AW: Thanks, kinda busy though. You're doing just fine.

johnsojc: That's an even better answer than I had before, so again I'm grateful.

I'm pretty sure, since we've covered all three extremes, that the answer won't change this time at least

Still not quite sure what the problem is here. You're asking for clear Guild statements. Here goes:

Writers: Make new game levels and clothing.
Maintainers: Check fan levels for bugs.
Messengers: Spread information in and out of the cavern.
Cartographers. Make maps of new game levels.
Greeters: Help explorers.

So why was this so hard and why was this needed?

_________________
-Whilyam

Whilyam wrote:

Still not quite sure what the problem is here. You're asking for clear Guild statements. Here goes:

Writers: Make new game levels and clothing.
Maintainers: Check fan levels for bugs.
Messengers: Spread information in and out of the cavern.
Cartographers. Make maps of new game levels.
Greeters: Help explorers.

So why was this so hard and why was this needed?

Ummm... perhaps all the posting, second guessing, and speculation is needed to curb an unreasonable urge to scream or roll up into a ball and gibber foolishly while waiting for MO:RE to come online. Just a thought...

Whilyam wrote:

So why was this so hard and why was this needed?

Because, bluntly, the official threads are hard to follow and nobody has hours to spend reading through every post in them to find pertinent information.

The summaries are appreciated, if a bit late for the party.

Whilyam wrote:

Still not quite sure what the problem is here. You're asking for clear Guild statements.

So why was this so hard and why was this needed?

Maybe easy for an old and experienced user like you but
try putting yourself into a new gamer's shoes and... !!!!!!!
(do not drink too much lake water, in Ae'gura)

Artic_Wagon wrote:

Whilyam wrote:

Still not quite sure what the problem is here. You're asking for clear Guild statements.

So why was this so hard and why was this needed?

Maybe easy for an old and experienced user like you but
try putting yourself into a new gamer's shoes and... !!!!!!!
(do not drink too much lake water, in Ae'gura)

Very well said, thanks!

Wish I had put it that way first... :L

Ed Oscuro wrote:

Also, I don't know who is "officially" taking care of it at the moment, but I read something about the Guild of Messengers facilitating dialogue between Guilds. Is this actually true, and if so how is it working out? I'm interested to hear.

Someone at the Guild of Maintainers had suggested that the Messengers do something like the above, but at this time, the Guild of Messengers is not pursuing the idea. We started to talk about it, and then word spread that we were talking about it, and we very quickly received some valid concerns that we took into consideration. Mainly, (a) we already have the Guilds area here for any sort of communication that a guild wants to make public to all other groups, (b) a Messenger service between guilds doesn't really add a lot of value (direct guild-to-guild communication is better than using the Messengers as a proxy) and (c) determining who specifically would be involved in such a project, to the satisfaction of all affected parties, would prove to be challenging in some cases (particularly for loosely organized groups where no single person speaks for that group). Internally, the Messengers experienced a similar problem when we set up our affiliates program, and I really don't care to re-live that experience on a more community-wide scale.

What the Messengers are doing now is, entirely for its own purposes and within its own structure, setting up preferred contact persons for each guild that may want to interact with us. Each of these preferred contact persons is a member of of the Guild of Messengers. We're calling this team of preferred contact persons the "GoMe Liaisons." Our arrangement may then serve as a model or inspiration for the remaining guilds to work out how they'll interact with each other, without the Messengers being directly involved.

Ed Oscuro wrote:

Finally, a random thought - since Guilds can have acronyms that come the same as another, why not add a second letter? i.e. GoMt for Guild of Maintaners, GoMs for Guild of Messengers. Not so important but at least worth my sentences.

Andros has already mentioned the acronyms for the Messengers and Maintainers. Other conflicts are bound to arise as more guilds form, though; for example, GoA - is that Archivists, or Artists? Tweek seems to be trying to sidestep the issue by inserting the word "Fine", so it's Guild of Fine Artists, or GoFA. That should leave GoA clear for the Archivists... at least, until a modern analogue of the Guild of Analysts is formed.

_________________

MOULa 26838 | Prologue Video Project: On Hold pending Minkata support
Visit rel.to to explore Myst, Uru, and D'ni communities!

