R.I.G. Senate.

We think you 2 are doing a GREAT job, bro!!! You got my goofy azz (<--Selvan profanity filter activated) in here 3-4 hours a day!!

Get some rest, we have plenty of time before launch!

True Schwen, and thanks

Just tomorrow will lkely be more of the same lol, crazy work is crazy at the minute lol.

I am just clawing my way towards Xmas and my nice 2 weeks off work....... I will try to sort this out tomorrow though if I have time will let you guys carry on the discussion better and tidy things up a little

Take care bro..."All work and no play makes Ty-Odi a dull boy"

Hang in there!

I'll attempt to bring this thread back onto the track from whence I stole it...

The original proposal came when Ty-Odi wrote:

The basic concept of the Senate will be that every member on her will have seat on the Senate, and each member will have a vote.

>>Ald gets snippy with Ty's post, <<

This would not be a prestige thing, no ego trips please, just a case of us all getting together once a week, with a few representatives from each area of the game (And some I am sure we have not even thought of yet) who in the meeting are put forward to discuss what’s going on, and where people can find the fun on different nights and at what times etc.

The original proposal also included a recommendation for weekly meetings, Ty-Odi wrote:

Mostly I would see this as chance for us all to come together say once a week in game...

Discussion of the role of this group was initiated when Variable wrote:

I like the general idea here, but I do have a few concerns. For one, any kind of community senate needs to accomodate the guilds within the community. A higher level of abstraction from the guilds, so to speak, or a higher level framework that the guilds will interface with. That way, you wind up with the senate enabling a melting pot of ideas across the guild spectrum of the community. The reason I think this is important is because people tend to stick to their own groups, and when you can elicit contribution from individual guilds, then you are really pulling each of these groups into the greater community.

Further distance from the controlling aspect came when Valentin Bravado wrote:

I think we should get away from having a body that actually makes rules, but rather debates what exactly we will organize.

We have a proposal to link leadership roles to The RiG forum positions when I, Aldemarran wrote:

I would recommend that R.I.G. be heavily forum based. I would further recommend that any R.I.G. Senate / Committee / Leadership / Group / etc be organized around the usage of R.I.G. forums

We also have a proposal that The RiG needs representation on both structural and guild levels when Ty-Odi wrote:

Well for me I think you need you need to have a representative for both guild, and gameplay functions.

I'll go out on a limb and attempt to describe what I perceive to be the general (if not overwhelming) consensus, aka the "TL;DR to Date":
We see The RiG as communication channel and quorum of instigators & facilitators. We therefore desire that our organization reflect these objectives in name and support such functionality. The discussion seems currently to be focused on role names and whom shall provide structure and initiative in The RiG.

As I see it, the original purpose of this thread has been nullified (heavily forum based beats regular ingame meetings as a primary organization tool - which however doesn't mean we can't arrange ingame meetings).

The new purpose would be to find out the following (to take Ald's words): Who shall provide structure and initiative?

The system should work pretty well as it is, with everyone being included in the discussion. However I can see how there might be a need for an additional "body".
My take on this is the following (I will be taking PvP as an example domain):
We should maybe have one or more PvP "managers" (not in the sense of having to create the ideas etc - which is up to the community). These would assist in achieving a tightly knit system of projects. The goal here is coordination and communication (as in between all the PvP projects for instance - they might have different "organizers"). We aim for a structure of events that all work together, not against each other.
So at the end of the day, the different "managers" could have their own forum/meetings to see what is going on in each respective area and how they can maybe work things out together to see it through a little smoother.
For instance, we wouldn't want a huge PvP Event on June 26th at 3 pm and just a few hours later a big Crafting event.
To avoid such confusion - which is bound to happen, once this grows and the ideas flow in at a rate we cannot properly follow all by ourselves anymore - such a position as the hereby explained "managerial" role would probably be necessary.

For now, this is a raw idea, but I think it might be in the right direction. What do you think?

