Catholic Harbor's Future and Mission

[Mr. Warren]

12 minutes ago, Margaret Marie said:

@Draper I just wanted to say that this sounds amazing! And also, I actually asked a few members to help me out with one of the things you mentioned. You see, when I first got on I really liked that people had messaged me personally and welcomed me on and helped me figure everything out. So I immediately started to message all the new members as well and I thought it would be great if I could have others to help me too, so I asked @Maximilian Kolbe @Icecool @TrivialPursuit @Aeri and @Paula to message the new members. @Icecool and @Paula agreed and @TrivialPursuit and @Maximilian Kolbe said they would see what they could do but to be fair they are pretty busy. And I just messaged @Aeri today and I haven't heard back. I just thought I should let you know. I didn't put it in the suggestion box because I really didn't want publicity, I thought it would be nice to do it secretly. I greatly apologize if I did anything wrong. 

That is great. I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from greeting new members. That is a great thing.

[Solkitty]

14 minutes ago, Margaret Marie said:

@Draper I just wanted to say that this sounds amazing! And also, I actually asked a few members to help me out with one of the things you mentioned. You see, when I first got on I really liked that people had messaged me personally and welcomed me on and helped me figure everything out. So I immediately started to message all the new members as well and I thought it would be great if I could have others to help me too, so I asked @Maximilian Kolbe @Icecool @TrivialPursuit @Aeri and @Paula to message the new members. @Icecool and @Paula agreed and @TrivialPursuit and @Maximilian Kolbe said they would see what they could do but to be fair they are pretty busy. And I just messaged @Aeri today and I haven't heard back. I just thought I should let you know. I didn't put it in the suggestion box because I really didn't want publicity, I thought it would be nice to do it secretly. I greatly apologize if I did anything wrong. 

its a normal thing to welcome new members, you didnt do anything wrong, a lot of people welcome new members(:

Edited June 10, 2019 by SolKitty

[SmartKitty16]

1 minute ago, Daisy62300 said:

I don't think you did anything wrong (apart from harassing me to answer awkward questions XD (jk XD)) I also felt happy when peeps welcomed me

Yeah same here. @Margaret Marie you didn't do anything wrong. 

But seriously, when I got welcomed by @SlyGuy12 and @Spider-Gwen, it made me feel welcome and want to stick around. 

[Dais]

1 minute ago, SmartKitty16 said:

Yeah same here. @Margaret Marie you didn't do anything wrong. 

But seriously, when I got welcomed by @SlyGuy12 and @Spider-Gwen, it made me feel welcome and want to stick around. 

(Whoops, thought she was @Maya.... i am SO blind XD)

[Gabe041050]

50 minutes ago, Draper said:

C'mon, we gotta go with something that sounds cooler than Greeter. We are planning on Ambassadors.

I would like do that whenever it starts.

[Margaret Marie]

6 minutes ago, Daisy62300 said:

I don't think you did anything wrong 

(Oops, thought you were @Maya XD FAILLL)

Because you thought I was Maya, I didn't do anything wrong? I'm perplexed. lol

[Margaret Marie]

5 minutes ago, Draper said:

That is great. I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from greeting new members. That is a great thing.

Okay, I can breathe now! I'm glad it wasn't wrong, thank you!

[Dais]

1 minute ago, Margaret Marie said:

Because you thought I was Maya, I didn't do anything wrong? I'm perplexed. lol

(Nah, you did nothing XD.i just mentioned something maya does XD)

[Margaret Marie]

5 minutes ago, SolKitty said:

its a normal thing to welcome new members, you didnt do anything wrong, a lot of people welcome new members(:

Yeah, but I didn't know if having asked people to do it and whatever was okay. 

5 minutes ago, SmartKitty16 said:

Yeah same here. @Margaret Marie you didn't do anything wrong. 

But seriously, when I got welcomed by @SlyGuy12 and @Spider-Gwen, it made me feel welcome and want to stick around. 

You shoulda seen the look on my face when @SlyGuy12 and @Glitter246 welcomed me. lol

[Margaret Marie]

Just now, Daisy62300 said:

(Nah, you did nothing XD.i just mentioned something maya does XD)

Ahh! Now, I'm following. Thanks for explaining it to me. 

[SmartKitty16]

Just now, Margaret Marie said:

Yeah, but I didn't know if having asked people to do it and whatever was okay. 

