ALFA3's governance

Ideas and suggestions for game mechanics and rules.
Locked
Ronan
Dungeon Master
Posts: 4611
Joined: Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:48 am

ALFA3's governance

Post by Ronan »

Obviously this post assumes some new platform will come along to attract our attention at some point. It may or may not be Forgotten Realms and D&D based (I'm hoping not). It might even be in space. Whatever.

Its my opinion that ALFA's governance has two key strengths:
  • It keeps the project changing hands when people leave. ALFA's lasted a long time. Most projects like ALFA die off when their contributors leave. The result is a system either no one knows how to run or no one can run because they don't have the source code (modules in our case).
  • It keeps the management from doing anything too stupid. I think the worst we've experienced is admin blocking policies which most of the playerbase wanted.
Of course, it has some downsides:
  • Its really, really slow. Look how long it took to get two PCs approved, an act which I think almost everyone now sees as a good move.
  • Changes have many failure-prone steps. A lot of people have to discuss and agree on even minor alterations. Since we're all volunteers, this tends to mean things fall by the wayside.
  • Its very costly in terms of manpower. The "B-game" burns people out and takes time away from the game. Of course all management has some cost, but I think we can agree ALFA's is costlier than most.
  • The people who make policy don't implement policy. This means that the implementers often get stuck with really, really costly policies which might not justify their costs. See the pricing standards (untold work would have been saved if we tried to modify NWN's built-in pricing system) or the -6 floor as examples.
Now compare this to how most open-source software (OSS) projects are run: by a dictator. Larger projects are generally run by companies, and individual users have no formal power to affect the course of the project. They can contribute to it, but their contributions can be summarily dismissed. Companies build multi-million dollar systems on top of OSS projects which can be ruined at the whim of people they have no control over. They do this because the source is open; if the current project lead goes off the deep end or gets hit by a bus, the company can pick up where he left off. This is called forking. Most often when a project lead steps down he or she simply hands it off to someone else though, no buses involved.

Forking does help people stay sane, since they know they could lose control of their project if they screw up. Google forked the Linux kernel to create android (though they are slowly merging the two back). LibreOffice forked OpenOffice, and is now the mot popular free office suit. There are many other examples, but none most people here would probably have heard of.

So it is my opinion that ALFA3's game content and hosting environment would be better served by dictators and a 100% commitment to open-source. That is open modules, open shared content (haks), and even a forkable character vault (though you could not have the vault 100% open obviously). If this ended up being a bad idea you could always fork the project and bring it back to something more democratic.

Of course the danger here is that you have multiple ALFA-forks out there, sapping at our playerbase. You'd essentially be making it easier for people to compete with ALFA. In practice I don't think this would be a problem for end users, though it definitely might cause contributors some stress. Its a ton of work to fork and create a new PW. Sure it might be done, but only for major differences which might be best served by separate projects anyway. This problem is shared by OSS projects, and the world keeps on turning.

You can also think of this proposal as "start simple". Complexity in governance could always be added if the dictatorship ends up being a poor idea. Of course you'd have to convince others of this view, but if its really that bad you should be able to.

Opinions?
HEEGZ
Dungeon Master
Posts: 7085
Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 4:17 pm
Location: US CST

Re: ALFA3's governance

Post by HEEGZ »

Makes sense to me.

I'd like to support NWN2 from the DM side for as long as possible.

I'm also trying to get a NWN1 server up to experience content there that I missed way back when.

Finally, I don't know what the future holds, but I'd like to be around for ALFA 3.0, whatever it ends up being.
Zelknolf
Chosen of Forumamus, God of Forums
Posts: 6139
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:04 pm

Re: ALFA3's governance

Post by Zelknolf »

Wouldn't have expected that we have enough proficient people to make forking really viable, or as a thing that could come up. Like right now you could grab an (outdated, granted) BG and an up-to-date ACR and make a new ALFA if you wanted. We haven't seen any meaningful competition for it because the people who would want to do so are also people who aren't dedicated enough to learn and/or work on it.