Grome wrote:

As I see it, the original purpose of this thread has been nullified (heavily forum based beats regular ingame meetings as a primary organization tool - which however doesn't mean we can't arrange ingame meetings).

The new purpose would be to find out the following (to take Ald's words): Who shall provide structure and initiative?

I think if we have a "new purpose" perhaps we need to Grome-kickoff a new thread?

P.S. Who started the Grome-kick pun? I know I saw it somewhere else before I used it... Credit where its do and all that.

Aldemarran wrote:

I think if we have a "new purpose" perhaps we need to Grome-kickoff a new thread?

P.S. Who started the Grome-kick pun? I know I saw it somewhere else before I used it... Credit where its do and all that.

Haha, you may be right. It's much easier to follow a thread that hasn't completely changed its direction on page 4

The whole Grome-kick thing started in the Theorycrafting thread I believe when, as a result of some silliness including Az kicking me (:p), Godric asked if the Grome kick wasn't a Smuggler ability.

A community cannot exist for too long without leaders and decision makers even one based on respect. So some sort of council/senate is needed in the long run.

No matter how respectful you are, that dose not mean you cannot have a different opinion, and there will be a time when somebody will have to take the bull by the horns and choose one over the other. Not an easy job I can tell you that much

/salute

KDS - Prometeu wrote:

A community cannot exist for too long without leaders and decision makers even one based on respect. So some sort of council/senate is needed in the long run.

No matter how respectful you are, that dose not mean you cannot have a different opinion, and there will be a time when somebody will have to take the bull by the horns and choose one over the other. Not an easy job I can tell you that much

/salute

I don't think a "ruling" layer is needed or should be put in place.

Yes, there are different opinions. But we are not a guild, we are a community. We do not have to enforce anything to let this work. Everything is "optional" and therefore there is no direct need for leadership but only for communication and coordination in my opinion.

KDS - Prometeu wrote:

A community cannot exist for too long without leaders and decision makers even one based on respect. So some sort of council/senate is needed in the long run.

No matter how respectful you are, that dose not mean you cannot have a different opinion, and there will be a time when somebody will have to take the bull by the horns and choose one over the other. Not an easy job I can tell you that much

/salute

As a communication layer rather than a governing body, I would agree with both you and Grome here. We're not really going to try to tell people or guilds what they can or cannot do in-game, except as forum moderators. The only control we're trying to exert is over extremely inappropriate methods of communication such as Trolling or Foul Language. These sorts of things are best handled by moderators who will need to be chosen carefully, and will need to work closely together.

However, opening moderator positions up to public voting is unlikely to work, since one of the biggest requirements is their ability to function as good friends under stress. They need to be able to politely tell each other to cool off. They need to be able to be stressed around one another without causing additional friction. These things mean that the moderator body needs more than just veto power over who joins it.

This group of people must have a great deal of integrity. They could easily slant discussions by editing or "losing" posts, banning dissent, etc. Yet they must not. One of the more subtle ways of manipulating a system is to report and make a big deal over subtle "rules infringements" when they are by people who oppose you, but ignore worse "infringements" by those aligned with you. Moderators have to be aware of this and avoid it all costs.

Therefore I see The RiG as being many guilds and independents facilitated by a group of people with great, but comparatively unused power, aka Moderators. And these are the people who make final decisions over how everyone may communicate. And they must be careful not to "legislate from the bench" even accidentally.

I think I can agree with Ald. May I label the moderators in this scenario as "often silent and impartial background administrators that intervene only when needed" (hopefully not often)
What would be important in such a system is to really stress the guidelines (to post) here (which would be mainly: respect to the others and keeping it close to the posting guidelines).

Grome wrote:

I think I can agree with Ald. May I label the moderators in this scenario as "often silent and impartial background administrators that intervene only when needed" (hopefully not often)
What would be important in such a system is to really stress the guidelines (to post) here (which would be mainly: respect to the others and keeping it close to the posting guidelines).

Agreed. The idea is to have instigators, aka Movers and Shakers, but not to assign that power so that others don't wait for any committee to start something before generating and acting on their ideas themselves.

