Be cautioned ....

greydragon wrote:

Eleri wrote:

Examining these two statements, it seems Cyan is saying:

"Go ahead and plan, and make a Guild of *whatever*, but we'll be making our own system in the future, when we're ready."

Yep

Quote:

What assurances do any of us have that any effort put towards building a guild, of any structure, will mean anything when Cyan launches 'official' Guilds?

None

Quote:

Why are we being asked to do work, when something different will be used by the Cyan in the future?

Who's asking you? Guilds will be months / years off.

Quote:

Shouldn't we be *WAITING* to organize, until Cyan shows us what their system is? Or are people putting cart before horse in their enthusiasm for the word GUILD?

You tell me. Even if Cyan came out today and said stop organizing guilds people would still do it.

Cyan is just giving you a heads up that Cyan version of the guild system might be different then the one produced by the fans.

So proceed at your own risk.

_________________

Montgomery - Maintainer Grand Master of Inspections (ret.)

I saw the response already, and have been thinking it over before saying anything.

I don't see that anything prevents us from being an unofficial guild, which is basically what we are starting up right now, anyway.

As I said in my response to Eleri's previous post, I'd like it if our group remained flexible enough to respond to what Cyan wants to do in the long-term, and be able to fill that role when it becomes available.

Y'know, we've got two choices -- keep moving forward, or stop and wait for Official Word From On High. I'd rather keep moving and be unofficial than stop where we are and get left behind.

_________________
Jishin's KI: 82165

I wish help the guild of the maintainers...what have to do to go into the guild? Or, does am able behaviour to help the Guild of the Mantainers?

_________________
Quelli del QUARTIERE ITALIANO

There is no "Official" Guild yet we are in the planning stages.

Another part of the discussion is going on at the Assembly of Guilds forum.
http://uruguilds.org/uruguilds/

If you see a topic that interests you feel free to join in, we are starting to plan some small things.

Also there is a bigger group meeting on the 20th of this month for all the groups; so they can exchange ideas.

_________________
Waymet

Interesting stuff in Reteltee's interview. What do you people think about the firefighter role? That, I think, is rather nifty.

I'm all for the protecting of the Cavern. I just really, really don't want to have problems with the policing thing causing problems with the rest of the Explorers.

_________________
Jishin's KI: 82165

It was a very interesting Interview.

That Reteltee sees it as restoring the guilds to the state of the original groups as they moved to the cavern is a interesting point. Could it be that the Cate quote everyone is worried about is actually a mis-spoken line from her speech?

Anyway it seems our humble adviser is a bit more involved then we were lead to believe by his quiet manner at our meetings. We might do well to invite him to speak up a bit more when he's around, and we are hashing out issues.

_________________
Waymet

Perhaps. That would be very good if so.

I think it would behoove us to take a closer look at the earlier roles of the Maintainers, given that that seems to be the intended focus. It would be really keen if Cyan/the DRC actually let us take on a fuller maintenance role in repairing and restoring the Cavern and the Ages. You know, doing "maintenance"!

I could see that the Maintainers might have a wide variety of roles that we haven't touched on yet, or have only skimmed over briefly, thinking that it would be too difficult to implement. You know what? Sky's the limit. (Well, OK, maybe the Cavern ceiling is the limit ... )

Let's dream big and see what we can do. Do a little more research and see what else we can take on.

_________________
Jishin's KI: 82165

I agree; I'm very impresed with Reteltee, now that I've heard him talk for more than 2 sentances.

One thing that came up that got me thinking was the idea that the "5 GuildMasters" might somehow make decisions in the affairs of the cavern. This echoes what Cate said, which people pretty much feel uncomforatable with. I took that and compared it to something I recall Ja'de saying in her post about the GoG structure.

The GoG has several GuildMasters, and they work as a committee. I like that immensely. So I'd like to propose for the Maintainers something similar. I think 5 is a nice round number, so for now my proposal is that we appoint 5 GuildMasters -- all equal -- who will vote on all decisions ordinarily left to "the" GuildMaster. And one of those 5 will be designated as the Speaker -- the one who talks to the rest of the guild and the community. No higher rank, just an additional responsibility. The Speaker job can be rotated -- in fact so can the GuildMasters, but I think it more practical to just get guild member consensus on who those are, and let them stay until voted out or they step down. And the number need not stay 5, but it should always be an odd number to avoid tie votes.

