Guild of Writers Leadership

Re: Guild of Writers Leadership

Postby teedyo » Thu Dec 06, 2007 7:54 pm

Ahh the contentious issues. Gonna put my 2 pennies on all of 'em.

I know, I seem to be the only one but, I still have a problem with the disparity of proposals set forth by 5 council members or 6 non-council members(20% v 50%). I just don't see where the council has shown that their proposals should carry more weight than the other members. If a proposal arises that conflicts/overturns/modifies a currently 'entrenched' issue fine: raise the bar for everyone.

Private forum: Bad, bad, bad idea...NOT constructive...that way went the liaisons(in part). If Cyan chooses to divulge NDA required information, put it in a forum "API Discussion, NDA Required" or some such and grant anyone access who gets one. This has no bearing on whether a member is on the council or not. What if a member is elected who doesn't have a NDA? If Cyan wants to divulge general information to a select few; don't go for it. What would be the purpose?

"Voting" members: We already know that there are active members on this board that don't wish to participate in internal voting matters. Obviously using active members will skew the 20% or whatever it becomes. I still think that my proposal offers the least headache and zero work; well, almost zero. Use 'Accept', 'Reject', 'Abstain', 'Abstain-Non-voting Member' in the polls. Yes, this would be working on the 'honor' system; so what. Would people like Andy actually use the last option? Don't know. Kind of depends on how much love they want to show us. :)

Maybe we should just hire out GoMa members to shuffle papers for us. :D What the heck does the 'Green Man' signify any how??? :?:
teedyo
 
Posts: 212
Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2007 5:47 pm

Re: Guild of Writers Leadership

Postby Nadnerb » Thu Dec 06, 2007 8:05 pm

They haven't. In the time period that we have submitted questions bearing on the Pre-GoMa that need input from the GoW, what we have received is a few responses and the posts have filtered down, down, and again down.
Asking technical questions about Age writting, and you'll get a host of responses. Anything else, poor response at best.
Well guess what. We're writers, artists and hackers.
Question about age writing/how to do it = interesting, and our business. Answers are likely.
Question about how you should debug our ages = we don't know yet, still working on building them, not our business.
Question about getting 8 new testing ages = "8!!?? :shock: we have one or two ages under serious development, what do you expect from us? If you want stuff to test, try writing detailed reviews of test ages already on ULM. As for intentional bugs, the best bugs are unintentional. Looking for known ones isn't teaching you anything."</offtopic>
Having a representative is not going to change the fact that nobody has answers for certain questions yet, and unless the rep is omniscient, he may not even know that it is an unknown.
Image
Live KI: 34914 MOULa KI: 23247 Gehn KI: 11588 Available Ages: TunnelDemo3, BoxAge, Odema
Nadnerb
 
Posts: 1057
Joined: Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:01 pm
Location: US (Eastern Time)

Re: Guild of Writers Leadership

Postby OnslaughtQ » Thu Dec 06, 2007 8:41 pm

I'd like to just say, I was out of line speculating about the NDA's. The private forums or the release of information to a select group was wildy inaccurate on my part and I should have given more thought to what I was saying. Let's make that a non-issue, because it has done more harm than good, and was an inaccurate portrayal of the private forums. I apologize. Trylon has restated the purpose of the private forums in a response further on down from my original.

At heart, from watching all the discussion here the past several days, there seem to be two major issues of contention . One, how do we define voting members versus non-voting members. Two, what are the definitions of "leadership" and "representation". The problem of private forums I feel is a subset of the "leadership" vs "representation" problem.

Some see the guild councilors as leaders, others see them just as a voice for the many. Perhaps there needs to be a subset of the document, in legalese (as specific as possible), defining the words used?

