There were 3 players in the guild. Kwik, Kwek, Kwak. Good PvP-ers, an arena team. Gathering gear, having some old greens but no problem there.
They were kicked from the guild. No, they were not rigorous and busy violators of the rules. They did some "hahaha" and "itz a fail" in /g but no one was kicked for that. They are missing from the hall of shame too. So actually I violated the rules by kicking them.
No, I'm not apologizing, I'd do it again. I'm explaining.
As you know, Tol Barad is one of our focused activities. I lead whenever I can and we have pretty impressive win rate. And you probably also know that nothing loses TB better than tower morons. The ones who just can't understand that a siege has 1M HP, someone in PvP gear, PvP spec, not raid buffed has 10K DPS if he is good, so destroying a siege takes 100 seconds. Replacing it takes 20 secs. So a single guy bringing sieges up the tower can keep 3 defenders CC-ed, on the top of the destruction of the towers, because the siege does enough damage while alive. So the most important thing in a TB defense battle is hunting and yelling at tower morons.
You guessed it. Kwik, Kwek and Kwak were busy defending a tower. The fact that 2 other towers were stuffed with sieges did not bothered them. Me yelling at at them brought a ./care "emote" from one of them on the chat (can't remember if /raid or /g).
We probably could have win with them being useless. We won with lolling tower noobs before. Also, I knew that kicking them from the guild won't remove them from the tower. I neither had any doubt that they find a new guild soon. And they did, right there during the battle, the "famous" TRACTOR INC FARMIN NOOBS guild took them (they are called "noobs inc farmed by horde" on the server due to their superior "skillz"). What I couldn't allow is these punks making a complete idiot out of me by doing the thing I call "worst possible" while wearing our guild tag. As soon as someone would recognize it, I'd be a laughing stock.
Now why do I care if I'm a laughing stock? I'm sure that the lolkids ... lol on our guild rules, on our guild, on my blog, on me, on my "lulz 365 itemz" and so on. I never cared. One of my main points is not to care about peer opinions.
It's different in the sense that I have no power over TB. I can only lead via the respect of the players of the server. "respect" is a social construct. I can only win TB by "leadership skills", which means abusing social subroutines in the head of the socials. I reach it by appearing to be a widely accepted leader. The imagined reaction of peers does the rest. Practically every random believes that everyone else accepts me as leader so they want to fit in. If anyone respectable would stand up and say "I want to lead differently" everyone would see that the king is naked. I doesn't happen because I don't lead bad (it's not rocket science), so any other good player would just give the same orders. The ones that stand up are not looking anyone respectable, due to their terrible lolspeak, ridiculous gear or lack of membership to any (or any decent) guild make their person (as opposed to opinion) unacceptable by the randoms. Kwik, Kwek, Kwak were OK geared and had our guild tag. Had the potential to draw randoms to towers, losing the battle.
Luckily for me, after kicking, they all started drama with lolspeak both on /raid and /casual, making themselves look complete idiots. After their tantrum, no one cared to question my action. However it was still not by the letter of the rule. One could rightfully say that I was unjust and unfair, just got lucky and targeted it to morons who had it coming. It also means that next time I won't be lucky and may kick someone who did not deserve it.
I believe it wasn't luck, I simply have enough experience in spotting morons to do it on the fly. Also, I was in the rare situation when inaction could do much worse than a group wiping. However it rises the question: can pure and fair rational behavior be effective in a social environment? I mean if everyone in TB would be rational, I could just ignore them as no one would follow them to the towers. But they are not. The effective behavior among socials is manipulation that can't be done rationally. We also cannot completely isolate ourselves from socials.
So all I can promise is that I won't insta-kick anyone in any situation when we are isolated from the social crowd, like a raid, or even a random instance/BG, where the others won't see us again and won't remember. But it's a pretty slippery slope. Can I, shall I kick someone who does anal spam on the /trade? He is clearly an idiot and make the whole guild look bad, therefore decreasing the recruitment chances. However there is no rule against anal spamming.
The philosophical question of it is pretty deep: among socials, does democracy and "justice for all" works better than benign dictatorship?
They were kicked from the guild. No, they were not rigorous and busy violators of the rules. They did some "hahaha" and "itz a fail" in /g but no one was kicked for that. They are missing from the hall of shame too. So actually I violated the rules by kicking them.
No, I'm not apologizing, I'd do it again. I'm explaining.
