[Steppes] Issues - sorry long:)

[lists at bmhanson.net]

In this particular instance I can say with authority that the comp list is not the responsibility of the person running gate or the autocrat/steward.  The comp list is in the Baronial Financial policy.  I am not certain that the financial policy has been placed on the website (which if it isn't, will be rectified shortly), but I sort of halfway remember it being published in a Steppes Letter (I could be misremembering though).  

If at any time a person entering gate has any problems that cannot be solved quickly by the person working gate, that person should immediately contact the person in charge of gate, then the autocrat/event steward, then the seneschal, in that order if the next person in the chain is unable to help in each step.  The people who volunteer to run gate, or are stewarding the event, or are seneschal have taken that responsibility on when they volunteered for the job.  It should never be the person working gate's responsibility to handle an irate customer when they have other people who are getting equally irate by having to wait.  This is one of the many reasons why gate has a radio, particularly at large camping events.  

As far as people coming into the event expecting to be treated in a manner befitting their station, that is, generally speaking, highly problematic.  For one thing, if you are not in garb, you may not be recognizable to someone who has seen who knows how many people in the last hour.  Secondly, not many people are actually paying "real" attention to the person signing in - they are seeing a person who is needing a service and are trying to provide that service with courtesy and efficiency - that does not always translate well in to staring at someone while you try to figure out exactly who they are and why they seem so dog-gone familiar.  

In many ways the modern world has intruded on what we would do.  With privacy laws and frivolous lawsuits commonplace nowadays, gate personnel may find themselves hard-pressed to know what to do.  A few years ago when I was working gate, the person in charge stated that due to privacy laws, we would not tell any incoming persons that someone was or was not on site yet.  I believe that this was the case because the person running gate was aware of a situation in which someone was seeking person A for reasons outside of "I'm camping with them and need to know where they are."  Notes on the bulletin board letting people know you were there was highly encouraged.  Not to mention the fact that the later into the event it gets, the more difficult it becomes to quickly look to see if someone else has already signed in.  I realize that needing to know if so-and-so is here yet is important to the one person asking, but the 20 other people waiting probably couldn't care less.  They do not want to have to wait while the gate person searches through several sheets of paper to find out.


The single biggest problem we are currently facing, in my (not as seneschal) opinion, is that we are seriously lacking in volunteers.  Case in point, this past Warlord.  As opposed to previous Warlords, as well as other events, where it has not necessarily been a problem with not having anyone sign up to work gate (or anything else for that matter), there has never been a lack of people just "showing up."  This past Warlord (and probably other events as well), there was a lack of volunteers on any number of levels.  I do not know if this has become a new trend, or if it was, hopefully, a one-time anomaly.  I am sincerely hoping that it was a one-time anomaly.  If the only volunteers we can get are newcomers (that may or may not know what they are getting themselves into) then, perhaps it is time to take a step back and re-evaluate ourselves as members of this society. 

My personal opinions, not necessarily those of the seneschal.  

Margarite