For voters vs. non-voters, any solution proposed will likely leave a few thorns in some ones side. Why not just try one and if it doesn't work for the majority, then another can be hammered out.
OnslaughtQ
 
Posts: 26
Joined: Fri Nov 09, 2007 8:29 pm
Location: Ohio

Re: Guild of Writers Leadership

Postby teedyo » Thu Dec 06, 2007 9:05 pm

Well, you see, I just can't think of a single scenario that would require a private forum. Maybe I'm just obtuse or thick-headed. Perhaps somebody could post an example of what should be kept private only to the council members.
teedyo
 
Posts: 212
Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2007 5:47 pm

Re: Guild of Writers Leadership

Postby OnslaughtQ » Thu Dec 06, 2007 9:13 pm

Page 2 of this debate, from Trylon:
The "private discussion" forum just there because it's a fraction more practical than PM'ing when you are with a relatively large group. Just consider it as a place for "Group PM's".
OnslaughtQ
 
Posts: 26
Joined: Fri Nov 09, 2007 8:29 pm
Location: Ohio

Re: Guild of Writers Leadership

Postby BAD » Thu Dec 06, 2007 9:37 pm

OK......

Everyone has a lot to say, but it seems to me that what is bothering people the most is the transparency issue of the council.

First off. I want everyone who has had dealings with Cyan to please post, and tell us a little about it. I personally have dealt with Cyan directly, and I am a professional artist who has signed a few NDAs in my time. So when you read the rest of my post keep that in mind.

Cyan will not deal with this forum as a whole entity. I am sorry if this shatters your world view, it is simply a matter of business. It is not in Cyan's interest to speak to a collective. It causes things.......Well.....things like these arguments we are having right now. Would you want to have to go through this every time you wanted to enlist the GOW to do something? Be honest with yourself on this one. Now think about yourself as a business. Your in business to 1) achieve your goals 2) Make money. Time is money. Time also makes achieving your goals harder. You don't waste your time with chaos. What we have now is chaos.

What is the need for a private forum? Well to have private discussions of course! :P The council will need an area to discuss certain topics and issues with the confidence that their every word is not being watched. This provides some anonymity to their discussions on sensitive subjects. Like lets say that they need to discuss the wording of a council proposal because if the wording is wrong it could offend those who it applies to. What could they possibly discuss privately that could hurt the guild?

We added a way to audit the private forum as well (If anyone actually read that part) because we knew there could be times when the community distrusts the current council, and wants to see if they have betrayed them.

We haven't created the perfect, or permanent system here folks. This is the beginning.

And finally......

Like it or not, we need this. You can convince yourself all you want that this is unnecessary, but the truth is we are already getting flack form outside influences, and we have no one to push in front of us all and say "Talk to him or her.". If we do not implement structure then this guild will fall into chaos, and nothing outside of some independent projects will ever get done. Keep up this bickering and we will begin to lose talented people who will become fed up with it.

So that is your decision. Do I keep throwing wrenches into the works just because I hold on to an impossible Ideal? or. Do I get involved in a positive way to help this guild achieve its goals?

Your next post will speak volumes about your response to that question. Choose wisely.
BAD is as good as he gets
User avatar
BAD
 
Posts: 832
Joined: Sat Sep 29, 2007 9:44 am

Re: Guild of Writers Leadership

Postby Jennifer_P » Thu Dec 06, 2007 11:04 pm

Cyan will not deal with this forum as a whole entity. I am sorry if this shatters your world view, it is simply a matter of business. It is not in Cyan's interest to speak to a collective. It causes things.......Well.....things like these arguments we are having right now. Would you want to have to go through this every time you wanted to enlist the GOW to do something?

Well actually, Cyan is quite used to dealing with general populations of nonconsolidated people; they do it all the time when they make announcements on the MOUL forums. They also do not appear to have had any problems communicating with us writers in the past. In addition, if you were Cyan and you had posted your government strategy, there would be grumbling, but no big argument like this. The discussion would be more like, "Yes sir!" and then we'd set about it. Cyan said, "We'd like guilds," and here we are...

We added a way to audit the private forum as well (If anyone actually read that part) because we knew there could be times when the community distrusts the current council, and wants to see if they have betrayed them.

It's when I hear sentences like this that I worry about having a council.

