Shorah folks.
As the GoMe liaison to the GoW, it seems I should comment here since the GoMe became a part of the discussion
First, I want to give a few statistics. Including the GameTap and Cyan forums, the assorted URU communities presently have well over 50 distinct working forum sites, although some of those are virtually unused. Some of those sites are for non-English languages, but even so, we've got about 45 sites just for the English language.
In my opinion that is a lot of sites for a very small community. I believe that with the size of our community, it is very difficult to sustain so many forums. I think the Assembly of Guilds site was a good idea, because it provided a common place for many of the smaller groups to come together without having to set up their own separate spaces. Maintaining a presence on the AoG forum also served as a form of publicity for small groups that might have otherwise been too easily overlooked.
I also recognize that such conglomerate sites have disadvantages as well, and they aren't appropriate for every group. I think BAD is right that the GoW needs its own forum space. I could imagine the Maintainers and Writers working well together with a united forum, but consolidating one or more of the guilds' forums into the MOUL site would never have worked, for various reasons including moderation issues as already mentioned.
How this relates to "One Uru":
The role of the Guild of Messengers has been summarized in our motto, "See a need, fill a need." But that motto is the essence of every successful group. The Cartographers fulfill a need for maps. The Writers fulfill a need for new places to explore. To succeed, One Uru needs to fill a need... one that is not already addressed by any other group. That is why I believe that One Uru's best opportunity is to fill the hole left by the Assembly of Guilds. From that starting point, One Uru could identify other unfulfilled needs that fit its core mission and expand as it is capable or willing.
Presently, One Uru has a lot of forum sections that I don't believe will be used by anyone. For example, the various "Path of the..." forums are pretty well covered by the Guild of Greeters' various Age discussion categories. This is an example of a need already fulfilled adequately by another group.
It's possible that One Uru may identify needs that are being worked on, but not to someone's satisfaction. Again, I'll reference the size of our community for my argument - while competition can be a healthy thing, in too small of a group it only serves to fracture the community rather than serve its interests. My recommendation is that the people driving One Uru seek to involve themselves in other groups whose goals are aligned with their own when they see a need only partly filled and want to help better address it.
I'll finish my rambling commentary by raising a little awareness here of a project I have been working on that, from a short private discussion I had with Marcus Wheeler, seems to fit with what I understand of One Uru's goals. "One Uru" wants to help consolidate our community. My own consolidation project is Rel.to, and I'm hoping I'll be able to announce it to the community-at-large before April 10 rolls around. The purpose of Rel.to is to provide a searchable and indexed directory to the Myst/Uru community, a "home page" from which users can find the latest community news, and an efficient shortcut/keyword system that can be used to access all of the community websites (I find it so useful myself that I don't need keep Uru sites bookmarked anymore). Rel.to will be a service of the Guild of Messengers. You can visit a beta of Rel.to by visiting rel.to/proto.
What I'd like to see next is One Uru's goals, stated a little more concretely... so that I can better understand how the Guild of Messengers and Rel.to can work with One Uru, and not have any group duplicate effort.