Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin's Totally Unofficial Musings on the Business Side of the SCA
I was tardy in writing to the Board in support of the proposed Omnibus Peerage, but did manage to get my letter in just under the wire.
The process of implementing this change has taken much longer than it should; the proposal has repeatedly been workshopped, brought forward for consideration and then sent back for refinement, over and over again for years.
I hope that this time it’s finally going to get across the finish line.
Continue reading “In Support of the Omnibus Peerage”TL;DR: There are no clear Society-wide policies regarding mailing lists; I’ve made a recommendation that they should be covered by the Society Social Media Policies.
Electronic mail has been around for my entire lifetime (give or take a couple of weeks) and is so pervasive that it fades into the background, ceding attention to the showy titans of social media that have emerged over the last two decades. But if the historical sequence were reversed, and email was introduced today, we’d likely see it as a natural evolution of that ecosystem — another social media platform.
Or at least that’s how it seems to me, which is why in discussions of SCA policy I’ve always assumed that the Society guidelines for social media — about offensive content, or copyright, or a dozen other topics — also applied to email.
Continue reading “Email Is A Social Media Platform”TL;DR: SCA branches can create their own Facebook events using their official Facebook page identity without going through the KSMO; however, some kingdoms might impose additional requirements for kingdom-level events.
Earlier this year I posted about an annoying stricture of paragraph IV.C.3.d. of the SCA Social Media Handbook which specified that “On Facebook, Events are to be created through Official Kingdom Pages.”
The one problematic word there is “kingdom” — because it means that local branches have to coordinate all of their Facebook events with the Kingdom’s social media officer, and in the East that means that over fifty branches have to funnel their hundreds and hundreds of Facebook events through a single individual.
Continue reading “Update: Branches Can Create Their Own Facebook Events”The minutes from the first two quarterly meetings of the SCA Board of Directors for 2023 have now been posted to their website in the usual location, along with the minutes from the first four conference calls of the year:
https://sca.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/sca/neonPage.jsp?pageId=10
Correspondence follows, for those curious.
Continue reading “Recent Board Minutes Posted”The SCA will soon stop asking local event organizers to pay for venue insurance certificates by sending their personal credit card number to the corporate office via email, as it had been doing for the last two decades.
Instead, event organizers will be asked to process those credit card payments on the new membership portal operated by NeonOne, as hinted when the new higher costs for certificates were announced in April.
This change will be well received by Internet security enthusiasts among the membership, who have complained for many years about the practice of sending credit card numbers by email.
Continue reading “SCA To End Emailing of Credit Card Numbers”Someone asked an interesting question over on the Known World Discord server this evening, and after I wrote up my answer I thought I should also post it here (lightly edited) in case it was of use to anyone else:
Continue reading “Are Releases Needed to Re-share Social Media?”Is sharing posts from individuals […] acceptable by SCA social media rules for official accounts, or is a written release required?
The SCA does not have an established procedure for reporting or addressing technology security vulnerabilities.
In correspondence with the Society IT Manager, they suggested sending vulnerability notifications by email, either to them, or to the relevant kingdom officers, or both.
Continue reading “Procedures for Reporting IT Vulnerabilities”Earlier this year I learned that the SCA has long relied on an unwritten interpretation of copyright law that does not seem to be well supported.
I’ve encouraged Society leadership to reconsider this approach, motivated in part by the fact that this would have implications for my work on the Book of Traceable Heraldic Art, but it’s been difficult to make much headway and now a month has passed since my last email without any reply.
While I am not a lawyer, I am profoundly skeptical that the Society’s interpretation holds any water, and so I have decided to move forwards without giving it any credence, as laid out in the letter below.
[Update:] I’m very happy to report that the Society Seneschal has responded, stating that they are not claiming copyright to the armorial depictions produced by heraldic and scribal officers.
It remains unclear to me on what grounds they claim copyright for some creative works created by volunteers but renounce it for others — however, as a first step in the right direction, I am pleased by this declaration.
Continue reading “Update: SCA Disclaims Copyright to Heraldic Officers’ Work”The Social Media Handbook issued in October 2021 introduced a new requirement:
IV.C.3.d. On Facebook, Events are to be created through Official Kingdom Pages rather than Groups.
SCA Social Media Handbook, page 9
This creates a significant challenge, because local branches can create hundreds of Facebook events every year, and requiring all of those requests to pass through this bottleneck would create a serious burden on the Kingdom Social Media Officer who operates the Official Kingdom Facebook Page, and would likely lead to delays and coordination challenges.
Continue reading “Creating Facebook Events”I have sent the following letter regarding the sanction of Brian De Moray to the Society Seneschal, the Board Comments address, and the Ombudsman for IT, with copies to the Society IT Manager, Society Webminister, East Kingdom Webminister, and Brian De Moray himself. As always, I included my modern name and member number. Receipt was acknowledged less than two minutes later; I suspect they’re having a busy weekend over there. I will update if further action is taken.
To the Society’s Seneschal and Board of Directors, greetings from the East.
I write to you today to ask you to reconsider the January 2020 sanction of Brian De Moray, as the information available in the public record suggests that this decision may have been made in error.
Continue reading “Letter: Reconsideration of Sanction of Brian De Moray”