Probably need this topic , so I can consolidate all future discussions on House Rules into this thread...
Anyway, Confidence points. I'm, admittedly, pretty horrible at awarding these, I want to be better. And...
I'd like to solve both of these problems in one go. Have the players summarize their stories, and put them up on Obsidian Portal pending some edits by me. I would edit and modify these to include important information that the primary player might have missed. I would also clarify what is known to the players and what information should be compartmentalized away from their characters, things like that.
This echoes a similar sentiment by amul, back in the day. The goal for splitting stories wasn't to overload players, it was to allow players to focus on their stories, and collectively weave them together into a grand story. I want every major character made, Companion or Magus to play a part. I don't want players to be overwhelmed with the amount of material that they have to read, in order to feel like that they are keeping up. So, we need to summarize stories, that allows players to be off the hook, gives the players the rundown of what happened in the story. Maybe two versions, a player version, and then another version that is essentially a report to the Council of Magi.
So, once the summaries have been written, edited by me to include some important information, I would award the confidence points. If multiple characters participate in the story, they can include in character reports, of their point of view, too. This applies retroactively, too, if I didn't award Confidence points for a previous story, you can write the summary, and I'll award the points.