FCAL Proposal Announced at GoMe

[Gadren]

Since these nominations would have to be accepted by the nominee (otherwise you might wake up one morning and find yourself on the panel!), perhaps the nominee should have to state for what position or guild he or she is accepting the nomination.

[Chacal]

Sorry, but for those that say they know better than Cyan, please show everyone your different games that you've published that were just as successful as Myst, Riven, Myst III, IV, V and Uru itself. Then I'll believe you know better than Cyan. This is their show. They make the calls. Not us.

Just to avoid confusion, if you're referring to my "Cyan isn't always right", what I meant is this: you posted a list of what Cyan wants in the FCAL. But we might come up with a different suggestion for an item in the list, and Cyan might accept it as better than their initial idea. I meant nothing more.

I think everyone understands Cyan makes the decisions. But they may not be dead set on some of the things they want. From Chogon's post on MOUL, it seems he's pretty much ad-libbing it right now. He does seem open for suggestions.

[andylegate]

Appointee methode: My answer is that I don't do FCAL Panels. Period. Just like I don't do windows.

Election method: Sorry, I decline the nominations due to conflict of interest because I'm also a Writer, yadda yadda yadda yadda.

I dont' WANT to be on the panel. It's going to be very tedious and in my opinion BORING work. I'd rather build Ages, and explore new ones simply as a Maintainer.

However: any of you can write down in the proposal: Andy Legate may NOT serve on ANY FCAL panel, and I'll be right as rain with that. LESS work for me!

In anycase, as the proposal states: If a Writer is on the panel, they can not serve on that panel for any Age that they are writing.

Now you see the problem with elected members. There will have to be a stand in for Joe Writer who's on the panel, but a month down the road suddenly whats to make and AGe and apply for a FCAL.
With Appointees, the Guild Leaders simply go: Oh, okay, well step down. Let's see....okay, number 187? Who's number 187? Okay your up next!"

Election method: Okay we put in the runner up from the election.....What? What do you mean you've just submitted a FCAL?
You'd have to turn around and hold another election I guess for this one. :shrug: don't know how this would work. Then again, like I said, if the election can be stream lined, then a delay of a week or so would not be too bad at all. Elections that take a month, hurts the whole process.

Good questions.

[andylegate]

Just to avoid confusion, if you're referring to my "Cyan isn't always right", what I meant is this: you posted a list of what Cyan wants in the FCAL. But we might come up with a different suggestion for an item in the list, and Cyan might accept it as better than their initial idea. I meant nothing more.

No, there were others on here that have said various things from "Cyan isn't always right. " to "Just because it comes from Cyan doesn't mean we have to do it." etc, etc,.

However, further back on this post, it was said: "If you want to try and suggest a change that Cyan wants to keep in the FCAL Proposal, we can ask to change it, but again, it's their show. They have the final say."

Basically, every Guild Leader so far has agreed not to argue with Cyan. We might question, but so far everything they've told us (which has been splayed out all here) they had good reasons for what they wanted.

If anyone here or else where feels that Cyan is wrong about something, ask to change it. If they say "No." and you still fell that way, please, feel free to contact them yourself and continue to argue with them. I can't say how they'll react to that, but no one here is stopping anyone from contacting Cyan themselves.

[MustardJeep]

To anyone making the cross guild nomination bid again.........

That is why the Guilds have been implementing Guild Membership groups so members of other Guilds are visible as such.

[Trylon]

Ok,
I know how elections seem like the only fair solution and all, but if they have to be repeated every two to three months for the panel, after a couple of times most people will lose interest and don't really care to vote anymore. It'll just be "that stupid panel" again... Sorry, but the panel just won't turn out to be that important after a while, even though it seems so at the moment.

So how about this:
Everyone can fill in a panel membership application, and enter a pool of potential panel members
Then an automatic system will be put in place, choosing a random (or sequential) group of people from the pool, so that everyone has the same chances to get on it as the rest. It also selects two back-seat panel members for the 2 to 3 month term, who fill in when one regular panel member applies for FCA, or one or two are sick.
All applications can be shown in public for a week, allowing the entire guild to see it, and state their objections.
(Maybe a poll could be made of it, so people can place anonymous objections). By default, if there are no objections the applicant is into the pool.

I think it's a simple and fair system.
(The random selection will have a safeguard against people having one or more terms directly after each other.)

[Alahmnat]

Good night you guys talk a lot .

