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Rufus · 09-02-2011

As a guild leader, I'm not convinced that a fully automated democratic style of leadership would really be a benefit. I understand your train of thought in this though: Democracy could help cater for the majority of the guild, reducing conflicts, involving everyone, and taking the load off of the leader. You'd be encouraging people to get involved, to make decisions, and that can work great in a guild setting. However, I do feel there are some things that simply don't work.

In an automated system where changes are proposed and guild members are required to vote it is going to take time. In that time you're probably going to have the person who proposed the change start contacting each member and telling them to vote. That removes the intended convenience, because if that were the case, you could just do it through PM's instead. Similarly, discussing issues as a guild is a lot more personal than a polling system.
Giving empowerment to each member is going to cause conflict when there's a difference in opinion. People don't like to be told that their opinion is wrong, and if that starts escalating then you're going to need an actual leader to mediate the situation. Again, this takes away the idealistic approach that voting gives people power and thus everyone is happy, because that's just not how things work.
Some people just want to participate in a guild. Some people have more influence than others. Some people have been in a guild longer than others, is there a difference? Should there be? You can't really rely on everyone to have an opinion, or for opinions to be within the best interest of the guild.

So yeah, that's pretty much the disadvantages of having a democratic system, especially one that is automated. I think the style in which you lead your guild should be up to its leader, because in my opinion there's always going to be a need for one. Perhaps we'd benefit more from each guild getting a mini message-board with a polling feature.

09-02-2011	3
Rufus Registered rufp4 Join Date: Jan 2011 Posts: 3,378	As a guild leader, I'm not convinced that a fully automated democratic style of leadership would really be a benefit. I understand your train of thought in this though: Democracy could help cater for the majority of the guild, reducing conflicts, involving everyone, and taking the load off of the leader. You'd be encouraging people to get involved, to make decisions, and that can work great in a guild setting. However, I do feel there are some things that simply don't work. In an automated system where changes are proposed and guild members are required to vote it is going to take time. In that time you're probably going to have the person who proposed the change start contacting each member and telling them to vote. That removes the intended convenience, because if that were the case, you could just do it through PM's instead. Similarly, discussing issues as a guild is a lot more personal than a polling system. Giving empowerment to each member is going to cause conflict when there's a difference in opinion. People don't like to be told that their opinion is wrong, and if that starts escalating then you're going to need an actual leader to mediate the situation. Again, this takes away the idealistic approach that voting gives people power and thus everyone is happy, because that's just not how things work. Some people just want to participate in a guild. Some people have more influence than others. Some people have been in a guild longer than others, is there a difference? Should there be? You can't really rely on everyone to have an opinion, or for opinions to be within the best interest of the guild. So yeah, that's pretty much the disadvantages of having a democratic system, especially one that is automated. I think the style in which you lead your guild should be up to its leader, because in my opinion there's always going to be a need for one. Perhaps we'd benefit more from each guild getting a mini message-board with a polling feature.