As you know, Tol Barad is one of our focused activities. I lead whenever I can and we have pretty impressive win rate. And you probably also know that nothing loses TB better than tower morons. The ones who just can't understand that a siege has 1M HP, someone in PvP gear, PvP spec, not raid buffed has 10K DPS if he is good, so destroying a siege takes 100 seconds. Replacing it takes 20 secs. So a single guy bringing sieges up the tower can keep 3 defenders CC-ed, on the top of the destruction of the towers, because the siege does enough damage while alive. So the most important thing in a TB defense battle is hunting and yelling at tower morons.
You guessed it. Kwik, Kwek and Kwak were busy defending a tower. The fact that 2 other towers were stuffed with sieges did not bothered them. Me yelling at at them brought a ./care "emote" from one of them on the chat (can't remember if /raid or /g).
We probably could have win with them being useless. We won with lolling tower noobs before. Also, I knew that kicking them from the guild won't remove them from the tower. I neither had any doubt that they find a new guild soon. And they did, right there during the battle, the "famous" TRACTOR INC FARMIN NOOBS guild took them (they are called "noobs inc farmed by horde" on the server due to their superior "skillz"). What I couldn't allow is these punks making a complete idiot out of me by doing the thing I call "worst possible" while wearing our guild tag. As soon as someone would recognize it, I'd be a laughing stock.
Now why do I care if I'm a laughing stock? I'm sure that the lolkids ... lol on our guild rules, on our guild, on my blog, on me, on my "lulz 365 itemz" and so on. I never cared. One of my main points is not to care about peer opinions.
It's different in the sense that I have no power over TB. I can only lead via the respect of the players of the server. "respect" is a social construct. I can only win TB by "leadership skills", which means abusing social subroutines in the head of the socials. I reach it by appearing to be a widely accepted leader. The imagined reaction of peers does the rest. Practically every random believes that everyone else accepts me as leader so they want to fit in. If anyone respectable would stand up and say "I want to lead differently" everyone would see that the king is naked. I doesn't happen because I don't lead bad (it's not rocket science), so any other good player would just give the same orders. The ones that stand up are not looking anyone respectable, due to their terrible lolspeak, ridiculous gear or lack of membership to any (or any decent) guild make their person (as opposed to opinion) unacceptable by the randoms. Kwik, Kwek, Kwak were OK geared and had our guild tag. Had the potential to draw randoms to towers, losing the battle.
Luckily for me, after kicking, they all started drama with lolspeak both on /raid and /casual, making themselves look complete idiots. After their tantrum, no one cared to question my action. However it was still not by the letter of the rule. One could rightfully say that I was unjust and unfair, just got lucky and targeted it to morons who had it coming. It also means that next time I won't be lucky and may kick someone who did not deserve it.
I believe it wasn't luck, I simply have enough experience in spotting morons to do it on the fly. Also, I was in the rare situation when inaction could do much worse than a group wiping. However it rises the question: can pure and fair rational behavior be effective in a social environment? I mean if everyone in TB would be rational, I could just ignore them as no one would follow them to the towers. But they are not. The effective behavior among socials is manipulation that can't be done rationally. We also cannot completely isolate ourselves from socials.
So all I can promise is that I won't insta-kick anyone in any situation when we are isolated from the social crowd, like a raid, or even a random instance/BG, where the others won't see us again and won't remember. But it's a pretty slippery slope. Can I, shall I kick someone who does anal spam on the /trade? He is clearly an idiot and make the whole guild look bad, therefore decreasing the recruitment chances. However there is no rule against anal spamming.
The philosophical question of it is pretty deep: among socials, does democracy and "justice for all" works better than benign dictatorship?
36 comments:
Democracy is better because:
1. Better succession. There is a risk that a dictator may pass on power to someone unsuitable.
2. Power corrupts.
3. Democracy allows constant change which is good. Having someone in power for so long may lead to stagnation.
In the short run, if the benign dictator is wise, then it can actually be better than democracy. In a democracy, the popular decisions are not always the best - sometimes tough choices need to be made.
However, there are large risks with dictators and all it takes is one bad one to ruin everything.
By kicking without rules to back you up, you have shown that you have the cult of Gevlon.
You didn't kick the members for sitting in a tower; you kicked them for insulting you, and not doing as they were told. That they then acted poorly meant you had social support. Imagine instead they came up with a merely plausible (possibly wrong) argument they should have been in the tower?
You can be successul, and while you are making the 'right' calls according to the social norms of your group, you will be supported.
However, that is what you are relying on - the social norms & making the right call.
If you wish to have a social group that follows a strong leader, then dictatorially kicking is the right thing to do.
