Sleigh Bells Ring

The calendar tells me that it's that time of the year again! TOP has donned his seasonally-appropriate headgear and we have put up our miniature Christmas tree in the office. If we briefly ignore the fact that the thermostat is reading in the sixties here in northern Alabama today, things are beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

What's Next?

As AskTOP's first year online comes to a close, it's fun to look back at all we have done together already. Between our SMEs and our readers, we have answered so many Army leadership questions it is almost mind-boggling. We've met some great people and made some new friends. We've even managed to (mostly) stay on schedule and dedicate the time needed to keep the site moving forward.

More importantly, we must take the lessons we have learned and adjust our course accordingly. We've received excellent feedback these past few months. We've taken this feedback and applied it to create the following general guidelines for the new year:

Provide References

Our Subject Matter Experts include references to official doctrine, memos, and messages as often as possible. We have heard a number of times that readers are very pleased that we provide this information. When somebody's career is on the line, you have to make sure you have your facts straight. We aren't perfect, though! Sometimes we forget to reference a regulation or two. Additionally, not every little leadership tip or TTP has an associated reg we can reference. We want to make sure to provide as much information as possible because, in most cases, we don't expect you to just "take our word for it." Your job is too important. We want to make it as painless as possible for you to make sure we've got it right. Look forward to even more references and excerpts in our upcoming content.

Facilitate Discussion

We want your input. We need your input. You have perspective to share with your fellow Soldiers. We aren't trying to pretend like our SME Panel is the only useful source of information. We've seen more and more comments roll in lately. We want to make it easier for you to join the discussion. We have already invested in measures to reduce spam comments automatically and we've added a Recent Comments feed in the sidebar of the site. In the near future we will be adding paging to long comment threads and reversing the order comments are displayed in so the latest will always be on top.

Publish More Content

To date our posting schedule has been roughly four posts a week, not including news and special announcements. We receive and answer many more questions than this in a given week, but we lack the infrastucture to get these responses published out to the site for the public in a timely fashion. Also, the routing of questions currently takes place manually via email. We are working on a system to streamline all of this so we can provide more information to you, quicker. 

Maintain Culture of Professionalism

One comment that we hear time and time again is that readers enjoy the level of professionalism on the site. Nobody is here to make fun of anybody or make them feel stupid. Any question is a good question. We celebrate Army Leadership and we want you to be as excited about it as we are. We are drafting a set of community guidelines so you can know what to expect from us in the way of comment moderation. The jist? We are all adults. Let's act accordingly.

A Warm Welcome

Today I have the privlege of introducing a new member to our e-family. The latest addition to our AskTOP SME Panel is CDR Philip D. Cave, JAGC, USN (Ret). Philip is a practicing lawyer based out of the D.C. area who represents U.S. servicemembers. He has come on board to share his expertise in the realm of UCMJ proceedings and Military Law. His first article, tentatively titled "Soldier Decisions and Recourse during Article 15 proceedings" will be published as soon as it has worked its way through the editing queue. 


We hope you are spending the holidays with loved ones and cherishing the time you have together. Thank you for your service--it's time to take a load off and have some fun. Thank you for reading!

Preston Fitzgerald
Editor, AskTOP.net