You shoulda seen the look on my face when @SlyGuy12 and @Glitter246 welcomed me. lol

I'd like to help some with your welcoming idea. I can't do it all the time, but I could try it. (:

[Margaret Marie]

Just now, SmartKitty16 said:

I'd like to help some with your welcoming idea. I can't do it all the time, but I could try it. (:

That would be great! I plan to message those participating with me with a list of the new members every Saturday so they don't have to look through the Member list, would that help??

[Aeri]

24 minutes ago, Margaret Marie said:

@Draper I just wanted to say that this sounds amazing! And also, I actually asked a few members to help me out with one of the things you mentioned. You see, when I first got on I really liked that people had messaged me personally and welcomed me on and helped me figure everything out. So I immediately started to message all the new members as well and I thought it would be great if I could have others to help me too, so I asked @Maximilian Kolbe @Icecool @TrivialPursuit @Aeri and @Paula to message the new members. @Icecool and @Paula agreed and @TrivialPursuit and @Maximilian Kolbe said they would see what they could do but to be fair they are pretty busy. And I just messaged @Aeri today and I haven't heard back. I just thought I should let you know. I didn't put it in the suggestion box because I really didn't want publicity, I thought it would be nice to do it secretly. I greatly apologize if I did anything wrong. 

Been doing school, was just about to get to my PMs =)

[SmartKitty16]

2 minutes ago, Margaret Marie said:

That would be great! I plan to message those participating with me with a list of the new members every Saturday so they don't have to look through the Member list, would that help??

Oh yes please!! I can bring up our pm to the top if you like, then we can work from there?

[Margaret Marie]

Just now, Aeri said:

Been doing school, was just about to get to my PMs =)

Don't worry, I only sent it a little while ago and you were the one who encouraged me. 

[Solkitty]

5 minutes ago, Margaret Marie said:

Yeah, but I didn't know if having asked people to do it and whatever was okay. 

You shoulda seen the look on my face when @SlyGuy12 and @Glitter246 welcomed me. lol

o, no thats fine too(:

[Margaret Marie]

Just now, SmartKitty16 said:

Oh yes please!! I can bring up our pm to the top if you like, then we can work from there?

Yup! Sounds good, so long as Mr. @Draper is okay with that??

[Solkitty]

3 minutes ago, Margaret Marie said:

That would be great! I plan to message those participating with me with a list of the new members every Saturday so they don't have to look through the Member list, would that help??

Its only takes a few seconds to search the member list lol. But you do you(:

[Margaret Marie]

1 minute ago, SolKitty said:

Its only takes a few seconds to search the member list lol. But you do you(:

Well, I is kinda annoying for me so I though any way I could help other people help others, then I could at least offer to try. 

[Solkitty]

3 minutes ago, Margaret Marie said:

Well, I is kinda annoying for me so I though any way I could help other people help others, then I could at least offer to try. 

thats nice of you(: best of luck

[Gabe041050]

37 minutes ago, Margaret Marie said:

@Draper I just wanted to say that this sounds amazing! And also, I actually asked a few members to help me out with one of the things you mentioned. You see, when I first got on I really liked that people had messaged me personally and welcomed me on and helped me figure everything out. So I immediately started to message all the new members as well and I thought it would be great if I could have others to help me too, so I asked @Maximilian Kolbe @Icecool @TrivialPursuit @Aeri and @Paula to message the new members. @Icecool and @Paula agreed and @TrivialPursuit and @Maximilian Kolbe said they would see what they could do but to be fair they are pretty busy. And I just messaged @Aeri today and I haven't heard back. I just thought I should let you know. I didn't put it in the suggestion box because I really didn't want publicity, I thought it would be nice to do it secretly. I greatly apologize if I did anything wrong. 

I can help with that, but over the summer I can only get on CH mostly by my phone, so I won't be able to PM too many people.

[Sew perfect]

4 minutes ago, Shadow_Hunter37 said:

I can help with that, but over the summer I can only get on CH mostly by my phone, so I won't be able to PM too many people.

Yeah, I can help too!! Tho I will be a little busy over the summer, I will help best I can

[Spider-Gwen]

This is great @Draper!! If I can help in any way please let me know! Thank you and @Joe for all your work and time!!

[Clara_hu]

I am both happy that this is happening and terrified where's the "Draper is awesome" reaction when you need it?  