And in current states, we already have people entrenched into their little fiefdoms, generally to the detriment of actual play. I would think that we should be trying to discourage that.
User avatar
oldgrayrogue
Retired
Posts: 3284
Joined: Thu Jan 24, 2008 7:09 am
Location: New York
Contact:

Re: ALFA3's governance

Post by oldgrayrogue »

In terms of governance I'd like to see a combination of the two actually. Lets keep our elected admin but let them behave like dictators within their sphere of authority. This should speed up decision making considerably. Members can voice their opinions for certain, but unless you are willing to run for admin, do the work etc., the people we have elected make the decisions and make them quickly.
HEEGZ
Dungeon Master
Posts: 7085
Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 4:17 pm
Location: US CST

Re: ALFA3's governance

Post by HEEGZ »

Or, the people doing the work have the decision making authority since they are investing... Similar to the power we grant HDMs, however, it will depend on the format we use and so on.
User avatar
Castano
Head Dungeon Master
Posts: 4593
Joined: Wed May 26, 2004 5:42 pm
Location: USA

Re: ALFA3's governance

Post by Castano »

umm we're sort of already doing that in admin. I haven't seen anyone oppose a tech ACR change, DMA has never implemented suggested things down the throats of HDMs like plot standards and has supported forking like the NWN1 server project (which if it ever gets off the ground will be interesting to see).

So I don't understand who we would fork stuff off too (summary: less forum posts more volunteers pls).
On playing together: http://www.giantitp.com/articles/tll307 ... 6efFP.html
Useful resource: http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

On bad governance: "I intend to bring democracy to this nation, and if anybody stands in my way I will crush him and his family."
You're All a Bunch of Damn Hippies
User avatar
Castano
Head Dungeon Master
Posts: 4593
Joined: Wed May 26, 2004 5:42 pm
Location: USA

Re: ALFA3's governance

Post by Castano »

also: the Ith, Castano and LA's plan to implement time zone forums was not opposed by anyone, again forking.

If you want to do something holler and we'll listen.
On playing together: http://www.giantitp.com/articles/tll307 ... 6efFP.html
Useful resource: http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

On bad governance: "I intend to bring democracy to this nation, and if anybody stands in my way I will crush him and his family."
You're All a Bunch of Damn Hippies
User avatar
Ithildur
Dungeon Master
Posts: 3548
Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 7:46 am
Location: Best pizza town in the universe
Contact:

Re: ALFA3's governance

Post by Ithildur »

The timezone forums wasn't ... quite what I was thinking of (didn't even know there was such a thing until I saw it yesterday and did a double take :shock: )... but thanks for the credit I guess.
Formerly: Aglaril Shaelara, Faerun's unlikeliest Bladesinger
Current main: Ky - something

It’s not the critic who counts...The credit belongs to the man who actually is in the arena, who strives violently, who errs and comes up short again and again...who if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement, but who if he fails, fails while daring greatly.-T. Roosevelt
Zelknolf
Chosen of Forumamus, God of Forums
Posts: 6139
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:04 pm

Re: ALFA3's governance

Post by Zelknolf »

That's not quite what forking is Cast. The idea is to facilitate the ability of developers to take copies of source to date of a project and begin independent development of the project. If it's a large/popular/demanded enough kind of project, you get enough people picking up a fork and starting their own distribution that you make progress through the competition of the series of mad dictators and their probable sex dungeons. It also makes it so that software which fulfills some broad need survives even though specific instances and implementations of the softare routinely fail.

It's a whole lot of why open source works. Anyone can pick it up and make their own set of changes, so no one actually has the power to lock down progress and no project actually dies from inactivity of the main contributor. (but, of course, open source fails when there isn't enough interest to make competing forks and the individual forks run as dictatorships anyway-- then the typical processes are extremely likely to kill the extant forks and then lack of interest sweeps the project into the entropic depths of the internets)
Locked