Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Guild Power Structure

FWG Ideas and Feedback
#21

I’d love to have a couple of people in charge of certain things at some point in the future. For right now the guild is nowhere near active enough for that to be needed, but maybe later on.

My concern is not getting feedback from most of the community. With the exception of the two threads concning the future of and new leadership of the guild, the journals on FA for the last little while seem pretty barren of comments. The number of people who actually care about the guild other than it just existing is pretty low.
It’s kind of in the same way an amusement park you visit once every couple years announces its closing down. Sure you may make an online post saying you’re sad to see it go or another saying it’s cool to see it staying, but would you care if the staff was cut in half and service at the park diminished because of it? Not until it they made their visit in another year and a half.

I hate to say it, but it’s really turning that way. If the guild didn’t turn out a project, accept any new members, or promote anything for the next year, how many people would really notice? I mean it’s not just the FWG. A lot of member groups that start out strong tend to fall this way. I can’t even tell you how many communities I’ve been a part of that seemed so good at first with all of these people that loved it, only to see 85% of the members popping in every few months when they remembered it existed, claiming they were “busy”.

This is why my goal, before worrying about this petty president stuff, is to get more people involved with the guild. I can almost guarentee that my journal on FA won’t get above ten people commenting on it, and I’m sure at least three of those people will be forum posters. The vast majorty of the guild members are indeed on FA. They just don’t care.
If this means recuiting new faces to get activity up? Fine. If it means making the guild more appealing to the members that are currently ignoring it? Fine as well. It just needs more active members.

#22

I agree that it’s frustrating that activity/feedback seems to be low, but I don’t know if you can blame the guild members for not being active when the only thing to really be active in previously was the forums – and yeah, I wish there’d been more activity there, but as I’ve said, I also completely understand writers not having the time to go be involved in another forum when they’ve got other email lists and writing groups that they’re already committed to and active in.

As far as FA goes, I’ve seen a lot of FA writers that used to be very active on the site going dormant lately, at least ones I kept up with a few years ago, and I know from personal experience how many people on FA ignore journal entries entirely – so I’d be wary of gauging interest level too much by comments to the FA journal entries, because that account was dormant off and on at various times over the last few years, too.

I would just bear in mind that, until the guild members are all contacted by email, we can’t be certain they all know what’s going on – with the election issue or anything else. Yeah, most of them might see something somewhere, but they’re not all constantly on FA or watching the FWG page on FA, they’re not all on Twitter, and they may not necessarily be checking the main website (I know I rarely bother to go to it unless I’m checking something in the market listings).

I can’t remember now if an email announcement was ever sent out about the change in leadership or with a link to the new forums, but if not, obviously that information needs to be included first off. I’m not saying constantly spam the guild members with every little thing, of course, and I agree that the forum needs to be the main hub for community discussion, but critical announcements should probably be done by email, even if it seems redundant or just contains a link to the forum where things are being discussed.

So, just some thoughts on that to add to the mix.

#23

We shall see

#24

I know that. My point is that without more feedback from the rest of the community, it’s going to be us here and Sean discussing and deciding everything for the other ~100 members (or whatever we’re up to now).

#25

This is why we need to hold elections. People who may not ever be willing to invest the time (or risk the social fallout) of expressing their opinions on forums may well be willing to vote in an election. Or, if they don’t, at least they were given the opportunity. So, elections ensure that our direction and leadership represent our membership without trying to force a level of activity that may not ever happen.

However, as I pointed out in the other thread, the low level of activity on the forums doesn’t represent a failure on the part of the guild. We’re still providing a valuable service by offering a goal for new writers to strive for and a place where they can look for information on markets. That’s invaluable, and we’ve been doing that all along, regardless of whether the forums get a little sleepy.

#26

How do you intend to measure whether there is majority support for elections? That sounds like it calls for taking a vote from the membership?

Also, I’m a little unclear on how 2 and 3 interact with each other. It sounds like we’ll be holding our first election in six months, and anyone who wants to run for the office of president, including you, will be expected to write a brief statement of why they want to be president and what they plan to do with their presidency. Is that correct?

#27

Is there someone who will assert here that they can do a better job as manager?

#28

Show your truthful face if you are truthful.

#29

I’m a little dismayed that a number of members apparently believe the only reason for an election is if somebody else wants the job right now. That’s not the point of this issue, at least as I see it. It’s about the membership of an organization deserving to have a democratic say in who leads that organization. That’s the principle we’re dealing with, and either accepting or rejecting.

Even if nobody else wants the job and Sean would run unopposed – as people do, all the time, in all sorts of elections everywhere – it’s about having that process in place to give members a voice.

#30

Your tact, indeed, your command of English is noteworthy. I very much wish we had met under a more auspicious star. The point I was trying to get across was simply, “What will you bring to the table?” I do not feel that this was unfair.

#31

Seconded.

#32

(Posting from my phone so I’ll make this brief)

Ryffnah - As far as my intentions, you’re pretty much right. We’ll plan for the election probably somewhere around March or April. Anyone who wants to run will have to write up a message as to why they are running and what they plan to do.
Concerning gauging interest, this next week I’ll have to go through what emails I have and see who I can contact. Any other thoughts on what a majority means will have to wait until after I get that information.

Poetigress - It does kind of sound like, from the way these arguments are going, that we do plan to have an immediate election. Until recently that’s what I understood as well.

So does early spring sound good for these things to start?

#33

Folks, c’mon. The notion that the Furry Writers’ Guilds to have a somewhat more formal structure with elected officers – even if the structure is so minimal there’s only a single elected officer! – is not some kind of strange elitist plot to give control of the group to the Illuminati. The current “structure” is, in effect, that one person makes everything go and if for whatever reason they feel they can’t keep doing that, either someone else steps in or everything collapses in a cloud of hairballs. It’s terrific that (new) Sean was able to be the Guy Who Steps In this time – and I really like the new digs – but this is not a recipe for long-term sustainability.

“Activity” is going to have to be defined by people who give enough of a poop to come to the FWG web site – i.e., here – and put in their two cents. Hell, I was aware of the FWG when it was getting started and I didn’t even know it had a Fur Affinity account until recently. FA may be a good and necessary place to recruit – along with SoFurry (which is better in many respects for writers), Weasyl, and the smoldering remains of FurRag – but the FWG is not “everybody who posts stories to your favorite archive site,” it’s “people who’ve joined the FWG,” right?

#34

Let’s cut, print, and make the t-shirts.

#35

I’d feel better with some assurances that persons elected would be those with the necessary time, energy and competence to fulfill their duties, not merely those with the best name-recognition or the most flowery rhetoric. Will there be provisions allowing for the speedy replacement of officials who underperform, abuse their positions, or manage to inflict some manner of catastrophe?

That democracy is an end in and of itself, or that it’s inherently preferable to all other systems is simply not a position I share, however, my concerns about this potentially becoming a power grab and/or vanity exercise would be mightily assuaged if there were some checks in place to ensure that we don’t end up stuck with people who are going to muck things up (no offense to MUCKers).

The six month term limit is fine, but that still leaves plenty of time for an incompetent or ill-intentioned person to do damage. If establishing emergency provisions seems like overkill, it may indeed be so for an endeavor of such a limited scale, just note that the human capacity for making a mess of things appears to be limitless.

#36

That’s a good point, because I know that a lot of people that may take this job over who will decide after a couple weeks that it’s too much to handle.

We could have periodic evaluations, possibly. Maybe one two weeks after and one two months after? If the evaluation decides that the person isn’t capable to doing the job, then we can have another election.