If we do not implement structure then this guild will fall into chaos, and nothing outside of some independent projects will ever get done. Keep up this bickering and we will begin to lose talented people who will become fed up with it.

Oh, come now... :) How can we possibly fall into chaos--what would that even look like? And why would nothing but independent projects get done? Is Ahra Pahts, a community Age created before there was even a guild at all, going to go up in flames if we don't get a council of representatives? And seriously, there's been no bad bickering that I've seen here except the stuff related to this one issue.

The fact is, our guild can get along as well as it always has without leadership; it's our sister organizations, the other Uru guilds and groups, who want and need to talk with individuals (representatives?--only if there was a clear opinion to represent!) whom they can consult with questions and proposals. Even if all that individual says is, "Uh, I don't think the guild will be interested in that, but I'll ask," and then posts the question on the forum.
Jennifer_P
 
Posts: 729
Joined: Fri Sep 28, 2007 10:54 pm

Re: Guild of Writers Leadership

Postby Paradox » Thu Dec 06, 2007 11:12 pm

Argue all you want, what BAD says is 100% true. :(

Cyan will not deal with us collectively, they will want to have a contact person who could be held accountable for all actions of the Guild. (Essentially, they need to know who to send the Cease and Desist orders to).

Cyan is also famous for NDAs. There's a possibility that they might give source code to people under NDA, there's a possibility that they might put GoW storyline under NDA. We don't know what Cyan intends, we can only look at what they have done in the past.

I still doubt that Cyan will ever be able to release Age Creation tools themselves; and without a structure of some form, they will have no one to contact in the event that they should have any information.

I still agree with Aloys ("Let's just declare ourselves the Guild of Anarchists!"); but I know from experience that what BAD is saying is also true.
Paradox
 
Posts: 1290
Joined: Fri Sep 28, 2007 6:48 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Guild of Writers Leadership

Postby Tomala » Fri Dec 07, 2007 12:01 am

How can we possibly fall into chaos--what would that even look like?


Surprisingly it can happen. I've seen it take place myself... Structures that claim to be set in stone, actually being about as strong as a Styrofoam block with a boulder on top. You'll need a good structure to survive or you're bound to collapse and fail. I've seen history repeat itself too many times in this community, I don't think it's worth having that happen again. But that's just my opinion. Which amounts to nothing really... :lol:
User avatar
Tomala
 
Posts: 135
Joined: Wed Oct 10, 2007 10:32 pm
Location: Nearby

Re: Guild of Writers Leadership

Postby Jennifer_P » Fri Dec 07, 2007 3:00 am

Well, you two have both been around longer than I have, so I'll defer to your experience in what Cyan would prefer and what structure stands the test of time. :) At the same time, I would venture to suggest that it's in Cyan's best interests to foster guild growth, and I don't think they would let a lack of structure stand in the way of doing that. I confess I don't have much experience with NDAs myself, but it certainly does sound like the proposed representatives would be useful in that. Tell me if I'm picturing the situation right in this example: Cyan wants to do something or other secret with music, so they contact the representative who is associated with the musicians and after putting them under an NDA, tells them the proposal. Then what does the representative do? Does he go around pming people who he thinks would be interested with vague details, telling them that with the NDA they can hear it all? (Because that sounds sort of like preferential treatment) Or alternatively, does he post the vague details on the Music forum and tell people that with an NDA they can hear it all? Maybe you could give some examples of NDA situations of the past and explain how the representatives would have solved some of the problems involved. :)

And Tomala, I'm wondering what happened when the groups you mentioned dissolved into chaos? No need to mention names, I just want to figure out what parallels you're seeing with this group. I think it could be helpful in demonstrating the benefits of a structure to hear what caused things to go wrong and what you think might have prevented that from happening.

Want to hear an interesting quote? It's exactly right too...
And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them.
--Nicolo Machiavelli, "The Prince"
Jennifer_P
 
Posts: 729
Joined: Fri Sep 28, 2007 10:54 pm

PreviousNext

Return to Public Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests

cron