the way, is only four votes, as opposed to the thousands of Jedi present on our forums.) The final decision may rest with the Council, but the guidance for that decision ought to come from the rest of us here in the community.

I agree that democracy is best. But I trust that the council try their best to work for the good of the majority and take our views into consideration. I think that our views filter through to them more than it might seem. I can't see a practical way of involving the whole community in decisions - the forums would just get clogged up with threads about policy and such things. The only vaguely sensible ways I can think of would be to involve all those of the rank Knight and upwards in discussions, to have a larger council so that the majority vote required is bigger, or to have a kind of larger sub-committee of well-regarded (perhaps elected?) members to represent the views of all and help inform the council, in the same sort of vein as school student councils.

But...as I said...I trust the council.

We all thank you for the trust.... We do try, and we do not always agree...

I have been odd man out, as well as others...

As well as posting here in the general forums, we also post in the knights forums, and the Masters forums to get opinioins from those folks...

Just lettin' you know...

Aceboizor wrote: It is also my understanding that a number of our Council members were given honorary titles of mastership, and not all have completed the basic temple training required for rank. As much as I adore the members of our council, I do not think it fair nor acceptable that the leaders of this community are given exception to the rules this temple thrives by.

This is a difficult one...whilst I agree in principal, I also agree that those who show outstanding service to the Temple ought to be able to have this recognized, just as achieving Masterhood through training apprentices is giving service to the Temple. I don't know if there is any kind of policy in place for how this happens...but I assume that any Knight or Senior Knight, whether they are on the council or not, could be considered for honorary Masterhood. If this is not the case then it really ought to be. What feels slightly wrong about it is that in recent months it has become a LOT harder to reach the level required for Masterhood. I kind of feel in a way that those who have been granted honorary Masterhoods ought to be required to complete the degree programme, at the very least, as the rest of us have to do it just to attain the rank of Senior Knight and it is a HUGE amount of work. (Edit: by this I mean after being awarded the Masterhood, not as a pre-requisite). As far as I'm aware no-one has ever completed it, as until recently there weren't enough lessons available to actually make up 400 credits.[/quote]

I believe only I was given the title of Master... The only other person that could be considered is still not a Master, but a Senior Knight by the rules and regs in place at the time...

Yes, we have made it harder, for numerous reasons, but the main one, is that not everyone who has the titles deserves them... Some came up too fast, some didnt do as much work as the others... It was different then, dont compare now, to then...

The only title we were given by becoming council is "Cardinal"... Nothing else... Any other rank, secular or clerical, was awarded to an individual, by their peers, based on individual merit...

I promise...

Aceboizor wrote: #2 - Presence. After attending the Jedi Gathering in Logan, OH this past weekend, I was surprised to discover that TOTJO was considered the "turtles" of the Jedi community, meaning that TOTJO Jedi have a tendency to stick exclusively to our temple forums without branching out to the rest of the community (beyond our turtle shells).

I wonder if perhaps this is partly down to the fact that our site seems to be so much more active than most. I have considered branching out and visited other sites as an unregistered guest, but compared to TOTJO there often seems to be very little going on. I'm not saying that means that we should restrict ourselves to our own site, but I don't think that it's as simple as that we're all just being unsociable :laugh:[/quote]

I have the outline of a Plan... and it involves the Ambassador ideas...But, even though we are all 'representatives' of TOTJO, when ever we do anything, I have a more, uh, not agressive, but yea, kinda.. lol...

Jestor wrote: I believe only I was given the title of Master... The only other person that could be considered is still not a Master, but a Senior Knight by the rules and regs in place at the time...

Yes, we have made it harder, for numerous reasons, but the main one, is that not everyone who has the titles deserves them... Some came up too fast, some didnt do as much work as the others... It was different then, dont compare now, to then...

The only title we were given by becoming council is "Cardinal"... Nothing else... Any other rank, secular or clerical, was awarded to an individual, by their peers, based on individual merit...

I promise...

