Change Process

Wiki-based drafting

This section is for Kingdom Marshals who are happy editing the wiki directly, or for the Rules Infrastructure Team team to edit on behalf.

1. Use the Draft namespace - eg Equestrian_Draft:... to draft the new version of the page you want to make changes to.
2. Highlight changed rules with highlighting - check the edit version of this page to see the proper code you need to use. span class="revision" at the start of the rule, after the # etc (Can't include the < and > in this description, otherwise it treats it as code!)

   If you want to get really fancy, you can highlight just the edited text, but that could be more faff than you want to deal with!

3. Update the Notes section with what you have changed and why. The Notes section of the draft pages is for your drafting notes, and thoughts for future changes.
   • Ideally in the format of:

   Changed rule number and section name/topic You can use heading formatting for this.

   Was

   Text of the previous version of the rule. Copy it from the live version if you've already edited the draft, and forgot what it used to say.

   Now

   Text of the new version of the rule.

   Functional change

   What does this change actually mean? None, if you're just fixing grammar or spelling etc. If there is a functional change and the rule now means something else, then this is a rule change that needs approvals.

   Reason

   Reason for changing this rule

   For notes section

   How you are going to describe this for future reference without quoting the whole change log entry. These notes help people understand what changed when and why. Not needed for fixing grammar or numbering etc.

4. Copy the changes from the notes for each section you have changed to the Draft Change log page. The Change log in the draft should only have the changes you are presenting for approval, not previously approved changes. This should include any version increment minor changes - typos, rewording or layout changes that you have made between approved versions that also need to be logged.
5. When you are happy with your changes, the Draft PDF link will gather all the pages labelled draft together as a PDF. The highlighted text in the wiki will appear as red text in the PDF.
6. Check the PDF for any errors - use CTRL F to search for ? question marks where they shouldn't be - it's the replacement character for the wrong format apostrophies or quote marks.

   Contact the Rules Infrastructure team if the PDF fails to generate. It's usually just a rogue formatting error, and we can hunt it down and fix it.

Word version drafting

This section is for those not comfortable with editing the wiki directly.

1. One Word document per chapter. Your Word document will be used to update the draft wiki version of the page/chapter by the Rules Infrastructure Team, they will give you a PDF for presenting for approvals.
2. Use tracked changes so that it's clear what has been edited.
3. Use the comments function to indicate:
   • Functional change

   What does this change actually mean? None, if you're just fixing grammar or spelling etc. If there is a functional change and the rule now means something else, then this is a rule change that needs approvals.

   • Reason

   Reason for changing this rule

   • For notes section

   How you are going to describe this for future reference without quoting the whole change log entry. These notes help people understand what changed when and why. Not needed for fixing grammar or numbering etc.

Approvals

These steps will meet the requirements of the procedures to change the rules

1. Email the downloaded draft PDF to be approved to the Earl Marshal to approve. Don't send a link to the live draft as the approvals need to be to a static document.
2. If there are changes required, make the amendements in the draft wiki pages in consultation with the Earl Marshal, then resend the PDF for official approval by the Earl Marshal.
3. When you receive the email approving the draft from the Earl Marshal, forward or attach this email and its attachments, and send to the Crown and Kingdom Seneschal for approval, ccing in the Earl Marshal.
   • The Crown may have opinions about particular rule changes, especially where Society has relaxed a rule that our Crown wishes to keep more restrictive.
   • The Kingdom Seneschal may be aware of issues (including internationally) that are potentially problematic for the Board and Committee that should be addressed ahead of sending changes to them. They'll also send it to their Deputy for Risk for checking.
4. If there are changes required, make the amendements in the draft wiki pages in consultation with the Earl Marshal, then repeat all of the approval steps.
5. When you receive the email approving the draft from each of the Crown and Kingdom Seneschal, forward/attach these emails and their attachments, and send to the Board of SCA Ltd Australia (via secretary@sca.org.au) and Committee of SCA New Zealand Inc (via committee@sca.org.nz) for approval, ccing in the Earl Marshal.
   • The Board of SCALA and Committee of SCANZ will discuss the changes at their next meeting (or potentially an out-of-schedule meeting). They may have concerns that mean changes need to be made to what is proposed.
   • The Board of SCALA will present the draft rules to the organisation's insurer to ensure that we meet our obligations of full disclosure of our activities. They may also have concerns that mean changes need to be made to what is proposed. (Eg. our insurance company prevented us from using crossbows against moving targets in the parts of Australia where they are legal)
   • The Board and Committee have legal liability when it comes to our rule sets, so have final say in whether they are acceptable.
6. If there are changes required, make the amendements in the draft wiki pages in consultation with the Earl Marshal, then repeat all of the approval steps.

Publication

Once you have a complete set of approvals:

1. Establish when the rules will go live - when will they be announced in court? When will the announcement be published in Pegasus?
2. Email pegasus@lochac.sca.org to get the change announcement published in the kingdom newsletter.
3. You will need to make the changes to the live version the night before (or other agreed time if the court announcement is that the changes will be live on a particular date). Get in touch with the Rules Infrastructure team, if you need help with the following steps.
   1. In the Draft page:
      • Use "CTRL F" to search the edit screen for "<span" and delete up to the end of revision"> each time it occurs on the page
      • Repeat your CTRL F search, this time with </span, and delete up to the end of the >.
      • Use the Show preview button to check that you have deleted them all, and it looks the way it should.
      • Include the approval in the change summary field before you hit Save Changes - eg Approved by Board and Committee on X of April 2023.
   2. Copy each updated section (some sections may not need to be updated at all) from the draft page to the live version of the page (don't forget to take draft out of the category if you are copying the whole thing).
      • Include the approval in the change summary field before you hit Save Changes - eg Approved by Board and Committee on X of April 2023.
   3. Update the Notes page for that page to tell people about what changed when and why. Use the information you wrote as part of the change log.
   4. Add the change log of your changes to the live change log page (don't overwrite it - we can make a new page for old changes if it gets too long to have in the document)
   5. Once you have included all the changes in the live pages, got to the Title page for your handbook, and update the version number. Versions with change approvals from the Board and Committee get a whole number increment (eg. v5.0). Minor changes to fix typos, wording, grammar, etc. get a .X increment (eg. v5.1).
   6. Check the PDF for any errors:
      • Contact the Rules Infrastructure team if the PDF fails to generate. It's usually just a rogue formatting error, and we can hunt it down and fix it.
      • Use CTRL F to search for ? question marks where they shouldn't be - it's the replacement character for the wrong format apostrophies.
      • Are any sections missing? This is usually because the Category for the page still has "draft" in it.
4. Download a copy of the PDF for your records.
5. Make anouncements on mailing lists:
   • announce@lochac.sca.org
   • The relevant kingdom-wide mailing list for the activity
6. Make announcements on social media
   • The Lochac Facebook group
   • The relevant kingdom-wide Facebook group for the activity