RFC: Guild structure, or lack thereof

[Branan]

We don't have a structure here. We all know that. Adam runs the web space, and we all go about our business. We write our ages, we code our tools, and we generally leave each other alone.

What we do have is a rather scary structure document. Read it over. It implies (and even specifies) a lot of authority and control that's simply not exercised, and if it ever was exercised there'd be a mutiny. But outsiders don't know that. People new to the GoW don't necessarily know that.

I propose that we dissolve the current guild structure, and in its place build a charter about fostering innovation, encouraging community involvement, and specifying clearly that there is no "leadership". There should be some procedure put in place for creating new sub-forums (currently this is just at Adam's whims?), so that it's clear there's no exclusive "club". I'm not going to pretend to know exactly how to phrase all of this, but I will try to put some sort of more precise proposal together later today.

So... comments?

EDIT: if anyone thinks this should be in public discussion, I have no objections to moving it. I wanted to make sure none of the councilors/directors/representatives were particularly attached to the old system before making the discussion public.

[Lontahv]

I don't see why not using the power we have is a bad thing. Think of Veralun, the mod on the MOUL forums with over-active mod syndrome.

Why rock this boat when things are going fairly well? Of course there are philosophical principles at stake. However, are they worth fighting for when the resulting war could jeopardize the sanity of newcomers even more? This debate could cause the GoW to become a ghost-town if people migrate on to the next-best shiny new forum run by someone who thinks they have all the answers.

The dirty truth(sarcastic):
Hoikas pays for this site and makes sure things are running smoothly so that age creation rather than 404 screens thrive. A group of post assassins keep the spammers at bay and the posts well organized. GoW is run like a normal website, so there are no factions here; instead we have hundreds of helpful, repressed peoples.

This whole guild system thing was good at first. However, it started to break down a long time ago. Name one guild that actually still has a democracy.

[Branan]

I don't intend to rock the boat. I didn't mean to imply anything about the current leadership, and I think Adam does an awesome job at what he does. I mostly just want what we say we have to match what we have. And we simply don't have an active set of guild councilors, directors, and so forth.

What we do have is a loose group of people working on projects under one banner. It works, and we should just make it clear that that's what we are at this point.

Much of the fear of having the Guilds take part in an open-source Uru is this idea of enforced structure and hierarchies. Making it clear that we have no such thing is important if we want to avoid further fragmenting the community.

[Lontahv]

Paladin, that's exactly what's been on my mind for the last year. However, I just don't know if Cyan will come and say to us: "Where is your leadership document?" and we're like: "Er, we decided we really didn't need that thing, we just do whatevea!" and they reply: "Let's set up Harry and Chell's site as the official one because they had the boat, er, the have the document."

[Branan]

So we set up a "dummy" document. It doesn't have to be long or involved, it just needs to lay out how the guild actually works

The Guild of Writers exists as a place to foster innovation within the Uru fan modding community. Guild Membership is fully open: anyone can claim membership, and they will be accepted immediately. The de facto guild leader is the webmaster. He or She has administrative and moderative powers over the forum and wiki, and has the sole authority to establish project subforums based on <verbatim copy of whatever criteria Adam already uses so we don't have to change anything>. The Guild Leader has no direct authority over Guild Members outside of administrative and moderative needs. Neither the Guild Leader nor any Guild Member has authority over any other Guild Member's project.

In my eyes, that's what we have, and it's what we should say we have. Just *something* to show to Cyan if they ask, while at the same time not scaring off the (justified or not) fans who are scared of fan's controlling other fans.

EDIT: This doesn't rule out a "fake" IC structure that we can use to create drama and propel story in the game, and I think that may be a good idea to do that, but it's rather tangential to the discussion.

[Chacal]

If you remember that discussion, the main reason we set up a hierarchy was so that other guilds and Cyan would have someone to contact. At the time, there was that whole FCAL thing and Cyan was not willing to come on our forum and talk to the entire guild. They insisted on contacting individuals, as they have always done. See for example the restricted group of beta-testers for MOUL:Again, who were contacted individually and in secret.

Although I am against a guild structure, I see no reason to think Cyan would change its mind about this.
So I think we should not change what we have.

[Trylon]

Well, I'm kinda fond of our current "representative" stucture - a.k.a. Everyone who cares enough to vote can vote, even though it's not used extensively (since it hasn't been needed).
I'd have to recheck the documentation on what the councilors currently do, but if needed I wouldn't mind the following changes:
- Rename the "representatives" to "council" without a change of function.
- Rename current "councilors" to "council spokesperson" or something similar, and reduce their "power" to official contact person for the guild of writers.

In that scenario, the guild "council" would consiste of everyone who cares enough about the guild to register as a "representative/council member", and the guild "leadership" would just be contact persons and spokespersons, who act on behalf of the council/representatives. Webmasterism could just be separated from guild leadership, since it's not really connected.

Basically, that would be a non-change from what we're doing already, it'd just be a formalization of our current anarchy. (The "no rulers" kind, not the "no rules" kind, as everyone who wants can be in the council/representatives)

[Branan]

I think I like your idea better than mine, Trylon

[BAD]

Oh crap.... That things still up?

(That was a joke )

[Trylon]

@Bad: Which thing? The structure document?

@Everyone else:
Anyway, I just read through it and, it made me wonder a few things:
- Why would it be considered scary. The guild councilors don't have that much power under the document...
- Who the *** are our guild councilors again? I can only remember Lontahv and Hoikas, but we were supposed to have a 3rd which I can't remember

Just as well, from what I can tell my previous proposal would be possible, if we'd want it.
I do think it would be pereferable to update the document to whatever we see as a fit description of what we do now.

Formally any such change would need to be passed through the representatives by vote though.

I could make a quick draft for implementation of the idea I suggested above.

Edit: Ah, now I see why it's scary: The whole thing is ridiculously complex for a simple community like ours