Bring Back The Council?

[LoMega-]

So i understand +Colibri's point of view on how he wants it too work and how it ended up last time. I can say i wasnt there for the original Council but I personally would like to see it back and function as it was expected to instead of being 'Abused' in a way. I've given some idea's to both +Nyx and +Colibri and i told them i would like the Coucil to almost be an Adviser for other players and also to enforce the rules when any of the GM/Admin's are not available. It's another way that player, like myself, can contribute more the to shard. Some idea's of the Council that i thought of and also to limit exploits of it.

-20 Members altogether, which is 10 Elders and 10 Members.
-No more than 2 people from the same guild allowed to be on the council at once.
-GM/Admin regulated.
-A chat ban for the Elders/Members to use.(I.E. to use when someone spams, curses, talks about drugs/sex, anything of the nature that IS against the rules. Essentially making the Council "Hall Moniters" as deemed by +Nyx

this is only some of the things i can think of ATM. (Im at work and its early in the morning >.<)
I would like to get other players oppinion about bringing the Coucil back in a working, orderly fashion.
- Thank you for your time,
-LoMega-

[Ilsanor]

Well, I'm not sure if it's not just unneeded bureaucracy.
One - the Council is an advisory organ - it does not have any veto power over GM decsions. So what's the difference between that and just voicing your opinions on the forums or paging? I know +Coli looks at them and takes them into consideration anyway. Only thing you get is bickering between 20 (as you propose) players as to what the Council's opinion should be. Which does not help and takes time.
Two - advising other players is done on worldchat anyway, in any matter possible. I don't see why a group of players should have their say on advice instead of just anyone. Are we dividing players into those with good advice (Council) and bad advice (rest)? Seriously hope not.
Three - rule enforcing. While nice in theory, has problems in practice. Do you want to give every council member that right? Or do you require the whole Council (or a quorum) to be in agreement about enforcing a specific case? Getting the Council to decide would take probably more time than it would take for any GM to come online. This can be managed by making it a proposal->seconded - ie. one council member proposes a motion for a given player and it has to be seconded by another (or two) Council member - requiring only 2 (or 3) people to agree. Making it a one-man(or woman)-decision will lead to abuse and quarrelling whether a given action (or lack of thereof) was appropriate. Remember, 20 people = 21 opinions.

I believe this shard is not yet big enough to warrant a pseudo-oligarchy to rule over it. The GMs are doing a great managing any problems - even if justice is not instant it does come eventually for everyone deserving.

[LoMega-]

Good points, But the only thing a council-men could do is Chat ban tomporarily. And not all Members would get it, only the Elders would.
Im not saying we would argue with the GM's we wouldnt say we would give advice but we would take a load of +Nyx and the others by writing down peoples idea and then when +Coli or whoever contacts us we can give him a quick run down of whats going on, AGAIN though if this did get start i would want it regulated by GM/Admin's. We want Unbiased-ness. Plus the Council could take on the courtesy of helping New Players get started, i try to do it as much as i can and give away decent starting items but i dont see a lot of people touring anymore. i think theirs a lot of discussion that needs to be done about the Council and what the main job would be to do, which in my opinion is to give idea to help improve and propel Excelsior into a brighter future.
And by touring and helping young players out we could help improve the amount of people that try Excelsior and stay to play another day.
And as for your number 2, sometimes No Admin is on to see it. As a council member we could write it down and let +Coli or whomever know about the idea. We could produce the flaw in an idea to make it better. The same concept on why i posted this on the forum... to see the flaws and to correct them. and 20 was just a rough estimate

[Ilsanor]

Well, as far as youngs are concerned - would the Council be required to delegate a member(s) to this duty? Because as it is now, whoever is available and willing to help - does so. In what way would bringing back the Council change it?
It's not that I dislike the idea whatsoever. It's just that the Council need to actually have something to do that is not already done under current free-for-all system. So it's not just a bunch of empty titles for a few people. For now the right to chatban is the only exclusive option and seriously - does it really require setting up the whole Council?
As I said - discussion on shard-important topics can be done on the forums and this gives a much greater range of opinions. What if a player who is only a week old has some interesting point to add to a given discussion? He will probably not be a member of the council, so his voice will not be heard. (just an example)
While having a quick run down for the GMs is nice, a lot of discussion will be lost in such a summary. And as far as decisions go, I'd rather have the Administration read the whole discussion, than make a decision based on a few-sentence summary authored by the Council.
Last point - are there actually that many issues to discuss to warrant having a Council?

[LoMega-]

so basically... the shard needs to grow

[Larsa]

What are the duties of the council? If I require advice I will turn to the Elders, if I require help in game I will ask a GM. If a GM is not available you can always throw in your question in public chat and I am sure that someone might have experienced the same issue and will be able to assist you. And what's better than the forums? Throw in you questions, doubts, concerns, whatnot, etc... and most people of the shard will advise you

Another thing I think it might be a drawback is the lack of 'neutrality' ... if you have a 20 player council and 15 are buddies buddies except for the other 5 ... who's votes are going to win? Lets not even dare going into the donators and non-donators groups or the new players and vet players. Also worth mentioning is that most players belong to the same handful of guilds, so your 2 players cannot belong to the same guild might not fly. That's why I truly believe that let the big decisions be handle by the powers above.

