Governance Reform

Souvarine · Post by **Souvarine** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 3:17 pm

Out of my hat (since i have no say in here), the structure we have is that of a huge international space station. It's great but...we're on earth here.

Can it work? sure, is it too heavy? hell yes.

That's my opinion, biased and unasked for.

Anyway, onto Exodus

Lusipher · Post by **Lusipher** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 5:41 pm

For one thing you guys need to stop being so damn overgoverned to begin with. This project since the Quake has cared more for how it runs things and who gets a pretty little title than actually putting up servers and having the DMs have some decent say so on how they run their own servers. You dont need all the Admin. You need one or two people at the top running the place and looking out for the greater good of ALFA. You need those people to be pretty much agreed on by the general body of ALFA not just the Dms who think they are entitled to have a greater say so than everyone else. Dms do a lot of the work, but this project is more than just them. Let the whole project vote on the few who will run the place and be happy with what you get.

A majority didnt like how things were run pre Quake and those people had some legit beefs. I was friends with those that ran ALFA at the time and they pretty much had gotten sick of hearing people whine about things constantly. Do I think they were a bit biased ? Yeah, I listened to a lot of their discussions and I do think they were at times. Did it hurt they all came from mostly one server ? Yeah, in the eyes of most it looked like TVS controlled the majority of ALFA. They could shoot down stupid ideas by Indio or whoever was running Silvy at the time because there were at least 3 of them all good friends from one server. Bool got added to help off set that perceived bias, but a lot of times he sided with them and at other times I think they "encouraged" him to side with them.

What I just dont understand is why do other projects like Avlis and others just put out product and have people get along and not worry about whos in charge and all ALFA has ever cared about is whos running and rules and all this total nonsense. Its a gaming project.

Not everyone will ever be happy how ALFA is ran. Its a God given fact. You have too many people with too many ways of wanting to run this place and they will always be the case. ALFA has always been stymied by its overbueracratic nature. Its driven many folks away and made many just shake their heads at how stupid things have gotten. Dump the system and put a couple of people in charge. Stop worrying about your title or whatever and just do whatever job it is you do here. If people worried less about all the other stuff ALFA might thrive.

Inaubryn · Post by **Inaubryn** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 6:21 pm

Admin don't care about black people!

Mulu · Post by **Mulu** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 7:26 pm

Avlis is an unfair comparison, it has a single owner. I'd dare say many if not most PW projects have either a single owner or a very small group of owners. ALFA is a different project.

Lusipher · Post by **Lusipher** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 8:46 pm

Avlis 2 has one person running multiple machines that the Avlis community helped buy. One person runs the machines/upgrades them, but many staff help do the game updates/DMing/ and building. I dont see why ALFA couldnt be the same. Its mostly because people here dont want to give up control. Its that same nonsense thats hurt this place.

Mulu · Post by **Mulu** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 9:01 pm

Dude, Avlis has a single person calling all the shots, a single "decider," regardless of how many other people do work on the project. That has an obvious advantage in efficiency, as well as an obvious disadvantage: "my ball my rules." I can't honestly say whether that advantage would outweigh the disadvantage in all circumstances, though it seems to work well for them.

But realize that Avlis is big not because of decision-making efficiency. It's big because they aim at a much much lower common denominator. Specifically, they tacitly allow powergaming, min/maxing, munchkinism, etc. That's a much bigger pool of potential players than ALFA or other high rp PW's have to draw from. But it comes at the obvious cost of having a gameworld filled with PG'ing munchkins.

Lusipher · Post by **Lusipher** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:06 am

think you seriously should check Avlis2 out then. Cause you dont know what your talking about.

Rick7475 · Post by **Rick7475** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:52 am

Danubus wrote:think you seriously should check Avlis2 out then. Cause you dont know what your talking about.

They have a fun world. But we try and recreate Faerun. Also, we try and add more custom content, that is why we have an infrastructure.

We may not get the server numbers we had (ie 15) that our current infrastructure was designed for, but believe me, if we have 2 - 3 servers with 100 players, we still need the infrastructure.