[Lydia_rose]

1 hour ago, Draper said:

My friends, I want to talk with you briefly about the future of Catholic Harbor. In August and September, we are about to get a massive influx of fresh new members as many families start their school year with Seton. What will this site look like for them? What will they think of it when they get here? They get their cues on how to act in the first couple weeks and they will follow the lead of the students already here. They will model our behavior, so if we want them to be awesome members, we ourselves need to awesome members.

In recent months, we have had an increasingly large issue with frequent disregard for our community's rules—also with unhappiness both from members who are upset about members who seem to go unpunished and from members who have their content moderated. There have also been quite a few deactivations either from parents withdrawing permission, students no longer enjoying their time here, or less frequently from disciplinary actions were the deactivation is usually temporary but sometimes permanent.

I think it is fair to say the Catholic Harbor finds itself at a crossroads. I fear that if we continue on this path, the dissatisfaction will grow. I know my own pride in Catholic Harbor has suffered recently. I think many of us might even be unhappy with the current state of the site but not able to fully put our finger on what all of the issues actually are contributing to that sense.

Thus, it is time to talk about some of the root causes. One thing I have learned from hosting conferences for the past 20 years is that happiness with a product, service, or anything really comes down to expectations, purely and simply. If I host a conference expecting 500 people to show up and only 200 show up, I would be bitterly disappointed. Yet, if I hosted the exact same conference but only expected 100 people to show up, when the 200 arrived, I would be ecstatic.

I think a large part of our problem on Catholic Harbor has been a failure to clearly state the mission and purpose of the site and then have all of our policies firmly adhere to that mission. If all of the members had set their expectations on the same thing and knew exactly what to expect from Catholic Harbor, there would be less dissatisfaction.

In the end, a site cannot be successful if there is animosity between the admins and moderators and the members. An "us vs. them" mentality risks sending Catholic Harbor down a path that would ultimately lead to closure. However, if we were all moving toward a common goal and had a common mission, we could build the greatest community the web has ever seen.

THE MISSION OF CATHOLIC HARBOR

So what then IS the mission of Catholic Harbor? To answer that, we need to first recognize that Catholic Harbor is an official site of Seton Home Study School, and thus while Catholic Harbor might not be an academic site, it still is an offshoot of Seton’s mission, so that some of the things important to Seton are going to be important to us as well.

First and foremost is the Catholic Faith, so part of our mission is to help our members grow in their faith. It is also a social site designed to connect Seton students, so we would want to add that part of the mission is helping our members form good Christian friendships. Aside from Faith and friendships, we also want the site to be a good experience and useful in practical terms, so we want to add “enjoyable” and we want the site to be edifying, that is, to help our members grow both intellectually and morally—to learn interesting things and to gain skills in things like debating and resolving conflicts. We can now wrap this up into one statement:

Catholic Harbor exists to provide a safe and enjoyable environment for Seton students to form good Christian friendships and to grow in mind, in virtue, and in their Catholic Faith.

With our mission firmly in mind, I think it is time we reevaluate. This site is an official Seton site, not just a back alley hangout. We need to ask, is the site in its current form accomplishing its mission to help our members grow in virtue, form good Christian friendships, and is it edifying? Is it doing that for all of the members or just some? Are there aspects of the site which actively detract from that mission?

CATHOLIC HARBOR IMPROVEMENT PLAN

In the coming days, Joe and I will be introducing a Catholic Harbor Improvement Plan.

Part of the Catholic Harbor Improvement Plan (a.k.a. “the CHIP”) will include some rule changes, a new staff role designed to welcome new members and improve the experience for everyone, perhaps some forum structure changes, a streamlined moderation and warning procedure, and other changes.

As a site like ours grows, it establishes its own culture. A culture just means the customs, practices, institutions, shared values, and expectations of behavior. A culture can’t just be imposed from above, it is influenced by the community’s rules of course, but it is something organically created by you the members. Every interesting topic you create or kind word you offer to another member helps build the culture we want to see thrive on Catholic Harbor.

Joe and I strongly believe that the CHIP is going to help make Catholic Harbor a more fruitful and enjoyable experience for you all in the long run. We can improve the quality of our conversations and have a site we are more proud of than ever. Every year is a chance for renewal. Our best years lay ahead of us. I hope to have the CHIP unveiled within the week.

God bless!

I am looking forward to what this new plans brings for CH. I myself have been disappointed of what CH has become. I really hope that this new plan of yours works!