Ed Oscuro wrote:

Whilyam wrote:

So why was this so hard and why was this needed?

Because, bluntly, the official threads are hard to follow and nobody has hours to spend reading through every post in them to find pertinent information.

The summaries are appreciated, if a bit late for the party.

That's likely true. This place needs to be cleaned. Particularly the front page. I have a feeling this is a discussion for other topics, but this place should be easier to update and find things in. My inclination would be to let people (maybe the mods, maybe the messengers, maybe someone else) update the main page as they see fit.

_________________
-Whilyam

Ed Oscuro, I run into the problem you bring up often. Having been with the GoC from the beginning, I have explained the concept to people several times. People often want to be told exactly what the guilds do. Businesses and government agencies are well defined. Guilds in a game are not well defined, except in broad terms. Whilyam’s description is accurate but lacks the true flavor of the guilds.

There are over laps in the guilds. There is history. Also, people in the guilds are free. People in life are seldom free. So, people in guilds do all sorts of things we could not do in RL jobs. Consider. In SL I make clothes and texture furniture. What has that to do with the GoC? Not much. But understanding how textures are mapped to 3D objects uses much of the spherical geometry I learned for my RL mapping projects. That skill crosses fields. I use the same knowledge to draw a geographic map as I do to move the texture onto a 3D object. So, because I’m in the GoC, I can’t make clothes? Nah! These are for fun. Enjoy.

To come to a guild and ask, ‘What do you want me to do?’ I consider as missing the point of a guild. When you come to the GoC and say you want to do a map and ask what works for the community, then the GoC members can help. If you come with a Photoshop problem about how to paint the map or what size it should be, we can help. Asking what areas have or have not been mapped, we can help. But ask us what YOU should do, and my eyes glaze over and I walk off scratching my head and muttering. My answer is always the same, what do you think would be fun and of service to the community? Do that. If you want to be told what to do... you are probably in the wrong place.

If you like writing, maybe you should be a messenger. If you like testing ages, a maintainer…. Helping people, a greeter…. Want to draw maps, the GoC will be glad to help you. But we are not bosses. There are guild members that need help with tasks. Offer a pair of hands and skills and ask.

But don’t ask us what EXACTLY a guild does or its purpose. Because in the broad sense guilds do not EXACTLY do anything. They all do lots of different stuff. And other than Whilyam’s succinct descriptions the purpose of the guilds, it is not EXACTLY or narrowly defined. Because of that we consider it so basic most of us have never seen a need for better definitions.

_________________
Nalates - GoC - 418 - MOULagain: Nal KI#00 083 543, Nalates 111451 - Second Life: Nalates Urriah
Guild of Cartographers

Here is my input as a messenger in charge of the new messengers.

Nalates wrote:

To come to a guild and ask, ‘What do you want me to do?’ I consider as missing the point of a guild.

Over at the GoMe, both approaches are appreciated. We work a lot on team projects and the more the people on the project, the faster and easier is the process. So coming to our guild and asking us what he/she can do to help is good. We also welcome new messenger who can develop new projects on their own with our support. Marten's Rel.to is a one man job and it is very useful to the community. But we also need new messengers who don't mind writing articles for the Newsletter if we ask them.

Quote:

Because in the broad sense guilds do not EXACTLY do anything. They all do lots of different stuff.

I agree. The Guild of Messengers is an organization that needs lots of different people. We need people who are good at writing for the Archiver and the Newsletter, we need people good with web stuff to be webmasters, we need artists to make our visual products look good. We need people with good people skills to be interviers and GoMe liaisons. We need people very involved in the community to be reporters. We also need people with leading skills to be project managers or GoMe Council members... The list goes on because we need all sorts of different people with each one having strengths and weaknesses in the Guild of Messengers.

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

Guild of Messengers Website: www.guildofmessengers.com or http://rel.to/gome

Receive news on Facebook: http://rel.to/gome_fb or Twitter: http://twitter.com/GoMessengers

Whilyam wrote:

Still not quite sure what the problem is here. You're asking for clear Guild statements. Here goes:

Writers: Make new game levels and clothing.
Maintainers: Check fan levels for bugs.
Messengers: Spread information in and out of the cavern.
Cartographers. Make maps of new game levels.
Greeters: Help explorers.