I still believe that polls are the best way to go if the GM's wants our input. The only thing I really really really want to see is that we can have different public chat channels cause I am mostly interested in trade and help people with questions (I am not an antisocial by the way, but play time is short nowdays). Make a public social lounge channel for the players that wants to talk about EVERYTHING else and make it "R" Rated please, then we will not require a babysitter in the public chat.

[Nelapsi]

Kind of get the thought this will cause more problems then it will fix (assuming we have a problem right now that needs to be fixed).

[Jecks]

I still believe that polls are the best way to go if the GM's wants our input. The only thing I really really really want to see is that we can have different public chat channels cause I am mostly interested in trade and help people with questions (I am not an antisocial by the way, but play time is short nowdays). Make a public social lounge channel for the players that wants to talk about EVERYTHING else and make it "R" Rated please, then we will not require a babysitter in the public chat.

This.

It'd be nice to have a public chat I dont have to turn off 95% of the time.

[Ilsanor]

+1 on the additional chat idea. Or even more than one - so that each can be switched on/off depending on what we're interested - trade, help, chitchat, etc.

[LoMega-]

Now after talking to you guys i understand that its really not needed yet. But add another +1 to that chat idea

[anarchy]

someone famous said "too much government is like trying to hold sand. The more you try to gain control of the flowing sand; the more it escapes." oh yeah i said that. ok not so famous person :Þ Long Live Anarchy (not me).

there used to be an Excelsior Council but Electra won't give up the title. oh wait i think that's Excelsior's Governor. erm....can we have a recall for that? o.O

well what happened was that they really didn't do anything, nor did they have any power. I think they eventually became the youth center. o.O

[Namorah]

I am against having a public chat channel for R rated conversations. That's what guild chat is for. There is WAY too much of a chance of a younger player to gain access to said channel at some point and i would rather not have that happen. At least with guilds there is some control as to who they let join, and if you aren't 18.. so on and so forth.

[brhanson2]

someone famous said "too much government is like trying to hold sand. The more you try to gain control of the flowing sand; the more it escapes." oh yeah i said that. ok not so famous person :Þ Long Live Anarchy (not me).

there used to be an Excelsior Council but Electra won't give up the title. oh wait i think that's Excelsior's Governor. erm....can we have a recall for that? o.O

well what happened was that they really didn't do anything, nor did they have any power. I think they eventually became the youth center. o.O

Does Electra still play here? I know he opened his own shard and goes by Dante there.

[+Nyx]

Here's my thoughts on the matter.

I appreciate that you'd want to take some "work" off my plate, however that work is part of my job as a staffer, which I volunteer my time for. If a council was reinstated, it would need to be managed and overseen by a staffer. Which means it's not really taking any work off of us, it's just shifting what that work is. And honestly managing and overseeing a council would be a lot more work than taking down ideas from players to put into my nice little spreadsheet for Colibri to peruse. I'm not exactly against a council but I don't see any function they could serve that isn't already being fulfilled just fine elsewhere, and I really don't like the idea of adding more politics and more big things we as staff have to manage or keep an eye on. That would take time away from other things we could be doing like working on events and new content etc. I think adding a few more people to watch over / maintain the youth center and find new ways to help and retain new players would be a better idea.

[Cygnus]

As an original member and elected Vice-President of the Council let me throw in my 2 cents. The original council was designed to be a link between +Coli and the shard with the President meeting with +Colibri and giving him a list of issues that had been presented to the Council members throughout the week. This allowed +Colibri to stay on top of things without getting personally bombarded with PM's. Here are my reasons why I think a Council is a bad idea:

1. First off, I think the shard is too big for one. It could have worked, maybe, when we were medium sized.
2. Council members kept moving on. When using elders, it's like staff members. Players go on to staff because playing becomes old hat and they are looking for a new challenge. The original Council was chocked full of elders then. All but 2 have moved on. I still see Licos name now and then.
3. The politics was a nightmare. Some players who wanted to be on council and were denied, threw hissy fits. Some freindships were even strained due to it. Which leads to who determines who gets on the council? I guarantee you, even if all the right people were selected, a lot of players will feel slighted or disagree.
4. All the reasons that the other posts listed above said.
5. An just cause you are an elder, does that qualify you to do Council duties?

As I mentioned earlier, I was an original member and held a high position. I am also the eldest player on the shard, would I automatically qualify to be on a new Council? As +Nyx said,it is not worth the hassle.


Btw, Anarchy, I love your quote. If it is an Anarchy original, make some money off of it.