However, I thought you wished to have a set of individuals that act with enlightened self interest.
In essence, you won the battle, but damaged the message you are trying to sell.
I'm surprised that it's taken this long for this sort of situation to come up.
As you say, anal spamming in /trade makes the guild look bad. This has two impacts - one is related to guild recruitment, the other is related to social stature. Presuming that you're unconcerned with social stature in and of its own right, your only concern is that of guild recruitment.
If your goal is to recruit like-minded asocial people, they wouldn't be concerned by individuals /trade spamming, if they know anything about your guild, as the rules prevent it from occurring within guild. As such, your recruitment drive is unhindered.
Realistically, they abided by your guild rules. There is nothing in your rules preventing your members from running /trade PuG raids and master-looting / ninja'ing gear against previously agreed looting rules (as opposed to need before greed rules). Would you kick a member for doing so? If a member of the 'public' messages you with details of spamming / trolling / moronic behaviour, will you kick them?
At the end of the day, the guild rules very clearly specify that you can be whatever moron you like out of the guild channels, providing that you're not a moron within the guild channels. There are only 'guild chat' and 'raid chat' rules, not any rules governing the use of /trade or non-guild raids. Arguably, your responsibility is to therefore change the rules, or to accept that you will sometimes have poor representation at times, rather than impose /kicks subjectively on a case-by-case basis.
Personally I prefer dictatorship, so on as you can figure out a method of succession that ensure a "good" dictator ends up on the throne. Sadly, most methods of successsion only select for the: "excellent at killing people" trait, or perhaps simply : "excellent at manipulating people" neither of which gurantees this elusive "good" trait.
Of course, in a situation where succession is a nonissue, give that the leader is, objectively, the "best". Benign dictator ship should logically outperform democracy. Having the best person at the head, i.e. everyone else is WORSE at the job than he is, means that any other choice is frankly, sub-optimal. Democracy, in my opinion, would likely end with the giant middle group leading. Because the group that's neither exceptional in greatness or ... suckiness, is generally the largest(bell curve.) This means of course, the leadership is simply worse period than one which the exceptionals are the ones which lead. I suspect organizations led by the exceptionally "sucky" generally disintergrate rather quickly, so that should be a non factor.
So then the question remains, how would one design a test to measure one's skill at being a "good" leader? And how would one ensure that this is the test which determines the succesor? Rather than say, the test of last person alive who wants the throne gets to lead. Which generally ends with the guy whos good at killing people + moderately lucky wins. (Luck is almost always necessary. Unless you're playing by unmatched skilled. But even then, a natural 20 will still lop your head right off with a critical.)
RE: Goodness
Of course, the main reason I was rather vauge with the qualities of a "good" leader, was because there existed no parameters. Without a goal to aim for, the expasion comes with entropy, resulting in a net movement of none, of course, there are certain general guesses so that our efforts in selecting a good leader is not useless, since it should be obvious that "leadership" is likely one of the traits resquisite for a "good" leade. But nonetheless, I think it is necessary to define what one wishes to be done. For example, if one wishes to simply increase the size of The PuG, that can be done, as can increasing it's quality but, unlike David, most of us are not prophets, so, like the biblical wisemen of Egypt, (who incidentally likely never existed in Egypt) we are unable to interpret the dream the king as forgotten, i.e. one that we do not know.
Jeeeesus that TRACTOR guildname is so fucking bad and immature... It instantly gives away that its members are bad and immature. Good to have things like that, you can find idiots fast in a PUG :)
Guild rules and not the Testament. Usually, rules get amended as you (the leader)get more experience.
Add one simple rule, that should've been there from the start:
"Don't make the guild look like a bunch of morons.
If you are caught being disruptive in groups, trash-talking, leeching, begging, tradechat spamming etc, instant kick."
Simple, no?
Begs the question what would you kick us for? A random coming to complain to you that I ninjaed 5 epics in a zg, then vendored them "to pay for my repair bills morons"? Going 0-7 in a wsg then refusing to ress at the gyard where the rogues and frostmage are camping me? Ofc they wouldnt be presenting balanced views, but how about in a TB battle where I get asked (by RL) to go take out the one siege on a tower (no sieges on other towers), get killed once while doing so then go back finish the job before the tower falls (as you once asked me to do and I did as I am sure you recall). If a guildie sees me doing that and it gets back to you that "moron nightgerbil was defending a tower while we lost" will you kick me? that seems like something I need to know now not after the kick.
@Squishalot: it never came up before because it needed an extreme constellation of stupidity AND situation.
