Moving forward

[Hawkmoon]

The vote on adopting the set of guidelines (in "Guild Direction" thread) has closed, and the vote totals were 10 Yes, 1 outright No, and 1 "indeterminate". If we add the "indeterminate" to the Nos, the motion still carries, 10-2.

So let's move forward!

I'll start moving folks from Member to Officer (I think just about everyone who's active has been with us for over the requisite 2 weeks) tonight when I get online. I'm still going to keep folks who haven't been active for 3 months or more in the Members list, however.

I'd like to remind everyone that this is a trial, that we'll revisit the issue in 3 months to evaluate how it's working. But for now, we're going to put the whole shebang into practice. But it's not set in stone, and if you see something that isn't working, or have a suggestion as to how to make things work better, don't be shy about speaking up!

Let's all approach this Grand Experiment in a positive light, and make it work. And please remember that the one apparent bone of contention, the Peer Review Council, is supposed to be a last resort, when private means of resolving the situation have failed. I, and I think most if not all of the folks here, would like to never have to invoke it! So play nice.

Hawkmoon

[FoxBat]

Several people (both for and against the overall "going forward" with the guidelines) have expressed concern over the section on conflict resolution, with the establishment of a council and so forth. It did come "out of the blue" and is far more administrative work/overhead than RB is used to. Nonetheless many of us thought that something like it was essential for the continued functioning of the guild - let alone handling newcomers in a fair way, since we can't just leave them down in the member list and hope they leave sometime. I'm not convinced that what we came up with was the best solution, but we need to try something. I do think input from this thread could be used to modify the implementation, but in the absence of consensus at this point we can at least move forward with what was written.

In the past, there have been many conflicts between players in RB, including between established officers. When one member does something that offends another, whether that be in-game or on the forum, it's usually either handled with raging and yelling, or quietly endurance followed by increasing avoidance. Both strategies respond to a percieved lack of respect in a disrespectful manner, which creates a cycle of mistreatment and drama. Sometimes players will apologize and come to an understanding after the fact, sometimes they can cool off sufficiently and pretend it never happened, but at present we believe that grudges are running too deep and continued animosity is threatening the integrity of the guild. I would note that the guidelines for behavior are intended to discourage these behaviors, but individuals will interpret them in conflicting ways, and they need input from others to develop a broader guild consensus on appropriate behavior.

The primary mission of the council is to restore harmonious interaction within the guild, not to deliver judgements or punishments. This begins at an individual level by encouraging members to resolve their conflicts in a respectful manner rather than further aggravating them. We know this is difficult so we add in the next step that lets a mediator become involved. Anyone could mediate, but we want some publically designated for the position so that you always have someone you can and should talk to when you have a problem. As an elected position the greater portion of the guild body should trust the person, which will give them greater credibility when mediating. Should that individual's efforts fail then they seek out the help of a council, who discuss and then try again to reach out to both parties. The 2 temporary concil members are ideally chosen for their ability to reach the specific individuals involved in a case, where the GL/council leaders may have difficulty. Together they also provide those involved a broader, more complete and objective view on the situation. The numbers are however limited to a small group to enable fast and efficient communication, and to avoid the digging in and mudslinging that tends to happen in a public forum environment.

In his tenure as Guild Leader Wyrm took it upon himself to try and do some of this informally, although that ran into some difficulties. By making the process formal and known, we want it to be clear to members that when the council talks to you, they are trying to help you and the guild, not condemn you. By getting several people involved in mediation, including both permanent and temporary positions, we aim to reduce individual personality conflicts in this process, make it more objective, and gradually create some degree of guild consensus. By making it confidential we aim to avoid dragging everyone through public drama, grant the council agility to quickly adjust to and resolve situations through direct communication, and prevent the guild dividing along the lines of who is friends with who.

The addition of guild discipline we felt was necessary for tough cases that resisted resolution efforts. Although the exact judgement is left up to the council, discipline should be limited to the following three situations;

1) The involved member refuses to cooperate with the council in resolving the conflict.
2) The same offense has been addressed repeatedly in the past with no improvement.
3) The grevience is particularly severe and cannot be tolerated.

Discipline is meant to serve as an additional motivator for people to cooperate with the process and avoid things reaching that point. However should they prove uncooperative, we feel that ultimate removal of said individual is preferable to allowing discontent to foster throughout the guild. The larger body should not have to endure an individual that shows no respect or concern for other's feelings and makes no effort to improve. We entrust a council with this decision because the alternatives are as follows:

- Never discipline anyone, meaning that conflicts remain unresolved, at the expense of guild cohesion and enjoyment.
- Entrust the guild leader to make the best decision; there have been no real kicks in the past so there is great precedent against this, and great risk of further drama should one go ahead based on informal discussions. There is also greater risk for bias and partiality.
- Make the decision to kick someone a formal public poll. This is both slow and extremely flawed. It creates great drama by itself, it embarasses and persecutes the offender, and furthermore even a majority failing to see why a member should be kicked does not equal the best solution. If 5 are very upset with a member, and 7 see no problem and vote "no" but are not strongly attached either, then the guild is better off having that one offender removed than the 5 they upset leaving.

Again discipline is intended as a last resort, so it is something the council executes only after their other efforts have proven insufficient. Those nominated for the position of council leaders will primarily serve as diplomatic mediators, not judges, and we hope they spend the majority of their duties mediating conflicts without calling a council. We recognize that there probably are not many in this guild up for such a monumental responsibility, which is why the group is as small as possible while still providing multiple perspectives for fair representation. From here we could move forward with nominations for people to be entrusted with the job, including self-nominations, but nominations must be accepted by the nominee. Should more than 2 nominations stand at the end of this process, we can then have an election.

The note on term lengths is I think very debatable, I'm not sure we have the right solution here. The idea is that we want people who over time become less active in the game, less enthused for the position, or just plain less trusted by the guild to be gracefully replaced. There may be some other way of doing this.

[Seijin]

One more note on those nominations. They should probably be people who are fairly active in GW and not on periodically here and there.

For instance, you can nominate me, but since I'm playing Aion for the time being, that wouldn't be a good idea (not that it would have been a good idea in any context).

[Courin]

...since I'm playing Aion for the time being........

Seijin...........DON'T GO INTO THE LIGHT..........Stay AWAY from the light, Seijin!

:neenernee

[Hawkmoon]

Fox provided a very eloquent commentary on why some of the specific proposals were in the guidelines. I don't think I can improve on anything he said, so I'm not going to even try. I'd like to say that I concur with them wholeheartedly.

In the interests of continuing to move forward, I've created a new thread asking for nominations for the 2 Council Leader positions on the Peer Review Council. I think we need to actually implement the guidelines asap in order to be able to make a meaningful evaluation of how they're working in 3 months.

Please consider who in the guild you think would make a fair and objective Council Leader. If you think you fit the bill, you're welcome to throw your hat in the ring. If you want to nominate someone other than yourself, please talk to them first to make sure they'd be willing to accept the nomination.

Thanks!
Hawkmoon

[Zed-F]

Regarding Wyrm's nomination, I'm not sure I'm on GW enough to really judge what's going on in-game, which I assume is important for the position. I am active on the forums, but is that enough? If there's a lack of otherwise qualified candidates I'd consider the position, but I consider myself to be a second choice at best.

As for who else would be a good person to nominate... same sort of thing. Without having played much recently, apart from in our most recent variant, it's hard to really gauge who might be both a good match for the job and inclined to accept.