Creating a society/order?

[Sir Edward]

Sir Edward has put himself on blast.  lol

And I'm on every spammer's list known to man. So far this month my spam filter has trapped 272 emails a day on average. And that's not including what gets outright blocked at the gateway, but only what gets delivered to my spam folder.

Anyway, I'm used to my employers finding all this stuff. I get a lot of "cool website" comments when I get hired.

[Sir William]

That's awesome man....I mean about the cool website comments, not the spamfest your inbox is seeing daily.  Geez...

[Sir Brian]

That's awesome man....I mean about the cool website comments, not the spamfest your inbox is seeing daily.  Geez...

I'm sure it isn't so bad for our good Sir Edward...although I have it on good authority that his "delete" key is in dire need of a vacation! 

[Sir Matthew]

I'm ok with using our real names. My personae name is my first name, traditionally I have not used my last name, as it was not really necessary. As for privacy, well I used to be concerned with that, but I'm in the phone book and I'm pretty sure my name, phone no., etc. can be found elsewhere online so I'm not really concerned about that anymore. My last name is German/Swiss so for an English Knight it may be a little strange.

[Sir James A]

Since we brought up personas, I think it's worth asking another question about how we want to handle the membership roster.

I use a specific screenname for most forums, but MyArmoury and ARMA make you use your full (first and last) real name, so I did the same here and on all arms & armor forums I'm on for consistency (and so I can remember my login). I don't mind my full name being used, but of course, James Anderson is probably only slightly less common than John Smith. As mentioned, Facebook uses full names, but I think a key difference is that those profiles (and all info on them) can be set to private/friends only.

I'd prefer my professional "persona" to be the first thing they saw, rather than a pic of me armoured up and brandishing a sword

I had to interview someone at work for a position. Young guy. I walked into the room, shook his hand and said "Hello, I'm James". And his reply? "Hey, you're the ninja guy!". I stuttered something incoherent and sat in shock the rest of the interview. We spent some time after that interview, figuring out how the guy found out to say that. Turned out that if you google my employer's name, then my myspace page I had at the time came up, as I had them listed as an employer, and there were only about 25 employees at the time. And I had my "ninja" picture as my profile image at the time.

Thankfully, we didn't find out until after he had left from the interview, and wasn't hired ... his myspace page. We googled his name to see what came up after my "adventure". A MySpace Band page that he is a member of. No big deal. Oh, except that there was a picture of all the members completely naked, with strategically placed instruments covering questionable bits of flesh. Might have been more, but one was enough, and that window couldn't be closed fast enough.

At that point, the ninja thing didn't seem too weird any more....

[Sir William]

Nothing wrong with the ninja pic, man.  At least he took the time to take a look at the corporate website!

[Sir Edward]

I sometimes think employers take the myspace pages and the like too seriously. Many people put up pictures from Halloween parties and the like that are meant to be funny simply because of how out-of-character they are. It's not generally a good indicator of how good of an employee the person will be. The "odd" ones aren't always the problem. As they say, the problem with psychopaths is that they look just like everyone else.

[Sir William]

Yea, the nude bandmembers with instruments isn't even original; Lita Ford did it - don't know if it was an album cover but I remember he looking especially hot with a guitar pointed south, and nothing else.  Heh.

[Sir Patrick]

I had to interview someone at work for a position. Young guy. I walked into the room, shook his hand and said "Hello, I'm James". And his reply? "Hey, you're the ninja guy!". I stuttered something incoherent and sat in shock the rest of the interview.

A perfect example of what I'm talking about.  In the internet age, the line between your business and private lives is blurred.  I'm not on Facebook or anything like that because it frankly creeps me out when people I barely know/don't know at all come into the office and comment about how much fun I seemed to be having at such and such event (I'm not on Facebook, but that doesn't stop my friends who are from tagging me in the photos on their accounts).   By necessity, I need to keep a certain distance between myself and some of the people I work with/interact with, and the internet is making that increasingly difficult.  I wish to make it very clear that in no way do I regard the Order as some "dirty little secret" or anything like that.  I just can't be the "ninja guy" when I'm working

[SirNathanQ]

Being a teenage armour geek

Disadvantages= tiny budget, no job, cannot drive self to museums containing armour, having to approve all medieval-flavored purchases with parents, not being able to mount swords, polearms, or armour on the wall (at the expense of the ghost of Christmas photos past  ) and high school sports competing with campaign (renn faire) season! 

Advantages= not caring about my hobby being very public. Go ahead. Search Nathan Quarantillo on google images. See what you find. About 4 pages of medieval-flavored goodness, thats what!

Although I don't really see anything wrong with this hobby as far as making us look "irresponsible" really, if I were an employer, I'd be stoked that my employees uphold chivalry (less likely to be dishonest, probably nicer to people, ect) 

[Sir Patrick]

I'm going to go with middle and last name.  Allows me a bit of privacy without being a persona (this IS real life stuff we're talking after all)

BTW, I feel like I've been holding this topic up for days.  My apologies to all if that has indeed been the case.

[Sir Edward]

Nah, I think the holiday slowed down the board, not you.

I think as a general rule, folks can email me to have updates made on their roster info. "bones at toton.org" will work.

[Sir James A]

Nah, I think the holiday slowed down the board, not you.

I think as a general rule, folks can email me to have updates made on their roster info. "bones at toton.org" will work.

I finished the Sir Edward accessible roster updating portion, but I am going to work on a way for everyone to update their own data, down the road a bit.

[SirNathanQ]

Hey, I was just wondering about the status of "squire". As I will be the only one whom this applies to, how does it work? Can I still vote? Is there still a ceremony? and If there is, do I get another one when I turn 18 and become a knight? and can squires wear the gilded spurs?
Please explain. Especially the differences between squires and knights (within the order, not in period)

[Sir Edward]

Hey, I was just wondering about the status of "squire". As I will be the only one whom this applies to, how does it work? Can I still vote? Is there still a ceremony? and If there is, do I get another one when I turn 18 and become a knight? and can squires wear the gilded spurs?
Please explain. Especially the differences between squires and knights (within the order, not in period)

Excellent questions! I think we still have lots of little details to work out, and this is among them. I'm all ears for suggestions. Remember, everything I wrote down in the initial write-up is potentially still open to change if we come up with something better here. I still want as much of this as possible to come from a group consensus, rather than me pulling stuff out of my hind-quarters.