One ninjaes? Who cares? Exactly one person who would get the item without ninja. That person makes a tantrum on /trade of it? People ignore him or even /ignore him for spamming without even considering that he might tells the truth.
Someone does anal spam on /trade. Chances are he is /ignored without anyone bothering to inspect him and even if he did, only he will know that the moron is from our guild.
In TB they did
- something spectacularly stupid
- something that annoys lot of people (as loses the battle for all of them)
- in front of the more active players of the server
- in a situation where it's likely that someone writes on /raid that "they are from Gevlon's own guild lol"
In the absence of ANY of these, they could have been ignored. When I created the rules, I couldn't foresee that the 4 above can exist at the same time.
Nah. The fastest way I lose respect for a leader is if they keep tolerating the biggest screw-offs. If they don't care, then why should I? And I don't have any power to get rid of them. Only the leader does.
@ Gevlon: If they ragewiped a /trade pug raid, you would meet all four of those criteria as well. In fact, any /trade pug situation would give them the ability to damage the guild's name.
Regarding ninja's, you would be correct if it only happened once. However, such a person is likely to do it over and over, and word spreads around the server.
The situations have been available, albeit, discouraged by the number of guild raids/groups.
Anyway, my point stands - it's not in the rules, and so your kick was invalid (by the rules). You therefore need to either update the rules, or accept that the rules are not sufficient for keeping morons out and deal with things subjectively when they come up.
long time listner first time caller, doesn't caring how ass clowns make your guild tag "look" make you a social, I have noticed a marked diffrence in your posting in this regard and it mjakes me scratch my head.....not caring what M&S think is the key, not setting up new rules to take their place then enforcing them thoughtlessly
Guilds are, and this is pretty obvious, dictatorships by default.GMs have all the power , and this has been stated by Bllizard numerous times, its up to every individual to asses wether he/she wants to be in A guild.
To make point a litlle bit more clear one should realize that guilds arent countries, or goverments, even thought they may apear as countries and goverments in the sense that no guild has enough time, resources and above all will to make all the laws , acts and what not in order to function.So a guild leader and his chosen officers "rule" 'by feel' or along the guidelines. And sooner or later you may find yourself in the situation like you just described where no "law" or "rule" upon which to judge thus leading you to make one sided decision.
So to answer your philosophical question , guilds and its leaders are dictatorships and dictators, which is perfectly fine in my opinion but if a guild leader wants to maintain its 'dictatorship' she/he must rule sensibly.
Why black and white?
Tempers flare. If you're unhappy with someone, temporarily kick them, see whether they make a better argument after a while, and reinvite back if they do.
Problem with 'benign dictatorship' is that it offers no guarantee. One day, the dictator might be the benignestest ever, and the next day he may go batshit insane and execute every 3-rd person in the country.
As a rational person, I don't trust any kind of dictatorship, simply because I cannot ever guarantee that the dictator is rational, or that he may stay rational.
Thus, it is better to take the occasional poor democratic judgement against me than risk getting nothing but bad dictatorial decisions taken against me.
As for the guild, simply add a new rule:
"I reserve the right to temporarily kick anybody at any time for any reason. We must then take a break of 24 hours since the contentious issue arised, then discuss reinviting again. If the kick happened for anything other than a breach of rules, the member still has full rights to join raids/rBGs, if the leader wants him to."
This way, the person is protected from wronful kicks over questionalble gray area rules, you get to think on whether what you did was right or wrong, and the lolkids who wanted to see 'justice' on him get to see him kicked, then they will stop caring, and go chase the next shiny butterfly.
Why bother with tricky rules that try to cover every eventuality when all you REALLY want is:
Rule #1: Do what I say, when I say it.
Bam. Done.
@Squishalot: the ragewiper does not qualify because
- something spectacularly stupid: Yes
- something that annoys lot of people: just 9
- in front of the more active players of the server: no, just front of /trade puggers
- in a situation where it's likely that someone writes on /raid that "they are from Gevlon's own guild lol": no, they insta kick him without further thinking. In TB you are forced to watch as the idiots lose the match while unable to act.
@ Gevlon: I'm not sure when the last time you pugged a raid was, but people who organise trade pugs pay close attention to guild names, especially if said guilds are high ranked ones on the server. If top guilds act / perform poorly in pugs, it does reflect badly on the server's opinion on the guild. And yes, these people can be active members, considering that well-organised trade pugs are often alts of raiders, or second-tier raiders who aren't being called up (i.e. the core people you are trying to attract from other guilds).
