Joined: Sep 22, 2013 Posts: 5699 Location: Inside my own head
Identity: Human
I've tried bringing it up here and there, but I think this is the only way to really start discussion on it. The original rules look like this:
Spoiler
The Magic: Expanded Multiverse (M:EM) Project is open to everyone. All members of the group are allowed and encouraged to voice their opinions on current and past projects, to vote to accept new works into the archive, and to submit their own works to the M:EM.
The M:EM is officially lead by the Overlord, who is responsible for the maintaining the project as a whole and deciding on its short and long term goals. The Overlord also has the power to delegate any of his or her duties to other members of the M:EM by creating new positions for them to fill. If for whatever reason someone is unwilling or incapable of fulfilling the position assigned to them it falls on the Overlord to either perform the duties himself thereby abolishing the position or to find someone new for the position. The position of Overlord is currently held by Barinellos The Great and Terrible.
There are currently three (3) positions created by the Overlord, they are as follows;
1. The Speaker is responsible for the Voting Forum. It is his or her duty to call a start to votes that have been requested in the Vote Request thread, to inform people when a vote has begun, and to declare when the voting has closed. The Speaker will post the results of all completed votes in the Voting results thread, and will move all accepted works into their appropriate section of the archives. The position of Speaker is currently held by Trolljuju Master of the Juju.
2. The Archivist is responsible the compilation and organization of official Magic: The Gathering material to be added to the Apocrypha so that it is not lost forever. He or she is also partially responsible for the general organization and maintenance of the rest of the archives. The position of Archivist is currently held by KeeperofManyNames one of which is Sam.
3. The Works Manager is responsible for the Works in Progress/Up for Discussion/Requests forum. Their duty is to help the members of the M:EM stay focused and complete their projects, and to make sure good ideas don't get abandoned. The position of Works Manager is currently held by Jedi123 Master Prodder.
The archives are everything that the M:EM creates. The index of the archives is marked for your ease of understanding. When you submit something to the project, you can determine a lot of the marks applied to the characters, planes, and other bits in the story that become part of the M:EM's Canon.
means Open. Marking something Open effectively gives up ownership of it the M:EM. Open things are things that are free for everyone to use.
means Public, the default mark. Marking something Public means you want other people to use it and build on it, even in ways you might not have intended, but you'd like to retain some creative control over where it goes.
means Private. Marking something Private means you consider it entirely yours, and want the last word on its inclusion in other works, or interactions with it: you retain almost total creative control over Private things. Because you can already veto big changes to Public things, though, remember that you don't have to mark a character as Private just to keep them from being killed off by someone else.
means Active. This thing is being worked on, right now, and isn't going to stay in its current form.
means Contested Canon. This thing steps on other things toes or has had its toes stepped on, or has been made problematic by Wizards. It needs to be considered and might be deleted, changed, or kept as is.
means Dead. This thing no longer exists in the present, though it existed in the past. You might be able to resurrect it somehow, but that would be a Major Change, and would need permission from its author if public or private.
means, roughly, Planeswalker. This character can travel the planes. Occasionally, this might be used for other things that can travel the planes.
Now, the first and most obvious change is the Positions described. I'm pretty sure at this point that Overlord has become M:EMperor; and Speaker has just kind of diluted across all voting M:EMbers. The Archivist is still a thing, but number one is that there is an Archivist account now and number two is that I've been the Archivist for well over a year now (and these rules were saved in Feb. of this year). Jedi may be back, but I don't think we even need a Works Manager (not that anyone took the position when jedi disappeared).
We do of course need to edit the Voting Rules to reflect this, but that can come later.
The image tags can stand, I guess, but I agree with Keeper that their a little less than optimal. Hmm... if we had little colored badge thingys with little letters it might work... How big are the smileys allowed to be here?
Nevermind, here's my proposed changes:
Spoiler
The Magic: Expanded Multiverse (M:EM) Project is open to everyone. All M:EMbers of the group are allowed and encouraged to voice their opinions on current and past projects, to vote to accept new works into the archive, and to submit their own works to the M:EM.
The M:EM is officially lead by the M:EMperor, who is responsible for the maintaining the project as a whole and deciding on its short and long term goals. The M:EMperor also has the power to delegate any of his or her duties to other members of the M:EM by creating new positions for them to fill. If for whatever reason someone is unwilling or incapable of fulfilling the position assigned to them it falls on the M:EMperor to either perform the duties himself thereby abolishing the position or to find someone new for the position. The position of M:EMperor is currently held by M:EMber Yxoque.
As a supplement to the M:EMperor, the Archivist is responsible the compilation, organization, and maintenance of the Archives. This includes adding any newly voted in material to the Archives, adding the appropriate tags, and placing the work in the correct location if applicable. To perform these duties the M:EM Archivist account has been given moderater powers over the M:EM and Art, Flavor & Storylines forums. The M:EM Archivist account information is shared among a select few voting M:EMbers, at the discretion of the Archivist, to ensure the account can be recovered should the current Archivist be unable to perform his/her duties. The position of Archivist is currently held by M:EMber Lord LunaEquie is me (also known as Its_Always_42).
