ANST - Newcomers

[Jennifer Smith]

Isobel wrote:
> Is our problem that there is too MUCH information on the main Hospitaler's Web
> page?

Speaking as a relative newcomer (been in the SCA for just a 
smidge over a year now), I did read the entire 
newcomers/hospitaler's web area when I first started.  I didn't find it 
hard to find, but then I pretty much read EVERYTHING on the 
website, so...

Too much information?  Well... yes and no.  See below.

> *  Michael De La Mare's Guiding Hand is filled with lots of good information,
> both about the SCA in general and about Ansteorra.  I updated it a year or so
> ago, but there still are slight problems (doesn't have several of the newer
> non-armigerous awards on it).  The laws are probably also out of date.

This is pretty good in general, but you're right about it needing to 
be updated.  My biggest "too much info" area has to do with the 
kingdom laws and details about awards!  

Your standard newcomer probably needs/wants to know that there 
are awards, that convey various ranks (thus explaining the 
hierarchy), but the DETAILS of the awards probably can go in a 
separate document (referenced by the first), instead of being in the 
main newcomer document.  

Your standard newcomer may be interested to know that there are 
Kingdom (and Society) laws, but good grief, who wants to read that 
stuff for fun?  When you move to a new town, you aren't met by the 
welcoming committee and handed a stack of city laws, are you? 
Talk about dry reading. :)

Yes, the kingdom laws should be on the website.  I question 
whether they should be listed in the hospitaler's area instead of, 
say, the seneschal's area.  (A link to them could always be made, 
of course, wherever.)

> *  I've added "Forward into the Past", though it does not yet have images
> (anybody want to do some scanning???).  It's good enough to stand without them,
> and does have all of the very basic SCA information in it.  Who, what, where,
> why, when, how, etc.
>
> *Most of the articles that are normally passed out by local hospitalers are
> online in digital format.  They are primarily from TI.  Again, no alteration
> allowed.

Again, most of these are fairly good.  The problem is that no single 
one covers *everything* a newcomer needs to know *well*, and you 
have to read all of them to get a good well-rounded picture of just 
what exactly is going on.  Quite frankly, that's a lot of reading, and 
most of it just repeats what another one said.  

I'm not sure of the  perfect solution here, unfortunately (of course).  
I guess I would have liked to have seen (enough verbs there?) ONE 
document that explained in very basic terms what the SCA is, who 
plays in the SCA ('all kinds of people'), that there are kingdoms to 
regionalize things, who/what Ansteorra is, and then go into a bit 
about how local groups are organized, what an event is like etc.
And then have a fair number of links, well organized.  For example, 
"to read more about the SCA from different viewpoints:", "to learn 
more about organizational details: (awards, nobility, maybe laws)".

I've been meaning to redo (or actually, do) a section of our shire's 
website to have a very basic "who the heck are we and what are we 
doing" section.  

I seem to dimly recall that the main www.sca.org site was largely 
useless, but it's been over a year since I looked at it.

> Finally, one thing that we are doing in Bjornsborg is passing out a small 3-fold
> flyer with basic SCA info, local contact info, links to the web sites, etc, to
> those who show up at the park where we hold our fighter practices.  We have a
> great local deputy hospitaler who sets up a small table with the words, "Free
> Information" on a small sign, for those who are more shy.  Any group who wants a

This is a really good idea, I believe, but I'm thinking of actually 
shrinking it down to business-card sized  (maybe a two fold card if I 
need the extra space, but we'll see), on the theory that it's easier 
to hold onto a business card than even a 3-fold flyer, particularly by 
people out jogging at a park.  

At our last rapier practice, I talked to several people wandered up 
to watch, and the questions I got asked were 1) who are they, 2) 
what are they doing, and 3) do they go to faires.  These are the 
questions I intend to answer on a small card or flyer. :)

> copy of this flyer (artwork by Ragnar), can download it from the hospitaler
> site, in either pdf format (with a space to write in local phone numbers, etc)
> or as a MS Word document, for editing and personalization.  See if you can find
> it on the hospitaler site.  Let me know if it's too deeply buried.

Which reminds me, there's actually TWO sets of information in the 
hospitaler area which may need to be more obviously segregated.  
There's information FOR newcomers FROM hospitalers, and then 
there's information for other hospitalers.  Working for two different 
audiences is never easy.

I'm not sure how much this helped, if at all!  If I actually DO get 
around to doing a newcomers/intro section on our shire's site, then 
hopefully I'll have more concrete feedback.

-Emma de Fetherstan
Shire of Mooneschadowe


--
Jennifer Smith
jds-emma at operamail.com
============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.