Just had an idea.

Maybe each Guild should create a small (or smaller) symbol icon/name and Logo.

GoC : Guild of Cartographers-

GoC: Guild of Caterers.

Most of the guilds do have logos.

But it is hard to put them every where one refers to a guild.

GoCar and GoCat, just don't cut it for me.

The GoS (Surveyors) has been brought up many times and that is whole long debate running over the years. In the UO forums are several posts regarding how GoC came to be. For now, just know there is history and a back story for how that came about. Out of respect and appreciation for those that came before, I opt to keep it as it is.

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

Nalates wrote:

Most of the guilds do have logos.

But it is hard to put them every where one refers to a guild.

Maybe they could be made smaller and clickable.

The Guilds should talk to each other and decide on a proper size.

Artic_Wagon, please take this the right way...

For the Guilds to decide anything is a whole big deal. Plus lots of people think 'they should' do lots of things. The fact is the guilds do whatever the guilds do.

When someone in a guild wants to take on an issue, get it decided and impliment it then it gets done. For all the guilds to do that, usually someone in each guild has to push for it, which makes it even more challenging and a bigger deal.

When all the guild members have other priorities or more fun things to do, they spend their time doing those. So, lots of 'shoulds' get forgotten.

You decided the Important Info was something you would take on, commendations to you. It is being done from your effort and some support from others, quick, simple and fast. I published an article in SL for people to visit your thread and help. But, there were no meetings in guild. I just did it. Anyone could have. I will likely make a small logo and post it on the Tech Data site, when I get around to it. But, getting a standardized size... too much work. It is easier and faster to forget the 'they should' and simply say, 'I think a 25x25 pixel logo would be great'. Chances are good it will just be adopted.

Plus let the community debate. Rather than send it off to the guilds, where it may be forgotten, just get a decision on what the community would like. Those interested are here. They are the likely people that will implement.

I see Cyan working with the guilds. They need to control their contact points. Use those people to interface with the larger fan base. It makes sense for them. But for fans, I'm not sure splitting us into guilds helps. The community seems to be doing an odd dance of separation and unification... I used to belong to one guild. I am a member of 5 or 6, at least, now. So, what is really happening? Are the guilds imaginary divisions of fans? I think so. BUT, it provides Cyan with a number of people (guild masters) that are handling specific issues and providing continuity and consistency. That is a real benefit to Cyan and the Uru community overall. However, I do not think it is a real division of fans.

I think it is making it harder for the fans to get things done. I think we should look at the fan base overall as a group. The information dissemination is for the overall group. We are having problems because we have not handled the OVERALL thing. Getting important info where new people can see it is addressing the overall fan base communication. For filing and management the break into guilds helps. But until a new person understands they have been lost. The effort to get info out in sight is like adding a Table of Contents or an Index.

I see comments like 'the guilds should' as an indication the actual nature of the fan base and its interactions as not being understood. There are simply faster, easier ways to get SOME things done. Go around the guilds for those. Good solutions will be adopted by the guilds and community. Guilds have a place and some tasks and especially processes and duties, are best handled by the guilds. The community will sort those out. After all no single fan or small group of fans or even a guild can impose their will on the community. Even Cyan has problems controlling us. (Not that they try hard if at all – other than setting some story limits and protecting IP)

Communicating with the community has to handle the overall problems and also break it into manageable pieces. We are currently learning how to do that.

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

Last edited by Nalates on Tue Sep 02, 2008 8:24 pm; edited 1 time in total

Nalates wrote:

Artic_Wagon, please take this the right way...

You decided the Important Info was something you would take on.

Shorah Nalates.

You are not quite right. This was supposed to be a "group" effort and the
responsability I have agreed with at the beginning is that I was supposed to
be the editor for the list/post.

People from all the Guilds were supposed to feed me with their suggestions,
their lists or with the result of their searches.

Here is a quote from veralun at the Guild of Messengers' forums that might shed some
light on their big plan. That point of view was a first for me. (Note the date)

Quote:

by Veralun on Mon Sep 01, 2008 5:47 pm
.....
When we asked at the MOUL forums to see if it possible to make a major topic with as much as possible information we realised this is a hell of a job.
But at the end we think the community will benefit from this.
So now the oppertunity is there to see what information can be gathered.
Your contribution will be a part of a large project.

Artic Wagon who is creating this asked for as much as possible information so he can present a draft for a major general information topic to MOUL's Admin/Mod team.

In there also the Guilds were asked to provide as much as possible information about their Guild.

This all will become a part of a "database with information" which might be usefull for the community.

So the idea is that a person who is searching for some info can find this info in one single topic.

Seen we are bounded on the technical possibilities from the MOUL forums the idea is to have in every forum one stickied topic with all the major information concerning that forum.

In the Resource forum one stickied topic with all combined information from all those forums will give us a great source of information.

The part on the each forums can be done by the members and the part in the Resource forum will be maintained by a admin or mod.