A wise man once sayd: "Democracy is the best of the currently available options, but it is still bad."
Constructively we cannot build a social structure of power right now which is 'balanced'. This makes me favor a dictatorship, becouse the appointed peer will be in control with certain ideals and goals. If sayd goals do not align with its people (in a WoW perspective) they can leave or revolt to try and change (ultimatly leading to changes in perspective or them being kicked.)
I personally think you handled the situation well, becouse your antisocial strucure developed a powerhouse of people who follow your philosophy. People who respect your philosophy and ways will follow you for the possible benefits they can reap or possibly becouse they dislike alternatives.
The barriers of the social structure you create are always a very delicate topic. Democracy is very popular becouse it gives people the idea they can voice their opinions. In the core its still communism, since the few handfull of people in control call the shots. But we get to choose them. (which is a joke in and of its own) Alternatives to democracy are socially less accepted and often disregarded as the root of all evil.
To the original topic: From your perspective, I think that Kwik Kwek and Kwak got what they had comming to them. They disregarded advice (or an order, I cannot tell from the post) which would have ultimately lead to a possible loss. You wanted to protect the victory and status of your guild and would rather see them dismissed then associated with losing Tol Barad under your command, and kicked them becouse of it. Perhaps in the future you could be slightly more leniant and give people a fair warning for certain acts, since an instant kick might have been overkill.
@ Azuriel: "Why bother with tricky rules that try to cover every eventuality when all you REALLY want is:
Rule #1: Do what I say, when I say it.
Bam. Done."
I wasn't going to say that, but instead, let it continue to evolve in that direction, based on the last 12 months. The 'ninja-raid' rule was just the first step.
I'm still wondering why EnergyBomb is still in the guild, when it's obviously a gross violation of the naming rule.
Firstly I just want to comment on "Democracy is very popular becouse it gives people the idea they can voice their opinions."
In the PuG members are free to voice their opinions, there are often passionate discussions and members will actively challenge Gevlon if they feel strongly about an issue, sometimes no resolution is found to a disagreement but I have not seen any member punished in any way for disagreeing. A lot of our guild rules protect the individual (choose the spec you enjoy/raid when you want to/set up your own raids at will) ie no slavery in our guild.
Our "Dictatorship" is a lot more free than your "Democratic" guilds.
Anyway my opinion....
I also lead a fair number of TB battles. I read the walk through here, watched Gevlon lead some TB and have the opportunity to ask him if/when I see/make mistakes. My success rate is also fairly good and the majority of players will follow my lead.
The night before I was leading a TB battle and Kwik/Kwek/Kwak were at towers. I called on them to stop (which they didn't). There's not a lot you can do to adjust to them but I did call on the "new" players who were following them to get back to a flag (which some of these new players did)
After the battle (which we won) they argued with me in guild chat about their pivotal role in the success. We disagreed but in the end I told them
1)If you believe your doing the right thing then you should whisper the raid leader and quickly explain why so he does not think you are a drooling idiot and
2)Three people going to towers may not seem like it would have a large impact but you MUST make a macro to whisper the idiots who follow you to towers and stand there wondering where they should go.
While Gevlon is the only authority figure in the guild if many of your peers warn you against something you should take note.
When leading a raid people will /who, they will see my guild tag, they will /who if I call someone a moron (I do this less frequently than Gevlon but I still use insulting as a tool to correct detrimental behaviour) How does it look if the people I'm calling morons and myself are in the same guild?
'Kwik', 'Kwek' and 'Kwak' are the names (and considering it's a team, pretty obvious reference to)of Donald Duck's little cousins in Dutch/Flamish.
http://www.donaldduck.nl/duckipedia/artikel/70
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwik,_Kwek_en_Kwak
So if I understand the Rules correctly, it's odd they were invited in the Guild in the first place.
Which by the way shows a plus of democracy: someone is more likely to tell the 'leader' he's making a mistake.
Is it more important to follow the letter of the law, or follow the spirit of the law?
Now, you should start to do this in RL. I think you know how and why dictatorship arises. The real people could have better life. No sarcasm, I'm not democratic.
The PuG is not a perfect manifestation of asocial vision. Simply introducing "no lols in chat" is kinda like company dress and language code. It shields you from people who think jeans is good office clothes and communicate mostly by 4 letter words, but the rest of the people will have their own share of m&s among them. In fact, having spent almost a decade in corporate world, i'm not entirely convinced that m&s ratio in it is any lower at all.