So why was this so hard and why was this needed?

Some slight clarification and expansion... (Nothing to do with Whilyam, his was just a convenient post to quote)

Writers (GoW): Generates Fan Created Artwork (FCA) and Uru-specific extensions to the free tools used.

Maintainers (GoMa): Inspects FCA for aesthetic and legal issues. Hosts a directory of FCA for use with Uru:CC and maintains the tools for automated download and install of FCA (the Uru Library Manager aka ULM). Although they inspect all facets of an FCA and provide feedback to the author(s), they can only reject an FCA for legal issues and catastrophic flaws.

Cartographers: IMHO should be called Guild of Surveyors (GoS) for accuracy and to avoid acronym confusion.

Archivists: IMHO should become a recognized official Guild of Archivists (GoA) in accordance with new Cyan policies as described below.

FCAL Panel: A proposed (by Cyan) cross-guild panel with the responsibility for reviewing FCA License (FCAL) applications. Membership is drawn from volunteers in the GoW, GoMa, and GoA. When this process becomes official, FCALs will come directly from this panel instead of from Cyan and the GoMa inspections will enforce the terms of the license. FCAL applications with concepts touching on gray areas of the guidelines will be forwarded to Cyan for judgment.

This is only a partial list of those areas I had comments for. If I have mis-stated anything, please feel free to correct me.

David Tierce

_________________
This post inspected by: Maintainer #165
MOULa-Ki: 15763576
GEHN-Ki: 00022090
DI-Ki: 00145074

Well, as long as we're poking at the phrasing -- filling the descriptions with TLAs is the opposite of obvious. Whilyam's short descriptions were on target. I might say "game worlds" instead of "game levels", but that's a matter of tone.

However, I go with "Writers: Make new game worlds *and help people to make them*". Which is longer but underscores a point.

_________________
Andrew Plotkin (KI#00102725)
Uru Newcomer's Guide and Answer Sheet
-- http://eblong.com/zarf/uru/newfaq.html

Artic_Wagon wrote:

At the bottom of "All in One Post Guild Links, there is a link
to an Abbreviation list where many Guild acronyms can be found...

Quote:

....
I agree that these next two would need to be "looked at" very closely.

GoC- Guild of Cartographers
GoC- Guild of Caterers

This little response is in response to the response posted above. Ahehm
I have a little background in acronyms and YES they are overused, stolen, copied and changed. They are hardly ever modified or added to because people think they have to go back forever and update the old ones. Not True.
So;
GoC Guild of Cartographers could be GoCm Guild of Cartographers-Maps
GoC Guild of Caterers could become GoCc Guild of Caterers-Cuisine

As far as GoI vs Goi are concerned, the right brainers should be creative enough to sort them out.

_________________
MOULagainKI# 00102324
'Only the way a man is when he is hidden, is how he is.'
MOULancientKI# 05969479 an old Unbound Heart

Al'Kaera wrote:

Artic_Wagon wrote:

At the bottom of "All in One Post Guild Links, there is a link
to an Abbreviation list where many Guild acronyms can be found...

Quote:

....
I agree that these next two would need to be "looked at" very closely.

GoC- Guild of Cartographers
GoC- Guild of Caterers

This little response is in response to the response posted above. Ahehm
I have a little background in acronyms and YES they are overused, stolen, copied and changed. They are hardly ever modified or added to because people think they have to go back forever and update the old ones. Not True.
So;
GoC Guild of Cartographers could be GoCm Guild of Cartographers-Maps
GoC Guild of Caterers could become GoCc Guild of Caterers-Cuisine

As far as GoI vs Goi are concerned, the right brainers should be creative enough to sort them out.

Your suggestions are very good.

Let us hope that the Guild Masters will have a good meeting
one of these days and come up with a solution.

Maybe they should ask help from the Guild of Imaginists.

When I read GoCm.. I think of the Guild of Comedy. So picking GoCm for the Cartographers is not the best idea.
I'm glad that I'm not the one choosing acronyms.

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

Guild of Messengers Website: www.guildofmessengers.com or http://rel.to/gome

Receive news on Facebook: http://rel.to/gome_fb or Twitter: http://twitter.com/GoMessengers