The Archives are everything that the M:EM creates. The index of the Archives should be marked for your ease of understanding. When you submit something to the project, you can determine a lot of the marks applied to the characters, planes, and other bits in the story that become part of the M:EM's Canon.
means Open. Marking something Open effectively gives up ownership of it the M:EM. Open things are things that are free for everyone to use.
means Public, the default mark. Marking something Public means you want other people to use it and build on it, even in ways you might not have intended, but you'd like to retain some creative control over where it goes.
means Private. Marking something Private means you consider it entirely yours, and want the last word on its inclusion in other works, or interactions with it: you retain almost total creative control over Private things. Because you can already veto big changes to Public things, though, remember that you don't have to mark a character as Private just to keep them from being killed off by someone else.
means Active. This thing is being worked on, right now, and isn't going to stay in its current form.
means Contested Canon. This thing steps on other things toes or has had its toes stepped on, or has been made problematic by Wizards. It needs to be considered and might be deleted, changed, or kept as is.
means Dead. This thing no longer exists in the present, though it existed in the past. You might be able to resurrect it somehow, but that would be a Major Change, and would need permission from its author if public or private.
means, roughly, Planeswalker. This character can travel the planes. Occasionally, this might be used for other things that can travel the planes.
The first paragraph should probably have a clarification of the division between regular folks who join in and are welcome to help, and people who have work in the archives and are M:EMbers.
We should also probably include a basic board policy.
Maybe something like:
Quote:
As this board is oriented towards creating material, off-topic conversation and general chatting about Magic is probably best taken to one of the other Magic boards [link?] or to the Off Topic Room. If you have questions about the art or storyline of Magic, check out Art, Flavor, & Storylines [definitely link].
Mature content (explicit violence and sex) within stories will not be immediately deleted, but the more explicit it is, the more you will need to justify it artistically. The rules about what material you include are somewhat looser here, but are by no means totally lifted. And, of course, explicit content posted for the sake of baiting or trolling, or posted outside of the context of a work, is going to be treated just as it normally would on any other board.
Does this seem reasonable?
Also, we should rewrite the explicit rules for how works are voted in and how new M:EMbers are selected.
Joined: Sep 22, 2013 Posts: 5699 Location: Inside my own head
Identity: Human
KeeperofManyNames wrote:
The first paragraph should probably have a clarification of the division between regular folks who join in and are welcome to help, and people who have work in the archives and are M:EMbers.
We should also probably include a basic board policy.
Maybe something like:
Quote:
As this board is oriented towards creating material, off-topic conversation and general chatting about Magic is probably best taken to one of the other Magic boards [link?] or to the Off Topic Room. If you have questions about the art or storyline of Magic, check out Art, Flavor, & Storylines [definitely link].
Mature content (explicit violence and sex) within stories will not be immediately deleted, but the more explicit it is, the more you will need to justify it artistically. The rules about what material you include are somewhat looser here, but are by no means totally lifted. And, of course, explicit content posted for the sake of baiting or trolling, or posted outside of the context of a work, is going to be treated just as it normally would on any other board.
Does this seem reasonable?
Also, we should rewrite the explicit rules for how works are voted in and how new M:EMbers are selected.
Hey, at least someone other than me is actually taking about the rules. You have a point about M:EMbers. I'm not good at this sort of thing. I keep saying we need to get Tevish to rewrite them since he is creepily good at this sort of thing.
Voting Rules I was going to bring up after this, but it seems everyone is ignoring this thread.
Do you guys think we should combine regular Rules and Voting Rules?
For the record, I'm not ignoring this, I just have no idea. I'm very much not a rules guy. Reading over your suggested rules, nothing stands out to me as strange or out-of-place. I don't see a problem with combining the regular rules with the voting rules.
Sorry for not checking this thread earlier. I like all of the proposed changes, both Lord Luna's and Keeper's. I do agree that there should be a clarification about who's a M:EMber and who isn't, but I don't know how that should be worded.
Now that this poll is officially over, it's time to congratulate Aaarrrgh for designing Hill, which has been decided by popular vote to be the Card of the Month for October 2013!
Joined: Sep 22, 2013 Posts: 5699 Location: Inside my own head
Identity: Human
Aaarrrgh wrote:
Sorry for not checking this thread earlier. I like all of the proposed changes, both Lord Luna's and Keeper's. I do agree that there should be a clarification about who's a M:EMber and who isn't, but I don't know how that should be worded.
First, you don't know how much twisted glee it gives me to be called Lord Luna.
Second, what do you think about combining the formerly separate Rules?
Come to think of it, it seems the only real reason Voting Rules were separated was because of the sub-forum for voting was apart from the rest of the boards.
Now that this poll is officially over, it's time to congratulate Aaarrrgh for designing Hill, which has been decided by popular vote to be the Card of the Month for October 2013!
