Author: SilverWolv

As announced earlier in the post about the upcoming changes to the WolvHaven political system, Staff will be reorganized into functional departments/ministries that oversee various areas within the server.

What are the new departments?

The new departments are as follows:

Launching the new wolvhaven.net/gov

To facilitate this change, the WolvHaven.net/gov microsite has been updated to become a new one-stop area for players to find all services.

You may also find out what each ministry/department mentioned earlier does, and the administrative tasks they are responsible for on the microsite. Contact information and management of the departments may also be found on this new page.

Introducing the new whistleblowing form

Following feedback that some players may feel reserved in reporting incidents of rule infractions or complaints out of fear of putting themselves at risk, the whistleblowing form is being launched to combat this problem.

Players may report incidents to members of staff for issues such as staff misconduct or if they feel that going directly towards staff and revealing their identity puts themselves at risk.

You may now report an incident at WolvHaven.net/whistleblow

The form can also be found from wolvhaven.net/gov and the website homepage.

Since the beginning of the current political system in WolvHaven in 2017, several issues have arisen. Following discussions with members of staff, and after conducting a review, several key changes will be coming to the server’s political system.

Why the need for change?

Several issues were identified over the past two elections, namely:

• Confusion over authority
• Community unity strained
• Lack of authority/power
• Concerns over conflict of interest

Changes were made to the election system in an attempt to address the issues at hand in the May 2020 General Election. However, it has become evident that more radical change will be needed to tackle all the problems at hand.

Confusion over authority

Under the current system, as it stands, elected members of parliament are unable to manage the execution of the changes they propose. There is also a lot of confusion, and the chain of authority is entangled.

Regular citizens are also unsure who to approach with regards to certain issues, making it confusing for everyone.

Community unity strained

While it is heartening to see individuals who care about the server, opinions and strong feelings on what they perceive as best for the server has strained the unity of the community.

Lack of authority/power

Most of the elected MPs currently do not have any authority to effect the change they propose

Concerns over conflict of interest

Doubts have arisen regaridng Staff’s ability to moderate and participate in debate impartially. This erodes the confidence in members of staff.

The key changes

• Staff will no longer be allowed to run for or stand in elections for positions in the House of Representatives
• Clearer seperation of powers between the executive and legislature
• Staff will make up the executive
• The legislature will continue to be made of two houses
  • House of Representatives will be made entirely of non-staffers, and represent the community’s interests
  • The Senate will be made entirely of staff, and members selected by the President for their expertise to represent server management’s interests

How the system will look overall

The following flowchart depicts how the new system will work

Hello! SilverWolv here. Since the inception of the WolvHaven server in 2011, I have mainly been in charge of overseeing the overall running and managing of the server.

However, all things will come to an end, and I will be moving off to doing my studies in University soon and will no longer be as active as I was last time. As such, I have entrusted several individuals with the responsibility to keep WolvHaven operational well into the future.

Who are the new head-honchos?

Since 1 August 2020, two of the staff’s existing admins have been entrusted and given the power to make overall decisions concerning the server. A new rank has been created for these two staff members – namely the PSO(OPS) and PSO(PC).

PSO stands for Principal Staff Officer, by the way.

PSO(PC) – essentially the community manager

Jotch is now officially the server’s PSO for Policy and Community. His role is essentially the community manager and will be in charge of overseeing, identifying, and addressing any issues or disputes within the community in general.

PSO(OPS) – essentially the backend operations manager

Mopsistudios, on the other hand, is now the server’s PSO for Operations. His role is to oversee and look into the server’s administrative processes; such as application processing and regulatory enforcement.

DevCom – essentially the server’s technical manager

Nixholas has been appointed as the server’s new development commissioner. He will be in charge in overseeing the server’s technical aspects such as uptime and upkeep of plugins together with his appointed team of server devs.

What happens next?

Both Jotch and Mopsistudios were identified to take over the role as both of them have great strengths in different fields. Hence, it was decided to split up the role between the two of them.

Both Jotch and Mopsistudios will now hold the ability to make final decisions for the server, and also change the way new staff members are appointed, and decide the appointment of new staff members.

As final testing on 1.13 has shown to be going well, with minor or no major expected disruption to the server experience, we are excited to announce that we are excited that we will be upgrading to 1.13.2 soon

As of now, the tentative date for this upgrade is expected to be on 5 May 2020, from 3AM UTC

Judging from our test server upgrade, this downtime is expected to last between 4 to 6 hours, with the server hopefully ready by 9AM UTC.

A final call to report bugs from the test server

We do not want to require a backup restore should there be any extreme bugs. Should a backup restore be required, all progress made on the server after the upgrade will be lost.

Feasibility status for upgrade

Sustainable
This means that the server can operate as it is, taking into consideration several minor bugs and/or issues that only affect minute aspects of gameplay. 

The following issues can be expected after the upgrade

WolvHaveners voted in favor for the implementation of a new interim rank between the Visitor and Citizen ranks – called “Permanent Resident” (PR) in the January 2020 General Election/Referendum Exercise.

On 16 January 2020, the PR rank was introduced by executive order, mandating that new Visitors who have completed the Immigration Test be promoted to PR instead of Citizen, without any promotions from PR to Citizen until further notice.

Applications Open from 13 March 2020.

The new Citizenship application will open from 13 March 2020. Links to the application forms can now be found in the Ranks/Application Forms pages under the information section of the WolvHaven website.

Applications will be processed on a weekly basis, with results released every Saturday/Sunday.