Posts with tag democracy

There's a difference between a consumer and a producer. To use the dreaded and overused food analogy, liking to eat doesn't translate into being a good cook. For that matter, liking to eat doesn't even translate into liking to cook, much less displaying any skill at cooking. I neither like to cook nor have even the slightest talent for it, but if you look at me you can tell I'm not shy about eating. Why am I belaboring this point into the ground? Because World of Warcraft isn't a democracy in part because the millions of us who like to eat it don't necessarily possess either the talent or aptitude to cook it up.

Partially this is due to the fact that almost any creative task requires a certain degree of focus, and the more people you attempt to include in the design process the more effort needs to expended keeping the project on track. There's a reason projects of this magnitude often have people who specifically work on doing exactly that. They don't do the individual art, they don't code the abilities or design the environments or that next cool armor, they instead work on keeping all of these variables on track. They're jugglers, and the balls in this case are the varied and disparate elements of the game's overall design.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook.

As some of the insane political tactics in recent weeks remind us, we're less than a month away from election day in America. On. Nov. 6, nearly all Americans will have the opportunity to vote. Guilds don't often work that way, but should they? This week, one officer wonders whether his new guild leader is giving too much voting power to the masses.

Dear Scott,

I recently stepped down from being the leader of my guild due to obligations outside of World of Warcraft.

Before I stepped down, I placed a new system in effect that is very similar to a city council at the request of the existing members. I selected our five current officers and myself as councilmen.

I appointed a trusted friend of mine as the new guild leader/council chairman, and he has some pretty colorful ideas as to how our guild's structure should work.

My friend feels that our guild should allow members who have been active to become councilmen, like us, giving them an equal vote on all issues.

Quite frankly this scares the heck out of me.

Terra Nova has an opinion piece up on democracy in virtual worlds.   While we organize ourselves into self-governed guilds, where does it go from there?  From my own experience as a guild member and a guild leader, the governance involved in even small organizations can be a headache, and I can only imagine it getting worse with increased size and complexity.  Anyone have any opinions on democracy, from a World of Warcraft perspective?