Another note on electing panel members to the FCA Panel:

Each guild could hold elections internally, but in an open part of their forum (does the GoA have that? Wait, I think Alahmnat said that they could use is DWPR).

That way everyone can see the election process to the panel.

Unless anyone ends up having objections to it, GoA will be running from DPWR for the foreseeable future... I've already got most of the infrastructure in place to handle the Guild's operations there, and it doesn't make much sense to start a new site if an existing one works just as well. That said, there's not a whole lot of structure to the Archivists at the moment, in part because I'm all about having an open door policy, and also partly because there hasn't historically been much interest in participating . I'm deliberating how to formalize DPWR into a more Guild-ready site without compromising a lot of the open-door status of the work we do there, and I'll likely be doing some forum re-working over the next few weeks to make that happen (having my time split between DPWR, The Archiver, and Mysterium is kind of cramping my productivity at the moment, heh...). In the event that we do hold elections or nominations or whathaveyou individually, there would be a place for that to happen publicly on DPWR.

I think a 2-per-Guild makeup would be fine for the panel, at least to get started. As wildly popular as the idea of UCC is, I suspect the actual number of approval requests will be somewhat smaller than the number of people interested in doing something (for any number of reasons). We may need to expand the panel at some point in the future, but for starters, I think 2 people per Guild would be enough to handle requests in a reasonable amount of time. This would, after all, be an initial approval before work could begin (unless I've misunderstood the past few pages of conversation), rather than an in-depth period of testing an actual Age for final release. For the more involved work of verifying a final Age's compliance with the previously-granted FCAL, I think it only makes sense to utilize more of the "regular" (non-panel) Guild members to assist in that process (GoMa testing for bugs/technical issues, Archivists reviewing the written and/or performed material for accuracy, etc.), otherwise, why have whole Guilds devoted to these jobs? As far as the election process itself is concerned, at the moment I'll leave the nitty-gritty of that conversation to you who have more time to devote to it... if I have anything salient to contribute, I'll be sure to stick my head in again.

I feel like I have a lot of catch-up work to do, coming into this process late as I am, and I apologize if I'm slow to react to the discussion going on in this thread and at the GoMa forum (where I still need to register). Aside from Blade and a couple of other newcomers to the fold, the GoA has largely been a one-man show for a couple of years now, and there's still a lot that needs to be done to get the GoA up to the same level of organization as the other five Guilds. Hopefully over the next few weeks, we'll have more in place, and it won't be just me having to tend all of the fires .

[Branan]

That would make the most sense to me

[Alahmnat]

One more thing that Blade has reminded me to bring up (and which he's PMed Andy about as well): what is the plan for approving story that doesn't necessarily require the creation of new Ages and such (i.e. strict role-playing in existing content, similar to what folks like J.D. Barnes or Subterranean Restorations was doing in MOUL), especially since such storytelling could get underway the day MORE opens, possibly well in advance of the finalized plans for FCAs? Would those stories need to go through the full FCAL process as well, or would there be a separate approval process for those that would be overseen primarily by the Archivists? Would this be something better aimed at Cyan?

I'll probably take this to the GoMa forums tomorrow as well... meanwhile I've got plenty of my own plannings to do .

[andylegate]

This FCAL is suppose to cover all content for Uru based games. Things for Myst, Riven, Myst III, IV, V and any other Cyan products, your request must still go to Cyan. Not a Panel.

THAT is something that Cyan was VERY clear about. The way to do that is make your request at legal@cyan.com

For someone just wanting to add clothing, a story, etc, for Uru:CC or MORE, they would still have to use the FCAL panel.

There is a reason for this: the above products won't generate as much requests now. MORE will cause a flood of request. So for the former, Tony at Cyan can handle those all by himself. But for Uru:CC and MORE, well imagine getting hundreds of requests flooding your in box asking if they can add this or that to DPWR, or change this and that. And you have to look at each one all by yourself.

That was Cyan's concern about UCC. Giving Tony a nervous break down.

The panel helps with the work load, but still gives everyone a fair shake: IE someone's Age looks like they just learned Blender yesterday does not mater. It's the functionality and any potential story conflicts that they check on. Quality is not up to us fans right now.

So as far as people only submitting story lines, etc, I don't see a problem with that, as having GoA members on the panel will make that work (that and RAWA explaining both to the GoA and to potential submittees what the guidelines and rules are).