@William Karnesky
I want to commend you for your care and empathize with your frustration. It is real and I DO understand that this is an area that our club can grow and be successful in if we don't screw it up.
Honestly, this whole darn thing is a volunteer organization and we live and die by that. We live by the skill, commitment, and incredible amounts of time put in by the people who sincerely love this org and want to make it better. The whole thing is not about "loving bureaucracy" but more about controlling the chaos that is massive growth over 7 years, lack of involvement, major change, and the list goes on.
Being in a bureau, a fleet staff position, a triad position, etc is not about elevated rank or authority, it's about elevated responsibility, time commitment, and engagement. I can't say that all the people doing these jobs always make the right decisions in the right amount of time, but I can say they all care significantly about what we do here and about the members we serve.
As far as following the chain and "telling us what's wrong", I'm happy to get your suggestions, we always welcome help or input. I can also probably tell you we've said it to ourselves more than once. Let's try to go through your questions:
I still don't understand
how copyright concerns and "professionalism" prohibit the release of a draft;
- we have to abide by all copyrights for art and also all requirements of our agreement with BuNine and David Weber. While this does not always pertain to an internal manual, it often does so we follow the same process regardless. There is no way to tell if the people in a job will always stay the same but if the process does we will not lose incredibly valuable institutional knowledge.
or why drafts for something so basic as the Marksmanship manual are considered under the Official Secrets Act;
No manual that defines the process is "simple" honestly. I wouldn't go as far as declaring it "official secrets act" but I do agree with not releasing it far and wide. This is an awesome way to delay a manual's release for years. I am in a job that requires a review of materials at each level. It can take forever. If we release a draft to get "member feedback" all the time we will delay the process even longer.
or why people were asked to "step up" if such offers were just going to be refused;
The offer wasn't refused but he was asking that people step up to review more than just their "pet" project. I didn't see that happening.
or why we were told it was "in review", or "If it's not ready for MantiCon, it will be shortly afterwards", or other variations of "nearly complete" if it was not the case(3);
This is simply a case of, as Michael said, getting two manuals condensed after one had been created. In short, someone looked at the manuals and changed their mind. It made sense behind the scenes. I do get that this is a great way to make it difficult for those in waiting and sometimes when we try and make a "good" decision it turns out more complicated.
or simply whether or not future manuals can be released to the Wiki as BuTrain has done so and why we can't do that for this manual,
Sure, I know we can do this for this manual and probably will do it for more in the futue...but, guess what, they released the Butrain manual on the Wiki because it is changeable and editable....and someone wants s PDF version. So there you go. We will please 75% and frustrate the hell out of 25% no matter how we do it. However, we do feel the Wiki will be the space for this stuff in the future.
This probably didn't answer all of your concerns but its what I can do. No one working here is trying to stomp on what we do just to make themselves better. No one here wants to be working on a manual for over a year, but on occasion, these things happen. Hopefully, we can get this thing out soon so you can use is and make TRMN a better place.