This is what is possible on the MOUL forums (in future MORE forums)

So again see what possible information you can gather about the Guild.

It is easyer to add it now than later.

The thread continues to be interesting. Read through some of it; don't think I have anything to contribute at this moment. I think that when MORE gets going things will get underway.

Well... maybe I am taking your comments the wrong way. You seem disgruntled that things did not work exactly as you wanted. I'm pointing out they likely never will and there are easier, faster ways to accomplish things.

When I rebuilt the GoC's references page I did most of the research simply to get it done.

Putting all the info into ONE thread (database - is someone really building a database?) where one person or moderators have to edit and update it, makes it so guilds have to go through people to get changes made, seems retrogressive to me.

Having guild info in separate pages linked to from many sources seems more efficient. Plus it helps people using Google find it. Fortunately MOUL is a search engine friendly forum.

In a huge thread how much stuff do I have scan through to find what I'm looking for? Even if all is one large initial post, that may be too much to deal with, too much is too easily missed.

Our problem is providing massive quantities of changing data in manageable chunks and keeping it all visible. At the same time we have to keep it accessible to numerous editors.

The common paper solution is a table of contents or indexes.

In our world of computer searches, searchable data is a more modern and far better and easier solution. Rearranging information only increases the amount of info. Making it searchable and teaching people how to search is the stage of most modern information systems. Google’s new Chrome has an amazing ‘address bar’ some call a Search Thingy. It is far more useful to me that just Google search. How do we build something like that for the MOUL community?

For many the solution has been the Wiki. GoW is using one. The Wikipedia is search friendly. We can use it but would have no control over who is editing.

The Archivists have a forum that is basically a beautifully formatted wiki/forum. As material is moved to the wiki section many people can edit it.

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

Nalates wrote:

Google’s new Chrome has an amazing ‘address bar’ some call a Search Thingy. It is far more useful to me that just Google search. How do we build something like that for the MOUL community?

Obligatory plug: Did you know that in Firefox and Internet Explorer, you can add Rel.to as a pull-down search engine? Information on how to do this is located on the 'About' page: http://rel.to/about

Of course, currently Rel.to does not search through the RSS feed or through forum posts... it only searches through its index of keywords. But extending what it searches is an idea that could be implemented, if people would only give me feedback.

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/me tiptoes in so as not to step on any toes of the WAYYYY more technically adept folks here just to ask a question...

Has anyone suggested using, rather than a "single informational forum post," a CMS ("content management system") site that could be edited/corrected by anyone who's been given editing/publishing privileges? It would not require that a single person be responsible for updating/changing posts with new information, but would limit immediate publishing rights to a group who've "proven their mettle" so to speak... (a bit more secure than a "plain ol' wiki" so as to avoid the ubiquitous wiki-esqe blunders/disinformation/gaffes/etc. that comes from the "simply-registered-and-therefore-can-edit-anything-on-the-wiki" knucklehead that has a grievance to air)

The Guild of Greeters went to such a website format ("Joomla!-flavored" CMS) where *anyone* could submit information for publishing, all admins/moderators and those who'd been given rights as website contributors could publish and/or edit information on the website at any time, and it relieved a lot of the burden from the site administrator (who happened to be expecting twins at the time) from making all updates to things that were not editable by others...

/me hopes she didn't upset those who are already working hard to solve the problem that is "real-time community-wide communication"

The CMS most people are familiar with is a wiki. GoMa is getting theirs running. The Archivists use a great system that I'm in love with... The GoW has a good wiki with considerable content and that people are contributing to now. So L'lee, your idea is good and it’s being and has been implemented in several places.

The challenge is of course getting the content that exists in the MOUL forums into a wiki. Once done I think it would be better. Most wiki's have better search plus are much more search engine friendly. It is that initial problem and work of deciding what needs to be moved... and moving it. Then there is updating… which with multiple authors might not be that bad.

Consider also, forums are great for question and answer stuff, which we see a lot of here. Also, they lend themselves to discussion. Wiki’s are great for answers. In our community’s case most of what we do is Q&A, discussion and voting. I think we will continue to grow the forum content. It is in the forum where most new information will appear first. The growth of a wiki would, I expect lag far behind because people would have to collect the content and then move it. I could be wrong, but I see new information by most people being entered into the forum not the wiki. Unless we have someone or group that enjoys that work, I can’t see it happening expeditiously. Besides the really good IC and OOC historical stuff makes it into the Archivists’ site now. Google already indexes this forum, so adding search is a trivial task.

I think a MO:RE wiki is a possible help but I don’t see a good cost benefit ratio in building one. Creating one will have to be someone’s labor of love. So, I think an easier solution is better search. In large web sites Google search using the Google API’s is built in by the web designers. I think one could be built into the existing search page and greatly improve searching the forum. A better, easy search that works would encourage its use. I see it as very little work and lots of benefit and no ongoing updating…

Edit: misspell affecting meaning

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