Are U you? Or are U the group, org or hood you affliate with? I have joined several groups, two hoods, and my friends are citizens of different countries. Does that mean anyone of them speaks for me?

I have a feeling that the "made up" notion you can't speak for yourself, and that you always speak for a group you are affiliated with is a strategy for some.

I really don't think forum posters or in cavern explorers expect someone to speak for them. But I could be wrong? It could be more complicated than I think. If it is, I would rather be a member of no internal cavern group, because I may change my mind about affiliation from time to time dpending on my interests. For example, I don't think the Guild of Artisans would appreciate me speaking for them. I was a member of that guild during prologue and loved being there, but I've had no time to get involved lately. This does not mean I won't go back. It only means it would be pretty audacious for me to speak for them now .

Could we just say that no matter who you affiliate with, you have the right to your own opinion and stand in for yourself once and for all? When you go to a meeting and you represent your group, you can state so. Otherwise I figure you are there on your own. Or is this a too complicated a notion/proposal to put out there?

Ruby
Ahvree

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Well, I may be wrong, but I suspect that, again, the confusion is over voting.

Quote:

Could we just say that no matter who you affiliate with, you have the right to your own opinion and stand in for yourself once and for all? When you go to a meeting and you represent your group, you can state so. Otherwise I figure you are there on your own. Or is this a too complicated a notion/proposal to put out there?

I don't think anyone has ever refuted this, though it depends on how you define 'stand for oneself'.

No one has ever said that you can not 'represent' yourself. Everyone is always free to represent their own ideas, thoughts, opinions, whatever at a meeting. Just say so.

In the context of voting (ironically, a concept to which we haven't even gotten to the stage of discussing properly, with all interested parties present), I don't think its that clear cut. The reality is is that it is impossible to be sure that someone is speaking entirely from their own PoV, with no other agendas, and that they will do so 100% of the time.

But I've said enough. At this stage, voting is really a nonissue anyway. Perhaps this is an argument for another time...

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Quote:

When you go to a meeting and you represent your group, you can state so. Otherwise I figure you are there on your own.

I don't have an argument with that. That's at a meeting though.

My concerns at present are only with representations on organising / governing bodies.

Speaking personally

If you go to a meeting as a member of a group, you will have to be clear when you represent and when you don't represent your group. You can say - "this is the group position" and "this is my position".

I don't think that you can depend on people reading the forums, or of people knowing the "rules" in advance. If there is some confusion, you need to state it, every time. If people ask you the opinion of your group, and you don't know it, they you say that too.

And yes, if you are a group representative, for decision or voting purposes (we aren't at that point with Guild of Messengers), then you represent your group. Where your group has an opinion or point of view, you state that. You vote and state the opinion and needs of your group, whether or not they exactly conform with your needs an opinion. That's when you are in voting/decision meeting, and you represent your group.

I've been doing this for so long in the work world - I don't even think about it anymore. I try to be clear when I speak for myself and when i speak for my organization. I also do it a mod. People aren't generally confused when I'm giving a personal opinion, but I still try to say when something is my personal opinion and not a mod thing.

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Last edited by mszv on Tue Sep 18, 2007 2:39 am; edited 1 time in total

mszv wrote:

If there is some confusion, you need to state it, every time.

I've boldfaced two words in mszv's comment above. I want to emphasize, It isn't enough to say it twice, 2 hours apart during a very long meeting. It must be stressed continually... whenever you speak, if any chance of confusion persists.

I believe that Ahvree is correct, and the identity issue is a red herring, and that there are other reasons this issue came up in the meeting on Saturday. But, I disagree with her on this point:

Ahvree wrote:

When you go to a meeting and you represent your group, you can state so. Otherwise I figure you are there on your own.

As Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka said: "Strike that. Reverse it. Thank you." If you're a prominent and well-known head member of a group, and you go to a meeting where the context is something your group would be interested in, then most participants will expect you to represent your group unless otherwise stated, and you must instead specify when you are speaking for yourself. In my experience, that is how life just is.

Right now, speaking on this topic, I don't have to worry much if people will ask, "Is he speaking for himself, or for The Great Tree?". But if I go to a meeting to discuss Douglas Sharper's latest controversy, the atmosphere is different... if I'm speaking for myself there, I know I'll need to state that clearly.

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mszv wrote:

Speaking personally

If you go to a meeting as a member of a group, you will have to be clear when you represent and when you don't represent your group. You can say - "this is the group position" and "this is my position".

mszv, I don't think you can count on group members remembering either. I figure some won't remember, so I state * "I am here representing myself".

The rules of moderation will not always allow a person to state their postion until the person is called.

Ruby
Ahvree

*No, it is not in the chatlog some of you have seen. The first portion of the pre-meeting is not in everyone's log. .

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Quote:

The rules of moderation will not always allow a person to state their position until the person is called.

...at which point you state your position, whether it be an individual or group one. If you haven't said anything yet, it doesn't particularly matter what PoV you're coming from, as you haven't actually said what your position is

Unless I'm missing something here, which is possible.

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This is really a problem only for group leaders and lightning rods. People just sort of fall into believing that someone strongly associated with a group will be speaking for that group, or as an expression of the group's ideas. This is fair, for the most part, and is easy to address: "I'm speaking for myself, not the Rooftop Volunteer Group." Not that I'm strongly associated with any group, but I needed an example.

The lightning rod type is less fortunate. Lightning has its own will and strikes mostly unpredictably, although it tends to have a long memory. The events that turned someone into a lightning rod can be long past but the memory is kept fresh by assumptions. This can be handled by each person examining their assumptions regularly to see if they're still valid. We all make assumptions, and we have to in order to reduce our complex world to something comprehensible. When the assumptions are no longer true they need to be discarded, and the first step in this process is to listen to what a person is saying instead of listening to what I think they're saying.

