Rusty_Russell wrote:

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The first question, in my mind, is not "what should the GoM look like" - but "what needs should the GoM serve."

I agree completely.

Does the GoMe have a mission statement yet?

I think a better question is "Who's going to create the Mission Statement?"

To quote a line from the Disney/Pixar film Robots, "See a need, fill a need" How's that for a mission statement? Or a motto at least.

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Lynnutte wrote:

To quote a line from the Disney/Pixar film Robots, "See a need, fill a need" How's that for a mission statement? Or a motto at least.

Amen. Don't need much more mission statement than that!

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What Lynutte and Eleri just said!

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Lynnutte wrote:

To quote a line from the Disney/Pixar film Robots, "See a need, fill a need" How's that for a mission statement? Or a motto at least.

Lol, it's true. When all else fails, Pixar knows the answer.

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Well that was simple though we may wish to flesh out the wording so it sounds more distinguished.

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Unless specifically stated otherwise all posts by me are my own and not official TCT statements or policy.

I think simple is better.....succinct...says it all.... (Pixar must know something! lol)

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Robots wasn't by Disney or Pixar. It was by Twentieth Century Fox.


Sorry to burst your bubble.

Big post coming up now...

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OK, back on topic.

In order to keep this nonpersonal, I've removed the names of the persons who originally asked these questions. This is my "one post" response to a number of questions and comments made during the meeting, which I was unfortunately unable to attend. (I was out enjoying my birthday at that time.)

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How do you differentiate between and independant and an organisation? I dont know any independants. I am independant as is Thend, but we both are considered organisations.

I do not like the idea of shoehorning people into "organizations" in order for them to be members of the proposed Guild.

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If the guild of messengers puts out its own content, the other organisations would lose viewers completely. Look at the difference between speculation given by a normal explorer and when reteltee speaks.

This may be the case for organizations that depend upon content from Cyan or the DRC. Much of Reteltee's perceived authority is derived from his communication with the DRC. We do not yet know how much the Guild of Messengers will be communicating much with the DRC. Furthermore, there are a number of excellent productions that do not need information from the DRC. Do the DRC Safety Alert movies, the Guild of Comedy productions, the Great Tree documentaries, or KI Toons depend on being spoon-fed information from the DRC? Would the viewing populations of these works dwindle away if the Guild of Messengers produced news documentaries? My answer: Hardly.

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What I'd like to see the Messengers become is a service organization. I'd also like to see the Messengers provide a training and education service for newcomers, so they could learn how it's done.

This is the same view I have for the Messengers. As others have stated, the Messengers need to exist to serve the community - not to serve other organizations. Yet it is possible to do both. As others have suggested, the Guild of Messengers could provide "raw" content that all organizations and individuals could access and put to good use. For example, I've been sending videos I've captured during the latest episodes to another organization for use in their productions; under this Guild model, I would upload my videos to the Guild, where they would become available for all organizations and individuals to use, rather than the exclusive use of just one. The videos are pretty useless on their own... there's no reason an individual would go to the Guild of Messengers for this content unless he or she intended to use it in his or her own creation. There is no good reason to specifically restrict access to the information by "consumers"; if someone really wants it, let them have it. If the Guild is also privy to special information from the DRC, that can be put into press releases, and while some explorers may prefer to obtain that information directly from the Guild, other organizations could use the information in podcasts, videocasts, and printed publications such as the Firemarble that aggregate and format content neatly for the public. This aspect would be mostly "out of cavern."

The same person continued in response to a question:

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They'd have a strong in-cavern presence: distributing news and events info through KI mail.

I'm not entirely certain I agree with this, at least at the moment while KI mail, KI paging, and face to face discussion are the only methods we have available for the dissemination of information within the Cavern. However, aside from a few exceptions such as Mr. Fitz' lovely "URU Action News" (of which I sadly haven't seen a copy in Ages...), there also cannot be said to be much competition in this area anyway, so I can't see how any of the legacy organizations would object.

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We have all these great videos out there that no one can find unless they've been around forever.

Boy and how. Videos aren't the only resource that suffers from the scattering of resources through the community. Myst Embassy's Nexus attempted to organize links to all of the content, but it has fallen short of what we need. For example, there is no link to the Firemarble on it.

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The way I see the guild of messengers working is this. The guild of messengers will be set up as a conduit for the flow of information from the source to the news organisations that will give the information to the explorers.

After the above statement, a complex, but well thought out model was proposed; I won't repeat it here, but it seemed to be designed with good objectives in mind, rather than being designed to create objectives, so I liked it. This person went on to say:

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Anyone who wants to report news should register as a member organisation to gain the benefit of the information, once accepted they can broadcast.

I believe registering just for the receipt of information from the GoM should not be necessary. Registering to contribute makes sense, as does registering to contribute in decisions that are placed before the guild (voting). I don't think individuals should have to self-incorporate to participate. And, I disagree with this next part:

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Also if they register, they can feed info they collect straight into the guild at level 1 after they have proven they can give accurate information

This seems at first like a really good idea for reducing the amount of rumor-chasing required by the Guild, but in the end I think it may be smarter to just fact-check everything where possible. A trusted organization can betray that trust and it could produce a tremendous embarassment for the Guild.