Ah, I thought it was only you, but this line

Aceboizor wrote: a number of our Council members

confused me! If it has only ever happened once then it isn't a big deal. Exceptions ought to be able to be made in exceptional one-off circumstances, as with this:

Aceboizor wrote: not all have completed the basic temple training required for rank

I'll be filling in the history and addressing these issues over multiple posts.

A person becomes a member of The Council by election of The Council. As it stands now the only voting members of TOTJO are cardinals.

We don't have honorary ranks. There are two members of The Council that are not masters. Damion is a senior knight and Ren is a member. Cardinal means member of The Council. It does not signify a rank or clerical status. There have been rare cases equivalent to field promotions due to an extreme necessity and emergency.

Our degrees and ranks are based on our training. There's no doubt there are people highly qualified with non TOTJO training and experience including self training. How can TOTJO recognize that? Ideas about this are welcome. Good ideas about anything are welcome.

V-Tog wrote: The only vaguely sensible ways I can think of would be to involve all those of the rank Knight and upwards in discussions, to have a larger council so that the majority vote required is bigger

I thought I would just say that there are lots and lots of Knights and Masters that have, for all intents and purposes, left the Temple. It would not seem wise to grant them (should they pop back for a single day and leave again) the same voting power as a Council member or another Knight or Master etc

It could work if it was a selected committee as you said after. I still however would not grant members of such a committee a vote and so don't see how having a committee would be necessary. Too many cooks spoil the broth as it were...

What I would wish for however was greater communication about decisions and changes... it can sometimes come across as ideas are disregarded without being discussed, because often they probably have been considered but we do not know that, so it can appear as though we are being ignored

As for Ace's second comment... I presume you spoke with Gabriel? It's just that he said you were awesome and also used the phrase 'TOTJO are like turtles' when I was talking to him...

The main problem we have at TOTJO (if it is even a problem) is that there simply is no 'need' to spread out and engage with the community. What is there in the community that we don't already have abundance of? Members? Organisation? Discussions? Training? Friends?

A lot of 'the community' to my eyes just seem to be the same people posting quite a lot. It doesn't seem like there are nearly as many as there actually are, mainly because I presume them to be TOTJO's size... which none of them are...

That isn't to say that we shouldn't engage, and perhaps we ought to do so more because there are some great people with great ideas out there to engage with (Ohio Gathering just gone is an excellent example)

My turn to wade in....

It's true that some of us were awarded ranks that do not fulfil the current requirements but these new regulations have only been in place for a couple of months and the Initiate's Programme was only established 2 years ago. People such as GM War Beauty were awarded their Master status for hand work, dedication and service to the Temple and it's members over a period of several years, before the IP even existed! I myself was granted the rank of Knight without having completed the IP (I got halfway through it!) because I had 15 years of experience with teachings in spiritual matters and because I completed the necessary training to become a Bishop and Head of the Pagan Rite. My rank of Master (and later GM) was awarded for the work I did in setting up the Degree Scheme and Clerical Training, editing the Way of Jediism, cleaning up and heading up the Pagan Rite, and countless other "jobs" in the service of the Temple. Even though I haven't completed the IP for myself, I have shepherded countless people through the programme and know the material well! Not that I feel the need to defend myself, I'm just pointing out one example of how ranks have been awarded on merit.

Up until we established new and solid guidelines for rank advancement, such ranks may have been awarded due to commitment and service. We used to have a system whereby any Knight taking on an apprentice would be promoted to Senior Knight (Akkarin was the last to be granted the rank under this provision) and the rank of Master was granted if your apprentice became a Senior Knight. I argued that this meant Senior Knight A could train 100 apprentices and if none of them decided to go on and train others, that Senior Knight would stay at that rank but Senior Knight B could train only 1 person and if that person then went on to train others, Senior Knight B would become a Master. So rank advancement was not based on someone's own personal work and dedication but on their apprentice's work and dedication. The system we have now is much fairer all round, we think!

I hope this goes some way to explain the evolution of the Temple with regard to rank advancement.