I like this idea, I think it should still be called the Senate though, for the sake of awesomeness.

Also, they wouldn't be making any rules and such, they would just be groups making events for the community. I like the idea that someone put forward, to have 'committees'.. instead of 1 guy running the PvP department, have a group of people do it and make it easy to join if you have some good ideas.

As far as the whole idea that it would exclude people somehow from the community if they aren't able to join the senate, I don't think that's the case. I think they should just put the idea forward, the committee of that department can discuss it and work out the details and if it's good, make it happen.

You can elect people onto the committee through votes and they won't have any power besides running events.

That's how I envision it, I'm sure it's far from perfect.. but it sounds like a lot of fun.

Welcome to the forums Rawrior!

I liked that idea as well but we have since backed away from it a bit. It was found to be more compatible in a guild-like environment rather than in a community environment. The community should only act as a platform to facilitate communication and coordination (is what was a common point further down the line).

So we went on to create a more "soft" approach to it in this thread here: Who shall provide structure and initiative?

Feel free to defend this point however or to go on discussing in the other thread. We came to a common denominator for now in there (well for the people participating in the discussion).

I'll be honest - I didn't (yet) read every post, and I deliberately withdrew from posting here until now.
With that in mind, some of what I'm posting *now* might have been covered/decided on, so I'll edit later if I need to.
____________

My thoughts on a Senate:
1. Representation through guild weight (as per Variable's suggestion) - except in directly related areas - is a big no-no.
The reason I say that is because, quite frankly, everyone is equal insofar as their rights concerning this community (or the R.i.G. charter, if you will) and representation should come from the public (community) based solely on said representative's merit. (merit being defined as perceived ability to fulfil said role, and popularity among 'voting' members, since that's essentially what any vote comes down to).
The exceptions (aforementioned "directly related areas") can be determined through role - someone who is responsible for organizing mass-PvP events, for an example, would be a seat best represented by someone with 200 people behind her/him rather than 25.
Ignoring this point potentially will result in lesser (by lesser I mean less #'s on the roster) guilds feeling as though (a) they have no place or (b) their opinions don't count. They will leave.

2. As per previous discussion in this thread, the council would not only be a legislative body, but instead more of a set of enforcers. As sad as that sounds, the fact of the matter is that some members (and yes, some guilds) will *not* adhere to the premises of this community, and action will need to be taken. A process would need to be established with transparent consequences to the community so that if it is required, action can be taken. (the end_action being ejection from this community, should all else fail.)

3. Given point 2, there ought to be both a rewards system (the right to post "Member of the R.i.G." banner, for instance) in place, as well as a punitive system (end_action, a transparent *ejected* list for any to see). I realise that I am talking about extremes, but of course I am only giving examples of possible worst-case/best-case scenarios --- assuming the best-case scenario for the R.i.G. community (that it grows across multiple servers and has thousands of members).

4. As per Ald's posts, the "Senate" would by necessity require some positions to be nothing more than moderators -- to enforce the above. Segregation of those roles would be necessary, IMO. There will be times when that is all that is necessary (hopefully, most of the time at worst), and more bodies able to fill that role is better than less.
That being said... there will still be instances where decisions/rule-making is required. We don't like it, we don't want to need to do it, but we will. Someone will have a hairline disagreement over whether something is honorable behavior or not, and it will be brought to the Senate (if it wasn't directly argued here to start with).
So, acting as "Judges" should in fact be a position within this community. Throw in a "jury" for good measure, even. Either way, we're going to end up needing some legislation, like it or not. The larger the body, the more rules are needed. If you don't believe that, then either you're naive or I'm way too jaded. Or some combination of both.

5. After all that, there needs to be a mechanic (read: SIMPLE mechanic) for no-confidence by members.
Someone voted into a leadership role needs to have a method to be pushed out if he or she is not performing their duties responsibly.