What the guild does achieve is the ability to always have people to do stuff at a good level without having to really keep any sort of time schedule. Those three hurt the level of guild.operations and didn't show any care for.it when called on. Kicking them was completely justified.
As for the rules, the one you might wanna add is that in any 10+ player environment one needs to be able to explain his actions in a rational way, should the group leader or a GM require such explanation. Failure to explain not followed by change of questionable behavior is evidence for M&S and grpunds for kicking.
If people are deliberately doing things incorrectly after being told the right thing, they are M&S.
Aside: do you have an explicit rule against the real money vanity mounts?
Summary: leadership will always require judgment; it can't be fully formalized. As long as you're open about when and why judgment is being used, everything is fine. Don't be an American corporation, and have a bazillion rules so you can cite a rule when someone shows they deserve a firing. Just fire them, say why, and move on.
I would suggest a rule that explicitly says you'll formally record the new violation when it is discovered.
Also, you should have a rule describing roughly when instantaneous judgment-based punishments are allowed.
I wouldn't have kicked Kw*k. (Though I also wouldn't have invited them based on name alone. If they mean something, I don't know it...until it references other players.)
I would, however, have publicly notified that I wanted to kick them, that I would be writing a rule against what they're doing, and if they so much as sneeze wrong in future, they're out.
Basically, it isn't entirely their fault, so they shouldn't entirely bear the punishment. While their moronity is proven, they should have an opportunity to fix it.
An alternative is to allow yourself to forgive if they'll repent. Kick, but if they appeal with maturity and politeness, they get a second chance.
However it rises the question: can pure and fair rational behavior be effective in a social environment?
Now you're more experienced you do (or will) have a rule about the towers in the guild post.
The problem is that you're not omniscient, so you can't articulate every rule in advance.
A secondary problem is that even if you did articulate all the rules, the post would be miles long. Nobody would read it, or indeed should have to.
The philosophical question of it is pretty deep: among socials, does democracy and "justice for all" works better than benign dictatorship?"
No.
However, 95% of those who try for the dictatorship are socials, and thus couldn't be benign if their life depended on it.
Even up against just the signal-to-noise ratio, it's really really hard to get a benign dictator, let alone the other barriers.
What you should do is try to articulate the spirit of the rules.
Though ultimately, I (personally) would just say, "Gevlon's Guild, Gevlon's rules. If you don't like it, start your own guild," you could simply put in a general rule to cover these unforseen edge cases.
Such a rule is necessarily ambiguous. But you've already had problems with interpretation of your existing rules. This is normal. It's impossible to completely formalize the rules, partly due to non-omniscience, and partly because everyone is a sneaky rules lawyer.
It is extremely rare to find someone who genuinely wants to play nice. The first reaction of a human to a rule that's in their way is to try to evade, not to understand the rule. Almost everyone will attempt to sneak through loopholes under some condition. A law-abiding citizen is just someone who got lucky, and doesn't desire anything illegal. If they acquire such a desire, suddenly they will call the law 'unjust.'
So, yes it helps to formalize the rules. However, when you run into the limits of formalization, it's mainly not your fault and you shouldn't worry about it too much even if it was - the effort isn't worth it. Just have good judgment.
If your judgment isn't good, you will suffer consequences - that's your incentive to get it right. Second, if you're open about it, and admit to mistakes, you can improve.
@ Pretension & @ General Gov Design
Succession IS the power. Anything that has the ability to choose a successor has the ability to choose policy and philosophy and style...and to extract promises in return for the throne.
All other powers are secondary.
The best solution to this is simple property rights. Blizzard has implemented this system.
Anyone can start a guild. Once up and running, the guild has a discrete and unambiguous chain of command and ownership.
This means well-run guilds succeed and badly run guilds fail - they cannot socialize their responsibility. Every guild owner suffers the consequences of their own actions, and nobody else's.
Guild members also have this property - they suffer the consequences of which guild they choose to join, and nobody else's decisions to join.
So, does democracy work? Well, if you think so, you should try running a guild democratically. It should out-compete the dictator guilds, such as Gevlon's.
However, you should fear the fact that if a dictator dictates badly, they'll lose all their guild members. This is a far more effective incentive than a vote, especially long-term.
To whit, having thought better by writing about it above, my guild would have the following rules:
What Alrenous Says, Goes
Specifically, in the past, Alrenous has said:
No lolspeak.
No silly names.
No (etc...going down Gevlon's list.)
Alrenous would add a few things:
I will be as fair as possible.
I will be as consistent as possible.