In other words, it's time for a fresh start.

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this problem has arisen out of the notion that some people may be trying to sway the discussion one way or another by influencing the members of their organisation to agree on a "party line" and push and push that particular idea.

Just an idea to take into account when answering this topic

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Samsbase wrote:

this problem has arisen out of the notion that some people may be trying to sway the discussion one way or another by influencing the members of their organisation to agree on a "party line" and push and push that particular idea.

The implicit accusation that CCN and/or Ahvree are wielding a "party line" to control the direction of the preGuild is without merit. And in the hopes of enlightening those who do not understand why, I will now explain:

CCN members are a diverse bunch and finding a party line among them is something they've never desired or cared about. CCN's members work well together because they see collaboration and cooperation as a road to accomplishing all of their independent goals. Standards of professionalism may vary from CCN member to CCN member, but the members do not gang up on one another or criticize when one person isn't doing things according to another's standard. Each member has his or her own projects which cannot be done alone, and he or she depends upon the others for assistance. It is this environment in which creativity flourishes rather than being stifled.

It is for the above reason that CCN has thus far resisted the proposal that they must have a single representative on the Guild of Messengers. Selecting a representative would require that the group figure out what their party line would be. A representative has a binary vote - a rep cannot vote "60% for, 40% against."

With the "notion" that Sam mentioned flying about, it seems unlikely as ever that CCN could agree upon a party line, because if they actually did, some will accept as a foregone conclusion that the party line will be used to steamroll discussions.

Never mind that ANY group with sufficient members could steamroll discussions with sufficient member involvement. And CCN is hardly the largest group with such a capability.

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personally I've always seen it as if a person of a group starts talking and expressing an opinion it's the groups opinion unless stated otherwise.

example: a cyan employee states something on the forums. Unless the employee says otherwise I see it coming from cyan, but if the employee says in my opinion(kinda like mszv stated first before posting). Then I have no way of knowing if a cyan big wigs told said employee to make the statement.

The way I look at it is if you know a person is apart of a certain group you could always ask if its thier opinion or the groups opinion. Aswell as the person stateing it aswell.

Ruby, is this a question posed by you, or the Guild of Messengers?

</facetious>

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@Pryftan:

It was posed by I to the GOM, or any explorer who wanted to discuss identity. Some posters were discussing this topic in another thread. It was suggested someone move the topic to a new thread, instead of cluttering up the old one.

I did. , but I don't think it is much of an issue, unless one doesn't agree we are explorers with individual voices. The thread should go away soon.

Ruby
Ahvree

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From my POV, I can see some of it in the Guild of Maintainers too. There are clear leaders, but they don't want to admit. And people pushed alot of ideas that had no true content and purpose in them. This is mostly because everyone wanted to be a Maintainer. The smaller more appropriate ideas got swept under the floor-board most likely because they were too hard to deal with.

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Marten wrote:

Samsbase wrote:

this problem has arisen out of the notion that some people may be trying to sway the discussion one way or another by influencing the members of their organisation to agree on a "party line" and push and push that particular idea.

The implicit accusation that CCN and/or Ahvree are wielding a "party line" to control the direction of the preGuild is without merit. And in the hopes of enlightening those who do not understand why, I will now explain:

CCN members are a diverse bunch and finding a party line among them is something they've never desired or cared about. CCN's members work well together because they see collaboration and cooperation as a road to accomplishing all of their independent goals. Standards of professionalism may vary from CCN member to CCN member, but the members do not gang up on one another or criticize when one person isn't doing things according to another's standard. Each member has his or her own projects which cannot be done alone, and he or she depends upon the others for assistance. It is this environment in which creativity flourishes rather than being stifled.

It is for the above reason that CCN has thus far resisted the proposal that they must have a single representative on the Guild of Messengers. Selecting a representative would require that the group figure out what their party line would be. A representative has a binary vote - a rep cannot vote "60% for, 40% against."

With the "notion" that Sam mentioned flying about, it seems unlikely as ever that CCN could agree upon a party line, because if they actually did, some will accept as a foregone conclusion that the party line will be used to steamroll discussions.

Never mind that ANY group with sufficient members could steamroll discussions with sufficient member involvement. And CCN is hardly the largest group with such a capability.

Firstly I wasn't directing that at anyone in particular, no matter who you think I was aiming at, it wasn't actually directed at anyone, just an explanation of a section of this debate.

Secondly, how could a party line steamroll discussions if that intire party line only had one voice ?

You are also stating one of the strongest arguments FOR the formation of a council because seeing that this is in fact a possibility if there was multiple voices from one organisation in a discussion (instead of an administrating voting council) then yes of course they could sway the discussion one way or another if a "party line" is set. Also a "party line" may not have been officially set, however many organisations in the cavern may be biased towards one topic in a discussion depending on the means they use to report their news.

e.g Cyan offer the Guild of messengers a choice on how we can recieve info from them, there are only two choices. The first being a written "press release" and the second beign a podcast. I of course would favour the podcast as it helps me out as I could play that on my show (or extracts from etc.) However The Archiver may prefer a press release.

In this way, a "party line" can develop due to the nature of the organisation. And therefore I think the strongest reason for having one voting member from each of the organisations in the cavern is that in this case this bias can never develop as everyone is producing and giving information out in slightly different ways and therefore the full spectrum of opinions on any such issues can be seen and decisions made effectively.

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