Alright, I'm abandoning my "
Notes" idea because it sucks
If I have anything to report from the Consul/Admin+ section, I will report it here and in our "main" chat (Guild Topic). We have some changes coming (TBA), and of course we've recently updated the heck out of our Guild Topic system.
SPEECH:Any time you have an idea, suggestion, complaint (etc.), please post it to our suggestion topic or bring it to the senate floor. Another option is to PM it to me or to inform a Consul/Admin (you can always request something to be FWD'd to me as well). I want to keep my own communication very open. I have never really been closed except when I'm away (because I can't be open to communication if I'm not here), but I want to take clear steps to
show that I am open. That may help eliminate the sense that the Admin+ are "closed" or too private.
To be sure, I was a big part of why the co-leaders were previously rather closed in terms of policy discussions, etc.. The prevailing notion was that our conversations regarding policies and members should be kept private ... mostly because we were worried about
reactions to what we were doing (it's not that we were doing bad things). We still need to keep some things private, like some promotions, any discussion of drama (going public with that always ends badly), and some policies which we feel need to keep under cover until it's ready to be released or brought to the Senate. The Senate itself was deisgned around the idea of creating more disclosure and to unwrap what you guys think, thereby allowing everyone to be part of our decision-making process -- and in many cases, the ultimate deciders of policy and various what-nots.
I want to share that I made an honest mistake in terms of our privacy policy, because I was following a model akin to much of what you would find in corporate America as well as in politics. Even if you look at d2jsp, everything is secret and top down, with the exception of the Site Suggestions area or when you get in trouble and a mod may need to be pretty specific about what you did wrong so you won't keep doing it. I understand and respect institutions that want privacy, especially because it is certainly true that public opinion can be, well, annoying as f*ck
It is also not only possible but inevitable that the public will break and exploit the rules, and so on and so forth. But it is my experience that in most private institutions, a distrust for the public leads to internal distrust and, in fair conditions over time, internal dissent and ultimately total collapse. This is a natural problem of human social relations. If you
begin with trust, then you engender it.
Besides, we have a pretty good group of people in Labyrinth. If you go out into the world, any way you slice it in any domain, you're going to see that a good portion of the population is made up of complete jerks, morons, or reasonable facsimiles -- my apologies if you are one of these lovely people
I spend a fair amount of my time learning and researching various subjects, just because that's how I operate. And a while ago, I studied motivation to the point where I became an expert, but what I learned was that it's very difficult to motivate people. It is better to lead them. And so I later studied leadership and I put a lot of effort into understanding it so that I could be an expert on the subject. And one of the findings I've made in that area of the seventh circle of nerd hell is that some very advanced forms of leadership begin with trust. This immediately agreed with my own sense on the subject, and it timed itself perfectly with my return to d2jsp (yarrrr, I was studying the subject while recovering from brain damage). And so now it informs my desire to make changes in Labyrinth. I know that
some degree of change is uncomfortable to some people, and that a large degree of change can really set some people off. I get that and that is not my intention. My intention is always to do my best, and now I see that my previous best was really good, but not as good as it is now (in terms of leadership) -- and all of this ties into the changes we are seeing. And most of these changes reflect the public will inside of Labyrinth
(F*cking wall of text = done)