I think that about covers most of what I had to say.
Note that I am posting this with *NO* desire whatsoever to be on any ruling body in this community.
(which is not to say I wouldn't if it was requested of me)
I state that so that you will understand that my bias in these statements is not with the intent of personal assertion. Rather, it is a bias of experience in leadership roles, both IRL and virtually. (If you'd like, I can post some psychology, sociology, and Organizational Behavior pshychology links to back up what I've said...)

__________________
Anyways, I think people who play alien races and wear cool hats ought to have DIBS on positions.

We generally moved away a bit from the "ruling body" idea. I'm glad you're bringing it up though because it's nice to hear your point of view (especially since you have some experience in leadership).

About this "ejecting" of people: We're not recruiting nor are we asking people to do anything to get in here. We're FFA, if you will and ejecting does not fit 100% into that.
However I can see your concern having people in there not following our charter, or trolling, as it were. However I don't think there really needs to be a legislative of any kind for that as the community usually should take care of it itself, as it values our charter. People that don't fit in will be friendly asked to stick to the charter and if they don't I don't see there being much need for discussion/decision either way as there should be agreement over them not fitting in.
The difference between this community and your run of the mill one is that this one at all times promotes respectful behavior, so the rule-sets of dealing with things is a little different I'd say.

I think I'll come back with a question.

At the moment there are really only 2 or 3 things that could get a "ban hammer" dropped on someone. Cussing, Trolling, or other hostile / disrespectful action. Therefore,

Still, what harm can a senate(in the form that the OP suggested) bring? I already planned on making PvP events for my guild and making events for the server-wise with other senator's would make it much more fun and easier to do. Obviously, we won't have the same power of the senate in the movies, it's just a fun little thing to do and make it easier and(most likely) end up with more community events then without it.

They wouldn't have more power then anyone else, they would just be the "go to guys" for events and organizers. I know it would make my life easier if there was a place or group of people I can talk to about organizing such things.(Instead of talking randomly to guild leaders and the such)

Well, let me try to reorganize my thoughts.

First, by the very definition of the word, a Senate is a governing body.

The fact that there are, in fact, two or three things that you can think of that would get a "ban hammer" dropped on someone demonstrates the need for a governing body, however reluctant or left-wing our intentions may be. To answer your question more directly, I can easily see an issue of "ninja'd my members" arising - a topic I already brought up.
While that might just be a case of cooincidence or bad internal leadership, it could just as easily be something intentional.
So let's hypothesise the situation a little, for the sake of argument.

Guild AAA accuses Guild XXX of stealing their members.
They argue some, and we observe it happening (as a community). Various opinions are formed amongst the populace.
Finally, at wits end, AAA decides to "Bring it to the Senate" to prove they are right, and XXX is right up with that b/c they feel they can easily win the decision.

From a "Senate" point of view, they are watching this unfold and thinking to themselves:
"This is not 'honorable' behavior on either side."
So, the 'Senate' ends up with 3 options:
1. Take the matter under consideration, achieve a private concensus, and deliver the opinion.
2. Put the matter to public opinion, the public decides Z, and that is delivered.
3. Decide that the matter is outside their purvue and either (a) eject both parties or (b) do nothing and let the drama ball roll on in the community -- a community that is supposed to be built on mutual respect, but in this case no longer is.

Note that in each of the possibilities above, I did not say whether (AAA or XXX was right), (Z decision would be better made in Y direction), or (C the right decision is to eject/not eject said member guilds).

Each of the above solutions presents a problem - that is inherent in what it is to be a responsible leader.
The scenario is -- while slightly exaggerated -- completely feasable in a larger community (or even a smaller one).

The fact remains though, that the same scenario without some kind of ruling body making decisions would mean the eventual downward spiral of this initiative.

If you cannot guard against any single threat, "foreign or domestic" to quote the southerly neighbor, then "people" (the community) will lose faith and ... well, then you're done.

This very discussion is an example of the potential for disruption of the status quo for the community:
People *WILL* disagree.
People *WILL* get defensive/offensive.
The lines of respect *WILL* be crossed.