However, the idea is to...(here I'd spend some time to properly summarize the spirit of Gevlon's rules. Simply, no M&S? Perhaps, no social nonsense?)
If, at Alrenous' sole discretion, you prove yourself to be (bad thing above) you will be kicked, regardless of how unfair, inconsistent, or extra-judicial the decision may seem.
Incidentally, this turns out to be the common-law system with the guildmaster as the judge, especially if somewhere in there I pledge to publicize all judgments and have an appeals process.
Basically this works because if I judge poorly, a competing judge/GM can hoover up all my members. After an equilibration period, all possible members will be under good judges.
@FluffypawsQT
Not exactly. Winston Churchill said "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…". Note that not perfect =/= bad.
Be that as it may, comparing guilds to forms of national government is silly and pointless. A government (democracy, dictatorship, or whatever) has the power to tax my wealth, imprison me, even kill me. A government also has the power to protect my wealth, my personal freedom, and my life. I cannot change the national authority I live under easily or cheaply. So, the rules of the nation I live in, and how closely there are followed, is extremely important to me.
A guild, on the other hand, is nothing more than a recreational club. The only real power it has over me is to kick me out. Boo hoo. I can join a different club in minutes (as the three ducks here demonstrated), or I can continue to play the game without belonging to any club at all.
The Dune series of books has some great insight into human nature & the essence of ruling & application of law. There's a quote in one of the books, i dont remember where, that i feel correctly portrays what you have done and how we should look at rules. The essance of it was:
Rules & law are dependent on the view of those who make & apply it. The advancement of a civilization is not determined by the quality of its laws but its method of choosing its leaders.
I'd say your defacto acceptance as a leader and your actions to ensure the continuation of success say more about the atmosphere of your server than the rules list of your guild.
among socials, does democracy and "justice for all" works better than benign dictatorship?
I believe you've asked the wrong question. Others have touched upon this point but I'd like to try and expand it.
In TB you're not running a country you're fighting a battle so deciding between democracy or dictatorship is irrelevant. You can't possibly hold a vote in a battle, you need a military type structure which includes a leader, strategist and troops who do what they're told when they are told.
Anyone disobeying a direct order is court marshaled because discipline has to be maintained for the good of all. It's harsh but so is war and TB is a simulation of a battle in a war. So simulating the conditions that win a battle (including discipline) is more likely to get the results you desire.
You did the right thing.
i think you could amend your rules by stating that guild members in a public raid like tb or bg's shall abide by guild rules.
when it comes to performing, and not just talking trash in /trade, it is important that the guild is seen at the highest level.
What if you didn't kick them from the guild? Surely that would have been a worse choice than keeping them around. If they can't follow directions in TB, how are they going to magically learn to listen in a raid environment? I agree with the decision to kick them.
guilds are all a democracy, by defination. Players vote with their feet.
How you lead a guild does not really matter. As long as the guildmembers all agree you're fine. The moment that any single guild member has difficulties with your decision, they can leave.
The so called democratic guilds, voting and polling about every little detail are in fact ships without a captain. There is no course for the guild. No progression in getting to a goal. And usually they come to standstill. In order for any guild to be successfull there needs to be a guy at the rudder, steering the boat.
Don't fall into the trap of voting about guildrules, kicks, or policy. The moment you start changing any rules to "fit" your bill you'll just cause drama.
Remember your post about the raid that got Hijacked? Where one guy in guild was creating another raid next to yours?
You got accused of changing the rules to fit your ideas after the fact. Regardless of how that worked, changing rules to reflect anything will just be an additional argument for opponents of that decision to cause more drama.
In my guild there are only 3 rules. Respect one another, be active ( 1 logon monthly else your kicked ) don't cause drama.
That covers everything. If you feel you're about to change something fundamental in the guild, you can ask for opinions, ideas. But don't go around explaining, or apologising, for decisions you've made. This is your guild, and no one else has anything to say about it. If they don't agree it only takes them 8 keypresses to be rid of it. [ENTER]/gquit[ENTER]
In the end, the more "democratic" guilds, all fail, policy will be based upon consensus, wich is by definition in a mature guild not what everyone wants. Just what the vocal group wants. If you put anything to a vote, you'll see that the far greater majority won't even bother to respond. ( in standard guilds ) Rather you'll see 4 - 5 guys being vocal about their opinions, and dragging more with them. Usually by manipulation, private whispers, or complaints in public chat.
Any single one of such players is a liability, regardless of weather they agree or not. They are bound to be in the midst, if not the cause, of guild drama.