I'd like to ask Ja'de or another Greeter how their GuildMasters we chosen.

Thoughts? Also, I never heard any reaction to my proposal on the All-Guilds Meeting thread about a Guild Council. I'd like to hear some.

Obviosuly there's no hurry on ether of these, since ther are no "official" guilds as the DRC will eventually define them. But we can still create the structure and use it going forward to formalize making decisions, like what mission statment to use, or what recruitment language we settle on.

_________________

Montgomery - Maintainer Grand Master of Inspections (ret.)

Montgomery --

I thought about this overnight because I wanted to really think it through.

I think it's a good idea. I like it a lot, particularly that it allows for a greater democratic process than a single GuildMaster would. I'm not finding any serious holes, though I'd want a policy in place for either rotation or resignation before anyone gets put in a job like that. I'm sure that's part of what you're thinking, so no big deal, just wanted it mentioned.

However, I wanted to ask you if it would be a wise decision to do any actual appointment now, or just work on getting the process in place.

We haven't done a lot of advertising in the Cavern at large to get a wider spread of explorers, and I'm thinking that it might be desireable to make sure that people find out about the guild and have a little more opportunity to join and contribute before we start doing anything about officer-types.

Just a thought.

As for the guild council, I think that it's still a bit premature. There's still a lot of discussion going on with the other guilds. I would like to talk about it at the All-Guilds meeting, once we've started shaking things out between the guilds.

_________________
Jishin's KI: 82165

Your Idea has merit Montgomery, I'd like to see this brought up in the All Guild meeting Monday. Not for Maintainers specificly but how all the groups are trying to or thinking of orginizing themselves.

While this break period between the episodes has been rather busy with planning, I think something as big as the setup of the group structure needs to be in the next break. Reteltee said in his interview that the DRC/Cyan have some fairly specific plans, and as yet we have gotten no information on this from them. What gets said during the episode by the DRC may very well alter the course of our discussions and planning just as much as GreyDragon saying Cyan wants the Guilds to have an IC presence.

From the All Guild meeting to the start of the next episode really needs to be focused on polishing the rough ideas that have been tossed out. We have a few IC ideas, and Reteltee has implied many many more, but it is all going to take time. The GoW is months if not years away from being operational, and the DRC is one week out of four so contacting them is a drawn out process.

What I would like to see is a brief overview of the things we are thinking about pulled together in the form of a single KI journal, and a second KI journal with the specific questions and requests we want to ask the DRC about. Reteltee has said that he plans on being something of a informed representitive rather then a "liasion" so we really need to be giving him some well written information to deal with. The interview showed our Guild advisor was a little out of date on some of the Maintainer specific things, but we have been talking fast and furious among ourselves so that was at least half expected.

We are not even all the way through the first break since the guilds were announced and a lot of progress has been made. More progress then I would have thought for a group that doesn't officially have rights to their own name yet. If we wrap up this break with preperations for the episode I think we will be in a good position for whatever the DRC might spring next.

_________________
Waymet

Jishin & MJ,

Thanks. I'm actually a little concerned about the trend of people "joining" these guilds, since they don't actually exist yet in any form (except the GOG. Even the Cartographers is not a direct transition into the "official" guild). So I ammend my proposals:

For the Maintainers -- Let's for the time being call the 5-person committee the "Guild of Maintainers Preperatory Committee" or the "GoMa Interim Committee." It might turn out that the members of this committee will retain their position when the official Guild is launched, simply due to their experience and familiarity with the subject. But a new election or appointment process would be in order.

I'd like to announce at the All-Guild Meeting my intention (and invite other pre-guilds to follow our example), then post here first a call for nominations, then a poll where anyone can vote for their favorite among all nominees. (I don't know if you can set up polls in here to allow for more than one vote). Than after a suitable time -- say 1 week -- the 5 with the most votes will become the official Committee. As for all of the ins-and-outs of policy and etc, I think it would be most practical to have the committee in place to form the policies. Unless you feel strongly about formalizing a process for removal of committee members.

