Guild of Writers Leadership

[Trylon]

Currently, we have no formal distinction between a forum member and a guild member.
One a distinction is established, there might need to be some changes, or perhaps a distinction will never be established.

Currently there is also no rule that prevents people to be members of more than on guild. Who is to say that a member of the GoMa, who is registered here, is not also considering themselves a writer?

[Dovahn]

Nothing, to be sure. But at the same time, nothing prevents someone from creating fifty users on the forum to vote for their favored choice (unless there is that I don't know about...). With such an open system, the results to the poll could be swayed if someone was determined. (I guess what I'm saying is that my own point is moot).

Dovahn

EDIT: I reread the specifications, and I must misunderstand this:

Once the list is complete, it will be submitted as a standard Council Proposal, requiring 20% vote.
If the 20% is not made, the proposal will fall under a Council vote, with Trylon, Pryftan and Bad voting as acting Councilors.

It seems as though it's saying, if the people chosen by Trylon, Pryftan, and Bad are not voted in, then Trylon, Pryftan and Bad will vote on whether they are accepted. This makes no sense to me (because obviously they would vote yes), so I must be missing something.

EDIT 2: Or wait, does 20% mean 20% of the total number of forum members vote? Or 20% of the voters have to vote in favor of them?

[Trylon]

Once the list is complete, it will be submitted as a standard Council Proposal, requiring 20% vote.
If the 20% is not made, the proposal will fall under a Council vote, with Trylon, Pryftan and Bad voting as acting Councilors.

It seems as though it's saying, if the people chosen by Trylon, Pryftan, and Bad are not voted in, then Trylon, Pryftan and Bad will vote on whether they are accepted. This makes no sense to me (because obviously they would vote yes), so I must be missing something.
EDIT 2: Or wait, does 20% mean 20% of the total number of forum members vote? Or 20% of the voters have to vote in favor of them?

The 20% in the part you quote is a short reference to a standard council proposal. It means that for the vote to be fully valid, we need at least 20% of the active members on the vote. If the 20% is not met, it becomes a council vote, with the results of the poll counting as 2 additional votes. There the three you mention will act as acting councilors on this vote only.
If over 20% of the active members vote (either for or against it), the vote results are final. If under 20% of the active members vote, the results of that vote will count as two additional votes in the resulting process. You do the math

I did a quick math on the amount of total votes needed, and we currently have about 200 members, of whom about 150 (maximum) have posted at least once in the last 6 months. 20% of 150 equals a 30 vote minimum. I don't expect to get below that, do you?

Finally, please understand that the specific situation you mentioned (a council vote on this if the total number of votes ends up below 20%) was primarily added as an incentive for everyone to vote on this issue. Neither we, nor you really want to do that council vote

[D'Lanor]

I guess we could see this coming. The leadership virus is spreading here as well. Such a shame when there really is no need for it. Since we are all volunteers nobody can claim to have any "power" over another guild member. Personally I only work on an equal basis unless someone is paying me to boss me around.

More importantly, from the historical perspective this type of leadership is against the nature of guilds. Medieval guilds always put the collective before the individual and rank was determined only by craftsmanship.

I am not saying the tasks at hand are not useful but why put a leadership tag on it? If you do the work and/or organize it you gain respect. That is how it works.

Me an authority problem? What authority?

[Trylon]

/me hands D'Lanor a "Representative" sticker, so he can paste it over the "Leadership" tag

[D'Lanor]

hmm, representatives... Yes, that sounds much better.

[Aloys]

If we can create members group with our version of PhpBB then there could be one solution to this 'active members' issue: by having people register for voting.
A members group, called say 'voting people', would be created by one of the admin, and people would signup (maybe in a dedicated thread) to be part of that group. Then a specific subforum would be created to hosts the polls, which only the voting people could post in (and thus, could vote).
That would be a simple way to specify active members (as in 'active in the guild activities and evolution') versus people who are just active on the board without being involved in the more crucial aspects of the guild.

[AtionSong]

Let me start this post by saying that, for all the criticisms that I have, I applaud the effort of taking the initaitive to create a form of structure. Even with our disagreements about structure, I think we all agree that some sort of organization was needed, so thank you for doing that.

I do have several concerns about the structure though. The first thing is that it relies too heavily in pure numbers. On Wikipedia, whenever there is a nomination for the deletion of a page, the discussion page says "This is not a vote - it is a discussion to determine a consensus." Similarly, I feel that if our entire decisionmaking process is just how many people agree with something, and no arguments or discussion of the merit of a decision takes place, then the decisions could easily be completely invalid. I mean, it's very easy for even a moderately experienced programmer to make a program to rig polls, even with registration required. And that's not the only reason - lots of people vote for choices based on social pressures or uninformed decisions.

Also, I agree that, even though I have absolutely nothing against Trylon, Bad, or Pryftan, this policy puts an extreme amount of power into their hands. If nothing else, I think that there should be a more democratic process for starting off the choices for administration.

These are my two main complaints.

[Dovahn]

^ Trylon:
Of course; I get it now.

AtionSong, I like the point you raised, but I think that the process wouldn't be without discussion. In fact, I think before someone brought a motion to be voted on, they would discuss it first. That way it could be melded into the way that pleases the most number of people, and then a vote could be made (because there's no way for an actual consensus among us; we've already proven that ).

As for the three involved in the beginning voting and stuff, I think that their power lasts only until the vote has been held, so IMHO it's not too much. But one thing I don't quite get: are they choosing who to appoint, or who to nominate? In other words, will we be voting on a finalized council (a yes or no decision) or on individuals for various positions? I think the latter might be the better plan.

Dovahn

[Kato]

Here's how I think the voting should go down: the three people should decide on who they want on the Council and each separate person should have a poll. That way if Person X wins Councilor of Y but Person Z doesn't win Councilor of F, Person X can still be in, and another poll will simply be run for Councilor of F, using another nominee. This makes it a lot easier (and kind of a compromise).

Also, I think that the idea of a "voting people," group is inherently discriminatory. I think that, for now, until the future Council better defines "Guild membership," all active forum members should be considered "voting people."

-Kato