Joined: Sep 22, 2013 Posts: 5699 Location: Inside my own head
Identity: Human
RuwinReborn wrote:
Yea, I'm more for a "follow the rules" guy than a "make the rules" guy.
You tell me what I can and can't do, and I will or won't do it.
If it turns out those things are ridiculous for some reason, THEN I'll propose a change and/or just bugger off or forget about it.
I mean, everyone here is already crazy, so as long as we don't go complete totalitarian lock-down, I should be chill with it.
Well, to be honest, I think the Rules around the M:EM as they were are a bit too strict, especially with how the original council fell apart and the slow degradation of our infrastructure. But it's nice to finally hear from people after nearly a week.
The rules have always felt like an after thought really, we never spent much time worrying about the letter of the law so I guess I never really noticed.
It is probably worth mentioning that many people are not very worried about the rules because we have an astonishingly well-behaved community here. No one actively attempts to break any rules, and very few people even accidentally break any rules.
And the people who do actively attempt to be disruptive, unruly, and belligerent are going to do that regardless of what rules we attempt to enforce. Because they're trolls and they don't need silly things like logic and rules in order to function, if the base level at which they do function can be considered actually functioning. (Hehe... Conjunction junction, what's your function?)
So, what I'm getting at is, while it is a good idea to have the rules so that we know where the lines lay, the majority of the community is polite and aware enough to ask if something is alright before just going ahead and doing it.
I'd combine the voting rules. They can probably be refined and pared down a bit, too. Maybe just:
Quote:
Any poster that has a work in the archive is considered a full M:EMber and has the ability to both vote in and create voting threads for different works and initiatives.
Votes pass by simple majority of Yea votes over Nay and Not As Is votes. In the event of a tie the vote passes or fails according to which way the M:EMperor voted.
Not As Is votes are Nay votes that can be changed to Yea votes when the author meets certain criteria, to be listed by the voter.
Authors of works should abstain from voting for their own submissions. However, works created collaboratively by a majority of [active?] M:EMbers are automatically considered to be endorsed by those M:EMbers, and the piece will automatically be entered in the archives barring serious objection from one of the collaborators or from the remaining active M:EMbers. (This is a tricky one to word correctly. Thoughts?)
Voting threads are considered closed after three days of no activity.
I think you got the Abstaining/collaborative works section pretty well there, Keeper.
Also, considering this community's lazy voting habits recently, do we actually think we'll be able to run the "close after three days" rule? I would suggest:
Voting threads are considered closed after three days of no activity after N votes have been cast.
That way, we don't run the risk of threads being officially closed with only one or two votes, just because they were posted in a week most of us were busy.
Now that this poll is officially over, it's time to congratulate Aaarrrgh for designing Hill, which has been decided by popular vote to be the Card of the Month for October 2013!
The problem with that would be, I'd imagine, that you end up with a situation where you've proposed a planeswalker because you want to use him in a story on someone else's plane, but can't post the story yet because the planeswalker isn't accepted yet.
Maybe expanding the three-day period a little bit is a workable solution.
Or (crazier idea) we make voting last a week and all projects up for voting to up on Monday. I then send each voting member a PM with the list of project needing votes. That way, people get a reminder to vote (which seems to help) and voting can become a cyclical, habitual thing.
_________________
"I'm all for screwing with the natural order. The natural order objectively is awful. The natural order includes death, disease, pain, and starvation." --Sam Keeper
It's a minor task, I think. Shouldn't take longer than 15 minutes if you have a default statement and a list of people eligible for voting you can copy-paste. The first time it would take a bit longer, maybe. I wouldn't mind doing it.
_________________
"I'm all for screwing with the natural order. The natural order objectively is awful. The natural order includes death, disease, pain, and starvation." --Sam Keeper
According to Gobbo Fire there's a plugin that would let a mod see who votes in a poll, so that could make things a bit easier on us if they can get that set up. Of course, people will probably still want to post commentary usually but if someone's in a rush they can just toss a vote up in the poll quickly.
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means Open. Marking something Open effectively gives up ownership of it the M:EM. Open things are things that are free for everyone to use.
means Public, the default mark. Marking something Public means you want other people to use it and build on it, even in ways you might not have intended, but you'd like to retain some creative control over where it goes.
means Private. Marking something Private means you consider it entirely yours, and want the last word on its inclusion in other works, or interactions with it: you retain almost total creative control over Private things. Because you can already veto big changes to Public things, though, remember that you don't have to mark a character as Private just to keep them from being killed off by someone else.
means Active. This thing is being worked on, right now, and isn't going to stay in its current form.
means Contested Canon. This thing steps on other things toes or has had its toes stepped on, or has been made problematic by Wizards. It needs to be considered and might be deleted, changed, or kept as is.
means Dead. This thing no longer exists in the present, though it existed in the past. You might be able to resurrect it somehow, but that would be a Major Change, and would need permission from its author if public or private.
means, roughly, Planeswalker. This character can travel the planes. Occasionally, this might be used for other things that can travel the planes.
