Hello Alumers,
I'd like to start a bi-monthly update to keep you all informed about the goings on in staff! These will happen every other month and contain varying degrees of info for you all should you want to read it.

Last month, the staff was quite busy with lots of behind-the-scenes work.

Admin and Species mods, with the input of other staff, have been working on updating a few of our processes.:

• Design approvers Blu_x_Jay carlos_claee MarshMoshi are working on improving the process for design approval, to help get designs approved faster and with more consistency. This work continues into this month but has already seen some updates.
• Event coordinators Rmin JJBum Vilagyent Nightspirit Philologique have been hard at work managing the “Spring in to Summer” event but also working to bring you the next alumy event launching in the coming weeks. This event would also not be possible without Blu_x_Jay carlos_claee Astr0fish and MarskyMessier who have all pitched in to do art for the event and get the prompts to the website.
• Discord mods have been getting used to their new roles and helping to keep the Discord a safe and welcoming place. They've also been helping create a new system for the DtAA channels with some associated rewards. More info to come soon!
• Masterlisters welcomed their new member L_moncello into the ranks and have been making sure all new Alumies make it to the masterlist before they're released to the community. They also manage approving trades and transfers on-site. Masterlisters successfully uploaded all submitted missing Alumy last month and have also been working to update BVs and traits as much as possible. In the coming months, we will likely allocate more staff to help with this effort as it has proved to be more work than we initially anticipated.
• MarskyMessier has been hard at work on the website as our primary web developer fixing bugs such as weird 500 errors in drafts, UI fixes, and adding new features/extensions. Check out the devlogs for more in-depth info as he also posts updates there.
• The staff as a whole is also taking part in trait discussions and documentation updates to provide clearer trait and un-traited design descriptions. Work has started on the first draft of updating these docs and we hope to release something out to you within the next month.
  These updates include rewording trait descriptions, listing what can and can't be done with traits, changing some trait names we felt were poorly named, tweeking traits we felt were not in line with the species as a whole, as well as creating clear descriptions for un-traited design elements such as ear length and mane definition and much more to better support customs and designs made outside the staff.
  This process is being overseen by Blu_x_Jay and Vilagyent, but has had input from the entire staff. We hope to release a solid draft to the community and hear from you all your thoughts as well before finalizing the revised traits.
• Another thing the whole staff has been discussing and addressing is the ever-present problem of providing everyone the chance to obtain Alumies. This is always a tricky topic, but we hope to address the concerns voiced to us by going over every adopt sold since the hiatus to analyze buying patterns. This analysis isn't done yet, but hopefully in the coming weeks we'll have some hard data for you to address those concerns.
• The staff also discussed the concern of people backing out of deals once they've been agreed on, and we'd like to remind everyone, that while the Alumy admins/staff will not be putting any hard species rules in place about backing out of trades/deals, this behavior can and will lead you to be blacklisted by many artists and is generally not recommended.

As a last note, we would like to remind everyone that everyone on the Alumy staff team is at the end of the day: a volunteer. We all take our positions very seriously and put as much work as we're able into the species with the intent to make it better. But we also do have lives outside the species. Many of us work, have other time commitments, or have hobbies other than Alumies. The Discord and this community is a place for all of us to enjoy and we'd like to stress that the staff should not be only expected to work on staff work while interacting with the community here. Our positions are not our only hobbies and we should not be expected to be “on shift” just because we are online. Many of us enjoy videogames, interact with friends, or partake in other online hobbies through this server, and though we understand and appreciate that you are invested in the species and want to see progress being made, you also need to understand that this expectation is extremely harmful to a person's ability to enjoy this community. We can not be transparent about the entire inner workings of the staff and most work done by any one individual in the staff may go unnoticed in the community. Therefore, you'll have to trust that work is getting done behind the scenes. We hope this update helps share some of the work taking place in the staff and have a good timezone Alumers!