[Jump]

I hear Istvan is going to sending a notice to the fan sites with the final facts on the account change. So maybe he is starting a grass roots effort within the organization.

[Balgoth]

I know i'm not really one to speak... but i have an idea!

how about GM's are employees only-- If you still need more than you can hand-select (invite only) and recruit players and train them on how NOT to abuse their power and how to handle certain situations.

[Ambrosius]

GMs are currently employees. The emissaries we were discussing are not GMs. They are simply forum "helpers."

[Jump]

The desired dynamic of any forum is that all members can be helpers. Anointing a specific few just causes trouble.

[Balgoth]

Well now i feel like a hypocrit because I just volunteered xP.

I actually just experienced a similar situation in which the organization ended up destroyed completely. That experience taught me that anyone who volunteers does so because they want to. Generally people who want to do something want to do well at it. My thought on choosing moderators-- Make sure they are not only good decision makers, but that they are good listeners. You'll always have naysayers, but a good leader will take everyones opinion into account before attempting to please all the dogs

[Jump]

Yes but moderators and actual staff is one thing, anointing members to be "good" members versus the rest is a whole other thing. Plus a fan or grass roots forum is different than a company owned forum. Company owned forums should only have employees as staff IMO.

[Kerberos]

I see two different takes on this idea. The first (and probably the bad one) is something much like the ISD department in CCP for EvE, which ended very badly. When you give volunteers power ingame, bad things can only happen. However, the other side is something like with WWIIOL, which is "Forum Liaisons." Not mods, but more of a designated person to voice the will and concerns of their particular part of the forum (on WWIIOL, the barracks, hanger, motor pool and dockyard for each of the different aspects of the game). This actually works really well, and I imagine that there will be one for each faction. However due to the much larger scale of the game, there will need to be more than one for each faction and possibly more than just factions as well. PVE and PVP are also possibilities.

[Slopey]

This has been debated to death over on the Jumpgate Evolution forums, but seeing as I'm here:

We don't have any particular allegiance to a faction - the earlier "faction" representative stuff we've dropped. We don't or won't have any in-game powers - we're just forum helpers.

We're liaisons between the ND staffers and the forumites - we can bring things to their attention, request info on things, and pass it back along without the devs having to spend time trawling (which they do anyway).

We're also not PvE/PvP biased - and we have zero input on the PvE/PvP debate outside of what you see us posting in forum threads.

Hope that's of some use

[Jonboy]

In-forum greeters for newbies are a good idea.

People who can get attention due to mutual respect aren't too bad.

Advocates of any particular play-style or faction end up being counter-productive.

Un-payed (read un-accountable) volunteer GMs are very prone to abusing the system or of being seen to be abusive of the system, either of which is bad.

[Karash]

I didn't want anything to do with it since I figured this is how it always ends.

But, thanks to everyone that wanted me to be one. I will take your arrows, but they will be IN GAME only hopefully

[Jump]

How does it always end? It's a bad idea from the beginning, not the end, because it offers symbols of legitimacy to certain members of the community. This of course invalidates everyone else. So Joe noob comes along and of course he will value purple names answer in a thread even though white names may be the correct answer. This only discourages others from participating.

[Slopey]

Nobody seems to have been discouraged from participating - quite the opposite at present.

[Jump]

Well I would hope that you support it since you are one. Either way, plenty of others disagree and that's ok too.