Guild drama is never to be tolerated. Disagreements of courses to be followed can be dealt with in private, or if sufficient reason for it, with a public vote. But once a decision is made, thats the end of it.
In reality, if you went on a kicking frenzy for no reason, it still is your guild. you can do with it as you want.
Don't fall into the social trap of consensus, no-one wants watered down beer in the end.
Pick a course, and sail it, keelhaul the disagreeing basterds, and if that doesn't fix it, make them walk the plank.
I lurk and read, but just wanted to add my 2 cents in: namely that I think there are some situations which are not covered by guild rules and must be handled outside of them. This was one such situation.
Your explanation for why you kicked them is, in my opinion, consistent with your outlook on WoW and M&S, so I see no problem. You handled it fine, and my opinion of you and The PuG is unchanged.
Looking forward to future posts!
Gev,
Two thoughts: first, you've just run into the oldest justice debate there is, whether the letter of the law or the spirit of the law are more important. The decision you made implies you value the spirit of the laws more than the letter. There's nothing inherently the matter with this, especially if it seems that everyone else governed by the laws agrees. However, it opens the door for looser and looser interpretation of the "spirit" of the laws, which can lead to problems. You've already acknowledged this (when you say you might accidentally kick someone who doesn't deserve it), but sometimes in the moment it's hard to be objective and realize you're falling into the very foibles you've discussed before.
Secondly, I teach English, and I'm particularly good at teaching grammar (I swear this is going somewhere, and has nothing to do with your writing, as I am under the impression your primary language is not English; I'm not here to criticize that, as I have taught heavily ESL populations and know what an absolute nightmare English grammar is. Back to the topic, now). I learned a long time ago that rule to which there were exceptions were bad rules. A good rule has no exceptions, but sometimes it's hard to formulate a rule that encompasses what you need it to that also has no exceptions. The honest truth, though, is that it's on you, as the teacher (and in your case, the guild leader) to do whatever work it takes to come up with that type of rules. You need clear, concise rules with no exceptions for people to fully understand anything, be it grammar or guild management. If you want to avoid things looking like a "cult of Gevlon" (to quote Foo), then you need to revise your rules. There's no problem with doing that (as others have mentioned it's quite common), but it's necessary to prevent cult of personality appearances.
For the record, you've made a lot of heavily reflective posts recently, and I've really liked them. I know you must innovate to continue moving forward and to have things to reflect on, but I've enjoyed the recent reflections quite a lot. It shows you're human.
I dont usually coment here, but this one made me think a bit and honestly I am surprised you do not have any rule of the kind azzuriel sugested
Quote Azzuriel
Why bother with tricky rules that try to cover every eventuality when all you REALLY want is:
Rule #1: Do what I say, when I say it.
Bam. Done.
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Honestly I am an officer in a guild and the RL of same said guild and I have kicked players for less, case in point:
Anal spaming in trade.
And what those players did was worse, they defied the leadership of your guild, that is more then enough reason for a gkick.
For all those that are spouting nonsense about "democracy" in a guild, I can only say "You are wrong", a guild can never be a democracy, something ruled by comitee never works optimaly, and a guild is just like any other organization that needs to function properly can not be such a thing, a guild must always be a dictatorship with a clear chain of command with a set list of consequences for wrongful actions, personally I have only one punishment, GKICK on the spot, no appeal and no second chances, saves the drama in the future and believe me when I say that is the best course of action.
For all those that think of GM's on power trips and just kicking everyone that looks at him cross eyed or whatever, just do a bit of research before joining any guild and avoid those that may look a bit shady.
Quote Squishalot
@ Gevlon: If they ragewiped a /trade pug raid, you would meet all four of those criteria as well. In fact, any /trade pug situation would give them the ability to damage the guild's name.
Regarding ninja's, you would be correct if it only happened once. However, such a person is likely to do it over and over, and word spreads around the server.
The situations have been available, albeit, discouraged by the number of guild raids/groups.
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News of this kinda of behaviour indeed spread and it's usually the guild that ends geting the bad rep of having assholes in their ranks, avoid that because I know of quite a lot of players that do avoid that kind of guilds when they are "shopping" around, case in point:
I had to recruit 2 dpsers to replace summer losses and after talking a bit with them on mumble one of them asked me if a certain player was still on the guild, (that player had been kicked for Ninjaing on a firelands trash run and after the GM knew he was kicked) and after I said he had been kicked and the why both of them told me they wouldnt have joined any "ninja guild" and I must say I agree.
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