My input on this...
Lizard Lizard
not a n00b to the internet or online communication in general, as my
presence in cyberspace dates back to 1989, and I'm getting some deja
vu * 100 here.
First, when people start putting together "Proposals" that sound like
Dennis The Anarchist's spiel from "Monty Python And the Holy Grail",
that's Sign One things are about to go terribly, terribly, wrong.
Democracy doesn't work on the Internet, for a huge number of reasons
I'm not going to bother going into. Almost nothing of any value on the
net, whether it's a web forum, a mailing list, or a software project,
is run *de facto* democratically, regardless of the de jure. The
structure that WORKS on the Internet is this:
a)Someone, or a VERY small group of someones, says, "Hey, I've got
this neat idea. Since I thought of it, I'm in charge."
b)They put forth unrewarded and considerable time and effort, and often money.
c)Sometimes, it works.
There's really only one way to save RPGBN now that the original
someones have had enough. Someone ELSE needs to step up and say, "OK,
I'm taking over." He convinces the people currently in charge to let
him, they hand him the keys to the kingdom, he issues a few
proclamations, and, if we're lucky, the day-to-day business of the
network proceeds effectively unchanged. Everyone else in the barnyard
who wants a slice of the bread after the Little Red Hen has sowed,
harvested, and ground the grain can just deal with it.
(And, no, there's no way in hell I'm volunteering for any part of
this. I'll just be happy to listen to whoever is stupid/brave enough
to do so.)
We need either a volunteer Benevolent Dictator For Life Or Until I Get
Tired Of It, or a volunteer SMALL Supreme Soviet. Nothing else will
work, and anytime people start talking about "councils" and
"openness", it spells imminent, total, and complete disaster, as
everyone focuses on putting together some ideal "system" and nothing
*actually* *gets* *done*.
--
=======================
Personal Blog: http://www.xanga.com/lizard_sf
Buy my book! http://www.amazon.com/Rainbow-Connection-Ian-Harac/dp/0982006713
The Abyss Projects: All 666 layers - eventually.
http://www.mrlizard.com (4e D&D game crunch)
Chris Tregenza
missing is the mechanism of handing things over.
In democracy, rather than waiting for the owners to get tired of the job
and quit, the members get to choose when it happens.
Phil & co are being very generous and honourable about handing over the
network but there is no guarantee the next controllers will be. A
democratic process has the best chance of ensuring that control passes
smoothly from person to another at an appropriate time.
Democracy is not a silver bullet. The strength of the network will
always depend on the skill and hard work of those in charge plus the
enthusiasm and support of the membership. Democracy is simply the best
way of achieving this over the long run.
Chris
Lizard Lizard
>
> Democracy is not a silver bullet. The strength of the network will
> always depend on the skill and hard work of those in charge plus the
> enthusiasm and support of the membership. Democracy is simply the best
> way of achieving this over the long run.
In two decades of watching communities form, flourish, and fail in
cyberspace, this has not turned out to be true.
The ease with which people can form new communities or join multiple
communities, as compared to doing so in meatspace, makes democracy
much less essential. In my very long (as these things go) experience
with a wide variety of groups, the ones which succeed are the ones
with the least fussing over ranks, rules, policies, and procedures,
and which just have a small core of people, formally or often
informally generally acknowledged as "in charge", who just get things
done, and if people don't like how they get things done, they just
quit.
Very few successful internet communities are run democratically.
RPG.net isn't. ENWorld isn't. No mailing list I've ever been on has
been. The most successful open-source projects have a leader or a
small cabal that decides what code is included and what isn't. While
I'm sure there must be counter-examples, due to the size of the 'net,
they're a minority and usually have some exceptional quality which
exempts them from the usual flow of things.
I've also learned something else in 20 years of arguing on the net:
Telling people things they don't want to hear never works. It doesn't
matter how much you tell someone "If you touch that stove, you will
get burned." They have to learn it for themselves.
Democracy is often the worst way of getting things done. It's just the
best way we've found of getting things done *without having to kill
people*. Once you don't need to worry about having to force those who
disagree to go along, democracy becomes an extremely inefficient means
of accomplishing almost any goal. In meatspace, it's very hard to
leave a nation, and laws, by definition, require universal obedience.
So democracy is a way of making sure everyone feels sufficiently
vested in the decision that they're likely to buy into it. In
cyberspace, there are no such restrictions. There can be a dozen
blogger networks, a hundred, a thousand, and you can belong to none,
some, or all of them with ease, and there's no need to compel anyone
to join or not join, so the issue of force is moot. Without the need
for everyone to agree before anyone can do anything, there's no need
for democracy. Someone just says, "I'm gonna do THIS, join me if you
want to!", and that's that.
Even in groups allegedly run democratically, the reality is that once
the group is over a dozen or so members, there quickly evolves a small
core of people who care, and a majority who don't. For all practical
purposes, that core becomes a ruling oligarchy, and the majority goes
along if they like the way things are going or just quits, one by one,
if they don't. There's no need to fight for "change" or "reform" in a
community when there is a very low cost to start up another community.
Further, since the resources which do have a cost are often privately
owned, any change which the owners of those resources don't like is
basically nullified. They will, quite simply, take their ball and go
home. Remember the golden rule -- he who has the gold, makes the
rules. In this case, it's whoever is paying the server hosting fees.
There's no commons here, no tax dollars which are paid by all and
which must thus be distributed according to the will of the majority
of the payers. Now, if that's what ends up being set up, things do
change quite a bit, because having real money invested in a community
dramatically raises the interest one has in seeing it run and the
responsibility of those collecting the money to those paying it.
However, pay-to-join communities rarely thrive compared to "Everyone
can sign up!" free communities. Even with the most nominal fee -- say,
5.00/year -- I doubt even half of those currently in RPGBN would pay,
and while that may be a shame, it's also, again, the reality of it.
You may disagree. In fact, I'm sure you will. It won't change things.
satyre
Thanks for your views. What do you want from your community and at
what point will you walk?
Steve
Lizard Lizard
I want a system where my blog reaches a larger audience and readership
grows through exposing people to it who might not discover it on their
own.
I'll walk when it seems the benefits of belonging do not outweigh the
cost in time/opportunity. At the moment, the "cost" is linking back to
RPGBloggers in every article, trivially achieved by a Joomla plug in
that automatically adds an appropriate footer to my posts. If the cost
-- which can be monetary, a mandatory time commitment to my posting,
overly complex style/format/content guidelines, etc -- grows, I'll
have to balance that cost against the presumed increase in readership
from membership.
satyre
I'm also unimpressed at the prospect of cost or needless imposition.
Let's see what the future brings. Nice work on the Abyss BTW.