Group governance

Possibly I'll be sorry for posting anything in the only forum area with a higher flame-to-information ratio than the General forum, but I just thought I'd ask what sort of systems of governance people would like to see for groups. Right now we have a limited system in which all officers have the same powers and all members have a single different set of powers. I understand some folks would like more options. This seems like the right forum in which to discuss this... or am I wrong?

neko

I would like to see a system within the group tools where not all the officers have the same powers.

Some officers who pay the up-front purchase price of land, and who pay the tier, should have greater powers. Only they should have the power to sell land, so that no officer who pays no tier, or only a little tier, would have the power to steal their land out from under them and resell it due to treachery.

So I'm for there being a "founding officer" status that becomes the sole officer allowed to sell land or finding some other solution to this problem.

Perhaps "investment officer" might capture the right of those officers to sell land.

There are some thorny problems en route to changing these tools. One problem is, if you have an investment officer only able to access and manage the tier he has put in, you have defeated the whole point of group tier. So I would keep the function that any officer can manage the group's tier as a whole, but I would put in a failsafe, that any time an officer wished to withdraw his tier from the group, his action to do so would automatically notify all other officers, and automatically be delayed for 24 hours.

This coud have some bad side effects. If an officer withdraws tier merely because he is putting it in another land group to cover a purchase or something, he's lost flexibility. But...we need to walk through all the steps and think of all the intended and unintended consequences on these tools.

Instead of members being undifferentiated, I am for having two tiers of members, those who are tier donors and those who don't donate tier.

Maybe there has to be a function of officers and/or members for "content creator" where the creator of a building can donate his building for the use of a group but retain his right to pull it back, but again, like tier, with 24 hour notice.

There's also the thorny issue of buildings. Should they be deeded to the group (once the bugs are fixed). Should they remain the sole property managed only by the creator?

These technical functions, once you walk through them and think about their unintended and intended consequences go a long way towards deciding the form of government you will chose in this world!

I'd like for groups to be able to sell products. When I tried this, it wouldn't let our group sell a copy of the product, it only let us sell the original. That stinks. As an individual, I'm allowed to sell a copy of a product I make, but groups aren't able to... why?

You're in the right place! I'd also like to hear about other existing or proposed governmental experiments out there.

I can tell you about our project briefly. The Neualtenburg Projekt implements a three-branch government each with different methods of choosing members. We have a democracy (elected representatives), meritocracy (selected thinkers), and an ergatocracy (productive workers) rolled into one. This provides checks and balances and different avenues for folks to advance based on their skills and interests.

The fundamental goal of the project is to create a system which allows the city to live on as new players join and old players leave. We want to make a self-sustaining organism whose fate isn't tied to a single individual.

In our second phase, we will sell land to citizens who will be bound to our constitution, laws, and theme by means of a covenant attached to the land grant deed. This should give the government true power to enforce its laws as it will control access to and possession of the land.

~Ulrika~

I myself would like for a group to be able to carry a balance of $L (though perhaps this is economics, rather than polisci). For example, when I made a donation to Awakening Avatars, I had to make it through a group officer, rather than making it directly to the group. I didn't mind, but it seemed counter-intuitive, and extra work for the officer in question to manage that. And in another group I'm in, I'd like to be able to deposit part of my funds to the group account for use in the project we're working on together. But then we'd need tools to define who in the group can spend the money. We could designate someone in the group as treasurer, but that person would still need to keep their own funds separate somehow from group funds. I suppose we could use an alt for this, but that seems really clunky.

neko