If so, I'd say we just do it this way: anybody (since there are no actual guilds to join, so no way to restrict to members-only) can call for a vote of no confidence for a given committee member or the whole committee. At which point a new poll will be posted. We just need to decide how to handle even numbers. Does a replacement need to be elected before a sitting member can be removed? Do we handle both in the same poll? Or does committee business go on hold until a replacement is selected? How do we establish the criteria for the election of a single candidate? So many votes? Or a yay or nay poll? Do we need to call for nominations first, or can anyone simply say, "I think Joe (or I) would do a better job than Montgomery -- I call for a vote of no-confidence." Then we set up a poll like this:

>Keep Montgomery
>Fire Montgomery and replace with Joe
>Fire Montgomery and replace with write-in
>Fire Montgomery and replace with TBD in a future nomination

Then close the poll after 1 week. And set an arbitrary minimum number of votes for any given change.

As for the All-Guild representative committee -- I'd call it the "All-Guild Exploratory Committee." But I'd wait until there is some elected or otherwise agreed-upon body of leaders for all pre-guilds from which to tap representatives.

My reason for wanting to move forward with this is that my spider sense is tingling, and I fear Cate or the DRC may wish to draft or court the leadership of the eventual guilds and attempt to influence them. I would feel more comfortable if there was a leadership body in place rather than a single explorer. The other reason is that I really want to promote the idea that merrit and to some degree popularity (or recognition) are the criteria for leadership, and not simply the strongest personality or the first person to claim the position.

_________________

Montgomery - Maintainer Grand Master of Inspections (ret.)

Last edited by Montgomery on Sat Sep 08, 2007 12:46 am; edited 1 time in total

Montgomery, one of the first things I asked was that we need to make a committee to help prepare it. My ideas were different, but as things went along I thought it was a bad idea. This though is a good idea and the voting process will make a whole lot more fair. How soon we do it will have to be decided, but I think this may work.

Also, the idea for a guild assembly is also a good idea. I think the role will be like a Grandmaster of the guild, but less of an executive job and more of a representation job.

We seem to have some things going and as things start to get more figured out, things are going to slow down. As things slow down, we may lose some people because of the pace, but that will show dedication.

The comment about how everything we may do could all of a sudden by changed is a big fear, but not something that we should stop everything for, as someone stated. Since the guild idea is very loose right now, we can still stay flexible and whenever we need to adjust, we adjust.

It's cool to come on these forums and read about all these things that are happening. I was almost afraid when deciding to devote to this that things would just be shot down and become a waste. I don't think that is happening this time around. I don't know about you guys, but I want to make this work so that Cyan's job can be even easier because really, they're having a tough time and any help they can get will probably be appreciated more than we can understand.

-Warren Weisstieg

Just a note so far I have 57 people noted down as interested in the guild.

This includes everyone that has posted as interested or come to the meetings that were held.

I only have a little under half of the KI numbers.

_________________
Waymet

MJ: Probably a silly question, but have you checked the complete KI list maintained in the General Discussion forum? You might be able to find some there. Also, let me know what names you're missing numbers for -- I tried to stick anyone who came by the meetings on my Buddy list, so I may have some of the missing numbers.

Montgomery: a temporary steering committee is OK, but I still think we ought to wait just a bit longer, at least until after the All-Guilds. Things might come to light that would change our plans. It will give us more time to talk with GoGreeters and see what they did, and what pitfalls they ran into. It'll also give us some time to collect KI numbers and make sure that the folks who have expressed interest get the chance to express their opinions.

Warren -- Thumbs up from me. We can do this. We have a great group with a lot of enthusiasm, and we've already put in a lot of work. It's good to have such a terrific team, and I'm glad we didn't choke when things sounded like they'd be different than what we envisioned.

_________________
Jishin's KI: 82165

Jishin wrote:

Montgomery: a temporary steering committee is OK, but I still think we ought to wait just a bit longer, at least until after the All-Guilds. Things might come to light that would change our plans. It will give us more time to talk with GoGreeters and see what they did, and what pitfalls they ran into. It'll also give us some time to collect KI numbers and make sure that the folks who have expressed interest get the chance to express their opinions.

Jishin, my plan was to have a framework for how the voting process would work and for what the committee would be responsible for to present at the All-Guilds Meeting, and announce a call for nominees to be collected on the AoG forum.

That would also be a good opportunity to collect KI#s. We might try to establish a membership base in the "pre-Guild." Which would essentially be the OOC/forum version of wearing a maroon t-shirt: showing support. No qualifications required.

_________________

Montgomery - Maintainer Grand Master of Inspections (ret.)