Personally, I do not like the proposed requirement of registering as an organization that was reiterated; this goes back to my first point at the top. I am me. I am not "Marten Productions, Inc" and I want to be treated as a person, not as an entity.

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Looking at guild systems from other games we see complex levels of hierarchy present in low age games (e.g WoW).

Perhaps immaturity contributes to overcomplexity. I prefer keeping things as simple as possible. I don't believe the model proposed was too complex, but I don't think it is reasonable to use "low age games" as an excuse for overdesigning this Guild. Also, I think that eliminating certain terminology ("level 1, level 2, level 3") and replacing it with titles ("Group Accuracy, Group Literacy Red, Group Literacy Blue") would make participants feel more equal and less stratified. And, don't restrict "voting", if there is really anything for the Guild to vote about, to one group.

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If multiple explorers from one organisation have lvl 1 positions, they may end up swaying the vote. I just consider it a bad idea for one organisation to have multiple votes.

I'm concerned here because voting (such as it may be) would be restricted to a small, sanctified body of the Guild rather than being placed open to the Guild membership under this model. I am also concerned about the apparent paranoia of some sort of vast power struggle that seemed prevalent through the last part of the discussion.

I'd like to see a little less panicing over such unnecessary formality. There are enough Messenger-supporting explorers in the Cavern today to ensure that, even if every messenger has his or her own vote in a flat Republic organization, no single legacy group with all of its members could dominate a vote (whatever they might be voting on). That could change with time if a group ran a very strong membership drive, but if the organization seems threatened by an imbalance, I think the rules could be changed before the Guild lost control.

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I saw a remarkable thing in the Writers preguild that I think could help here. It would be painful, but it would also forge a tigher community and give this pre-guild a more powerful voice. Quite simply, I saw that the various age-building orgs were going to freely and without discussion, dissolve.

I am not surprised to see that bearers of certain grudges would be reluctant to support this idea.

A key problem that rests before the Guild of Messengers is a problem that could yet afflict the Writers though it hasn't - an edict of professionalism. Per my understanding, the rift between TCT and CCN members stemmed from a disagreement over creative control when one person decided that another's work was substandard. This disagreement snowballed through a series of mistakes, and today CCN and TCT are now separate entities due to as-yet-unresolved ideological differences.

Messaging, like Writing, is an art form; one person's trash may be another person's Picasso. Legibility and accuracy were earlier stated as important traits... and I'd agree with that... but supporters of the Messengers need to be careful not to travel too far down the road of defining what is and what isn't acceptable product from Guild members. In my opinion, the separation of CCN and TCT resulted from some very childish behavior. Worry less about the standard you're going to impose on others; focus more about how you can serve the community. Ultimately, consumers will decide if they like a product or not - you do not need to protect them.

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Speaking as someone without any ties to any existing news organizations, as just an average explorer who wants to help - I would like to see the guild pull together all the disparate news sources and make them easily accessible to the explorers, and I would like to see especially an in-cavern newstand, or primitive equivelent (Kichain) until such a newstand could be made to exist. I don't need a guild to accumulate the news and offer a central dissemination point. There's a lot of amazing work being done out there now and I would not want the guild to discourage or interfere with any of it.

This is the sort of feedback the preGuild should be soliciting, and listening to.

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I don't care who made the movie. At least I got the title of the movie and the quote right, and the quote still fits. So there.

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My concern about allowing every guild member to vote is how much time that would take. But that may not be a problem if we put a time limit on when votes will be accepted, such as a few days or so. Just a thought of mine. If it's bad, chalk it up to lack of food and teaching all day.

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Lynnutte wrote:

My concern about allowing every guild member to vote is how much time that would take. But that may not be a problem if we put a time limit on when votes will be accepted, such as a few days or so. Just a thought of mine. If it's bad, chalk it up to lack of food and teaching all day.

I think that a time limited(one or two weeks) voting but where single explorers, who care about the guild, and not organisations can vote is the best way to do it if needed. I am not sure but isn't it like the model that the Greeters have?
If a member takes the time to vote, it shows that he is interested in the Guild even though his work in the actual guild may not be much.

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"When you want your message out in the cavern, use the Guild of Messengers."

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If voting is being done in the game, we could use an in-game mechanism to facilitate it. Do I hear http://support.mystonline.com/ calling me to file a ticket for a feature request?

However, out of the cavern, we have this glorious invention called the internet. There are voting softwares out there. We just need a trusted host who'll manage a voting system with honesty and integrity. Oh, wait. Do I hear http://support.mystonline.com/ calling me to file a ticket for a feature request?

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Voting would also diffuse naysayers ...

The issue I would forsee is making sure all Messengers were aware, well in advance, of the voting topic and time. Maybe we could look to the Guild of Greeters for techniques that have worked for them.

However, I still think we're jumping the gun on looking at structure. We talked about "See a need, fill a need." Should we start a new thread to discuss what needs we see now?

EDIT: I created the above proposed thread. Let's start discussing needs the GoM can fill!

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