OK I had another spasm of thought.
Let me layout how I personally think the council should work (roughly).
OK Lets say we elect a council of 5 people (Odd numbers are best to avoid 50/50 votes.). These 5 people hold meetings once a week privately, and publicly. The private meeting is to set up jobs within the council, and to keep everyone informed and on the same page. The public meeting is to get feedback from the guild and anyone else who comes to the meeting. There they can find out what duties they will need to take care of, help out those who have problems, or misunderstandings, and to make sure they are doing a good job.
Now duties I think they should fill immediately.
What does the word council imply? A team of councilors. Councilors are not people who tell you what to do or automatically make decisions for you. They are advisers. They make suggestions, or ask you to do something. You always have the option to ignore them or refuse their help. I believe that our council should be thought of in that way. That is why (if) when we go to elect council members we need to make sure nominees are skilled, and wise people of this budding community.
Our council should be our representatives. When people look at the GOW I think it is important we have strong and intelligent people to have in front of us. Someone that can be approached by Cyan, and honestly represent this guilds intentions. Cyan will need someone to be able to trust completely as they will have to allow them to know things they can never share with anyone. Having this person (or people) on our side, would be the best foot forward I think.
Our council should be our advertisers. They may not be able to do everything themselves, but I think they would be able to find volunteers to fill roles (such as making sure the imager in the hood displays our web address) much easier than just bringing up the topic, and waiting for someone to naturally take the initiative. Plus the council ( as they will be thinking about this stuff a lot) will be able to find new roles for volunteers to fill as they are needed. This is where the meetings come into play.
Our council should act as judges. Lets say you are working on a project, and you have a disagreement with one of the other contributers. You try to settle it between yourselves and the rest of the others working on it, but your not making any headway. Why not ask the council to help? They could review the design and give suggestions as to what they think the best direction should be. Now you can take that and follow their suggestions, or you can reject their thoughts, but at least you will have a structured outside perspective from people that are trusted in this community. If the council thinks your conflict is to important for them to decide alone, then they can make a Guild wide poll to aid in solving the dilemma. I think that should only be used when it is something that could effect the guild entirely.
This also extends to protecting the rules that we make for this group. I haven't thought about how the council will handle this really, as I don't want the council to have any power to stifle anyones creativity. I'll have to get back to you all on that one.
So anyone have problems with those roles for the council? They aren't perfect, but I think it's a good base to grow from.
by Jojon » Sat Nov 10, 2007 5:16 am 