Ideally, it won't come to that.
We'll have intelligent discussions that are posed and considered objectively. That being said, expecting everyone to always do the same as we are here is unrealistic, whatever the intent.

On one side that will require nothing more than moderation.
On the other, it will require more...

Rawrior wrote:

Still, what harm can a senate(in the form that the OP suggested) bring? I already planned on making PvP events for my guild and making events for the server-wise with other senator's would make it much more fun and easier to do. Obviously, we won't have the same power of the senate in the movies, it's just a fun little thing to do and make it easier and(most likely) end up with more community events then without it.

They wouldn't have more power then anyone else, they would just be the "go to guys" for events and organizers. I know it would make my life easier if there was a place or group of people I can talk to about organizing such things.(Instead of talking randomly to guild leaders and the such)

I see your point, but maybe there is no direct need for a specific position for that, maybe people will be volunteering?
Other than that - sure, why not have a sort of "committee" as you said before for the people that actually need assistance with an event. But I'm actually pretty sure that assistance would be there either way - with or without an official "senate"

Rawrior wrote:

Still, what harm can a senate(in the form that the OP suggested) bring? I already planned on making PvP events for my guild and making events for the server-wise with other senator's would make it much more fun and easier to do. Obviously, we won't have the same power of the senate in the movies, it's just a fun little thing to do and make it easier and(most likely) end up with more community events then without it.

They wouldn't have more power then anyone else, they would just be the "go to guys" for events and organizers. I know it would make my life easier if there was a place or group of people I can talk to about organizing such things.(Instead of talking randomly to guild leaders and the such)

In that incarnation, what you guys are proposing is more of an event council than a senate.
If you see what I mean.

Like the party-planning commitee in an office.

*edit*

I think that is a large part of where the confusion lies in this thread.
A committee is one thing, a senate another.

They've been merged in the proposals in this thread, and they really ought not to be.

Velaxi wrote:

In that incarnation, what you guys are proposing is more of an event council than a senate.
If you see what I mean.

Like the party-planning commitee in an office.

I agree... see my post above this one for further opinion... :p

Rawrior wrote:

Still, what harm can a senate(in the form that the OP suggested) bring? I already planned on making PvP events for my guild and making events for the server-wise with other senator's would make it much more fun and easier to do. Obviously, we won't have the same power of the senate in the movies, it's just a fun little thing to do and make it easier and(most likely) end up with more community events then without it.

They wouldn't have more power then anyone else, they would just be the "go to guys" for events and organizers. I know it would make my life easier if there was a place or group of people I can talk to about organizing such things.(Instead of talking randomly to guild leaders and the such)

I am as prone to delusions of grandeur as anyone. But...

The discussion and confusion that has gone on since your post will only magnify the more people there are involved. Then factor in the many, many people who won't have read this thread at all. This is why we can't afford a misleading title for any body of people we create.

Velaxi wrote:

In that incarnation, what you guys are proposing is more of an event council than a senate.
If you see what I mean.

Like the party-planning commitee in an office.

*edit*

I think that is a large part of where the confusion lies in this thread.
A committee is one thing, a senate another.

They've been merged in the proposals in this thread, and they really ought not to be.

This thread started off with a discussion of an actual senate. We rapidly moved away from a control element towards a facilitator element. There was also some discussion of whether or not a group responsible for initiation would suppress creativity on the part of the rest of the community via people's inherent laziness. In other words, if someone were made responsible there is a tendency for everyone else to quit trying.

I personally don't think the second discussion was ever given due consideration. Hence I'll throw out a general concept; what if we instead promoted those who did the most to positions where they had the most power to facilitate the initiatives of others? Hence the "Movers & Shakers" get forums made for them and moderator positions handed out where appropriate, rather than being "responsible". Thus we shift from a "responsibility placement" role to an "enabler" role is what I would support the most.

The FNC is a prime example of people going out and doing, and a prime opportunity to empower someone with tools to make it happen.

Maybe what I need is to add an "Event Tools Discussion" forum to my other post. A place where people can go "I need to do something like >this<, anyone know how I can do it?"