As for the representation of the Council, there is a LOT of discussion that takes place before any decisions are made. That's why it can sometimes seem to take ages for some things to be acted upon. We all debate issues strenuously and take into account all sides of each situation, who it would affect, any points raised by members, etc. We are always listening to the feedback and activity in the forum and we use this, and our own desire to do what is best for as many of our members as possible, to make our decisions. We like to feel that we are approachable and topics such as this provide a formal voice. However, anyone can always PM one of us with any matters of concern or enquiry and, if necessary, we will raise the issue with the rest of the Council for discussion.

Considering it takes many weeks to even decide something as simple as the readiness for someone to be Knighted, imagine how long things would take if we had to consult everyone all of the time! We try to do what we feel is best with the resources we have available.

Up until recently, we haven't had a lot of activity from senior members (Knights and above) and so it has been left to a few of us to bear the brunt of the decisions while also trying to maintain and evolve the Temple. Now that more people are dedicating themselves to the Clerical and Rank training, we hope to be able to rely on that help more often so things should improve even more.

A final note about the "community" topic. We have tried - many, many times - to engage with other sites and groups in the community and the responses have ranged from the disinterested to the downright rude! One UK-based group even saw fit to steal our name and use it as a domain name to direct traffic to their own site. Despite this behaviour, we are still open to any community contact and people like GM War Beauty (our Head of Public Relations) and Master Daniel L (our ambassador) are continuing efforts in these areas. Plus, every time one of us meets with a non-TOTJO Jedi, we form bonds.

We simply don't have the resources to dedicate a lot of our time to reaching out to the community only to come up against brick walls most of the time. So we do what we can when we are able to and hope that other people see this and become more willing to engage with us. To be honest, our main focus is on the welfare and development of our members and the Temple and this will always be our first priority. I welcome the day when Jedi of all types can freely engage with each other without resorting to childish or ignorant tactics and until that day comes, we will continue to dedicate ourselves primarily to what is best for those we have sworn Oaths to defend.

As a final note, returning to the topic of the IP, this was being discussed in Council but more pressing matters such as Child Safety procedures came up and demanded our attention. But we are still taking on board all that has been said in an attempt to devise a more expansive and relevant IP. Thank you all for your input

A: Democracy. I tried to implement just that at TJW. My only duties there were of the administrative type. Heck, nobody even knew who the infamous "webmaster" really was (It seemed to greatly trouble some people actually). Unfortunately I constantly found myself having to put an end to petty squabbles, breaches of ToS and the like, and the whole "we'll know who the better Jedi are" thing was a failure. I must admit that nasty bitter taste in my mouth lasted quite a while. I tried to base the community around traditional Jedi values and it just didn't work. It couldn't have failed harder than it did. Ever since that I am not as convinced as I once was that democracy is a "less bad" form of government.

B: Ranks of council members. None of the council members, except perhaps Damion (and then again I'm not sure) obtained their rank the non-special-circumstances way. Oh and me too. Though for me it's been about making a forum post and filling a form . They either founded the order, or belong to a pre-IP age or pre-this-is-the-law-rens-been-bitching-about age, when things were "good enough". Note how in other communities, Masters tend to be self-appointed and how some of them have been very keen to have their rank recognized here. Need I say the alert level in my head sounds just like defcon 1.
Ranks of non-council members have also been obtained according to a significantly easier, more tolerant and flexible system. Things like Doctorate of divinity and Grandmaster can only be obtained the "exceptional circumstances" way.

C: Structure of totjo and its council: I've been around the jedi community a while, and never saw any organization run as well as totjo in its current form. This coming from a guy who, most of his jedi life, thought people who took rank such as master or even knight were pompous fools, especially at totjo which has bishops, gransmasters, degrees and the like. Also there is a fun side to pompous

The rest of the community. I think you'll eventually find it's a double-edged sword. It has a history of tearing itself apart, and "the community" is essentially about 10~15 people hanging around different websites. Nice things out there, also lots of people with sweet tongues, ulterior motives and on the realist camp, sometimes a will to bash Jediism even murdoch newspapers don't have.

(This is actually an entirely different suggestion than what is currently being discussed in this thread. However, the original intent of this thread was to allow any suggestions to be made. So here goes...)


