I am thrilled to be the first of the 'foundational members' of the group, and my first assignment was to get something into this forum so it wouldn't be empty when people visited. I'm all choked up about it. I made a few queries about what exactly the state of operations is at this time, and here is what I know.

• The rubric for evaluation of material submitted is about 20% done. It is being written by Oz himself, as his background in screenplay coverage and analysis is fairly extensive. He expects to get it completed within 10 days. This will be the guideline used when filling out your ratings and evaluation of material you have been assigned to review.
• The actual ability to upload your material is working! In that regard, refer to the relevant point below about points.
• PDF has been established as the first accepted form of submitted work. It affords the ability to be read within the system directly or downloaded easily to assigned reviewers.

The following items are on the agenda for discussion once a full council of foundational members have been established.

• Establishing responsibilities, titles, and capabilities for foundational members.
• Securing and testing content handling (technical crap)
• Identifying and codifying effort/reward ratios and procedures. i.e. the current rough consensus is that reward points should be tied to number of words since a wide variety of material might be submitted. Obviously reading an entire novel is far more effort than analyzing a single chapter.
• In the same sense as above, parameters will be set for minimum/maximum words/pages in submitted content, and their submission expense (how many points does it 'cost' the submitter will also be relative to the size of the submission.
• Submissions for assignment, at least in the starting stages, will be reviewed and assigned manually. At some point in future development this will get automated, probably with a members first submission remaining a manual review.
• A court system will be discussed to determine how to handle issues of fairness. For example, member "A" gets reviewed by member "B" and feels like member "B" just bullshat to earn some credit points. Member "B" says he gave it a full and fair assessment and member "A" is just pissed because member "B" didn't like the material. The general thinking at this point is that a "jury" would be formed from members in good standing. They would individually be presented with the relevant facts of the complaint and asked to make judgement. Collectively these individual 'verdicts' would be reviewed by a 'supreme' council which would pass judgement. This is long term and obviously will require a greater base of members and some development of protocols and operations. Glad I'm not charged with that.
• Various plug in systems are to be evaluated more fully for their suitability in being used as the 'points' control system. Currently, the BadgeOS system is under evaluation for suitability. Clearly, in this and other areas, much will be done manually in these early stages.
• There is talk of possibly allowing new members free review of their first submission, up to some maximum page count. This may be required in order to 'jump start' submissions and prime the pump of operations. The burden of review may fall on foundational members to perform, but this should be looked upon as an opportunity to provide a good example of the detail and analysis we hope others will aspire to.
• There has been concern expressed (not naming anyone here Russell) that members would be skittish to submit work because of copyright issues and worries of theft. Oz pish toshed this, saying in effect that every writer should be aware that their work is in fact copyright the moment they produce it. It is the registration of that inherent copyright that can be an issue if work is stolen, and having submitted work with a date and time stamp by acceptance in our system actually helps preclude such theft, which would obviously have to occur afterward. In any event, rights for monetary damage award in an infringement case are maintained up to 3 months after any materials are made available to the public for any possible theft. That's just the right to seek damages. The right to make them stop using your material is not diminished by not registering what is already your copyright. I was doubtful, but read up on it myself and the old man was right. Check it out here.
• There is more to talk about, but that's what I remember from my notes.