Mulu · Post by **Mulu** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 3:03 am

Danubus wrote:think you seriously should check Avlis2 out then. Cause you dont know what your talking about.

I played Avlis 1 for several months, and I'm sure it's the same playerbase. Now, I had a lot of fun, and made some PC's I really liked, and even made a few friends, but despite the presence of some good rp'ers and DM's and a freaking ton of static content that I never even came close to finishing, ultimately the munchkin quotient wore me out. YMMV.

Lusipher · Post by **Lusipher** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 7:23 am

Im not talking about Avlis 1, Mulu. Im talking about NWN2 worlds here. Go check them out. Also, ALFA has had its fair share of munchkin players. Ive seen a good lot of them when I DM'd and played here. ALFA might strive to be above the norm, but its not as great as you guys try and let on. We wouldnt have had so many Min Maxing, powerleveling, server hopping folks in the past if this wasnt the case.

They have a fun world. But we try and recreate Faerun. Also, we try and add more custom content, that is why we have an infrastructure.

You do not have more custom content. A ton of content thats even been made in regards to custom models and animation came from Avlis 2 builders. Their dev team has made a lot of advances as well as sharing those advances with the NWN2 community.

danielmn · Post by **danielmn** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 10:36 am

Back to the topic at hand...

Mord · Post by **Mord** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:40 pm

No, I demand more entertainment.

Post by **ayergo** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 4:51 pm

I've always agreed we have way too much "government".

I would offer a different view as to what to do though:

Open Source Model.

All sever content is open for anyone to download. If folks want something added, they can submit their change to the maintainer of the server (HDM). Changelogs go to the project head (Lead Admin).

ç i p h é r · Post by **ç i p h é r** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 5:50 pm

I think we've been informally working in that mode ayergo, but it's a good suggestion nonetheless.

JaydeMoon · Post by **JaydeMoon** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 6:35 pm

Cipher, are all servers available to all members of ALFA? I'm fairly certain that if you don't DM on a server, you're not supposed to be able to open it up in the toolset and 'find all the secrets', as it were.

Not as policeable among the DMs and whoever has access to the DM ftp, but your standard members don't have that access and a common 'concern' is that people with access but no 'reason' for it may abuse that access by gleaning meta information. This is one of the reasons those people who provide a great boon to ALFA by offering a host machine even if they don't DM on a particular server are 'punished' by not being allowed to play on it.

I think Ayergo's version of 'open source' is completely open, access to all.

Back to the topic at hand:

What I just dont understand is why do other projects like Avlis and others just put out product and have people get along and not worry about whos in charge and all ALFA has ever cared about is whos running and rules and all this total nonsense. Its a gaming project.

Like others have mentioned, Avlis is pretty much owned by one person. So are many other PWs.

I have always felt that a benevolent dictatorship would be the best way to go. Problem with that is the same problem with any form of governance. Ego. You add people to the equation and it f's things up, every time.

As I see it, the overwhelming problem with a council lies in figuring out who goes on it. What is the threshold that determines a 'contributing member'. If we limit the size, then does another contributing member not get in, because 'oops, we're full'.

For contributors that aren't necessarily building or DMing but performing an administrative function, like Daniel Man (Superhero extraordinaire), effectively running the admissions process (a big job!), who determines who takes his place when he steps down, the council at large? Or does he select an heir?

There are a lot of questions and there would be a lot of hemming and hawing about how to make a system like this work.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the current way we handle it. I think locking down some of the voting would be helpful and I think I would support giving Lead a little more authority.

/me shrugs

There will be issues with every government. I fail to see how a council of people who feel like ALFA is theirs because they are the ones with the machines, know how, and power over PCs would be better than a council of people who run ALFA because their peers think they are the best ones to do it.

That certainly isn't to say that the current way is better, who would know unless we tried this council plan. But I think the actual gains from such a shake-up, especially in this time of transition, would be negligible compared to cost.