I think it would be a great idea to add a Community Service section to the forums. As Jedi, we all have a responsibility to maintain the community and serve others, even in the most basic ways. Even though I'm not sure how others would view this idea, I personally don't think anyone would disagree with the appropriateness and naturally good intent behind a community service forum section in our Jedi website.


Furthermore, in this section, we could post any community service opportunities located either locally or across the internet. For example, we could post when there would be a local trash clean up going on, or if there is an important website offering to donate to "save the pandas" (or something like that) based on the number of clicks we could all provide.


We could post with a standard format - to make sure the information for all service opportunities will be crystal-clear.

For example: Title: (Title of the Project)- (Location, like "Honolulu, HI")
Body: Title (re pasted)
Date of event
Description of the event/service responsibilities
Contact


Thoughts?

Two issues:

- It's not in our nature to boast about what we do. Some people are very out there, others simply are generous to the red cross. I personally don't want to see "I mowed my elderly neighbors lawn again today, I'm so great" posts.
- It's actually semi against totjo rules to "advertise" for charity events and the like. The issue arose before and I believe it was decided the post/thread should be deleted as it's just too difficult to review what is OK and what isn't all the time.

ren wrote: The rest of the community. I think you'll eventually find it's a double-edged sword. It has a history of tearing itself apart, and "the community" is essentially about 10~15 people hanging around different websites. Nice things out there, also lots of people with sweet tongues, ulterior motives and on the realist camp, sometimes a will to bash Jediism even murdoch newspapers don't have.

Hehe. You have a point. The Community members could LITERALLY be counted on all four limbs, I think.

The reason why we're called the Community is because we ARE members of all the different sites. We don't feel like we're superior (well, Hannigan might... lol), and we are actually a lot more active than most members of ANY one site. IJRS has a huge member-base (for a structured Jedi group), but we like to work specifically with each student very closely, so the academy doesn't have very many members. Also, the Academy program at IJRS takes 2 years to make it through all the 101 courses. haha. And, that's if you do a course over a two month period (usually 10 weeks are required per course, and it is "suggested" that only one be taken at a time). I started my training there in 2009 and have barely made it through to the Novice level. So, yeah, it drives a lot of people away.

Plus, the IJRS does not treat Jedi like a religion at all. We teach what we call "Life skills". So, we equate "Jedi" training to "Life" training and many of the teachings are done through self-discovery essay work, much like the Ashla Knights program. I believe I have written 200,000 words (about the length of two full length novels) on my blogs and most of it has come from the IJRS training.

So, the things that work can be in that format, and it drives many people who "start" there away. We also harbor many of the Old Guard (members who were from JEDI.org and the moodle academy failure) who tend to be... crabby towards people who are new. hahaha. But, we like are members to grow up really fast.

As for the other sites... what are they really doing? haha. I mean, Jedi School is practically just a Master/Student site with focus on esoterics (scares people away). Nice manual though.

uhhh... a lot are simply inactive. Just Jedi isn't really a training academy, so you cannot expect a large member-base. Barando.org is not a "Jedi" site anymore (used to be Jediism.org and went through various incarnations). Jedi Church, again, is not a training site. OH, and Force Academy is relatively active (and old) (and it takes many, many years to work through the aspects, which is a turn-off).

And! Jedi Foundation, but they are so radical that they refuse to "blend" with the rest of the community.

Other than that... anything else isn't worth mentioning in terms of advancing the Path. So, the draw for this site is people who are seeking a true working Order and have religion as the option for structured learning. It's unique and it's what people want. That's why it's the largest working site.

Do you need to branch out? Nah. Not important. Because, other websites just won't budge on the religious verbage, that's all really.

I mean, there has ALWAYS been a split right down the middle of the "WHOLE ONLINE COMMUNITY" (meaning all the online Jedi). It's the Religious versus Non-Religious. And, you're the only religious site that is active. So, there's only one place to turn to. Now you may say: "well, the members don't have to be religious". But, you won't get that past the people who call out your religious texts and quotations and borrowings from the front page. Eh. Just a difference of the vast needs of the community.

In this way, don't worry about this whole "branching out" thing. Members are free to join anywhere. Just don't expect to EVER be able to break down the Religious versus Non-religious wall.