I wouldn't support such a law, but I would support it being allowed. It's like that famous quote by Voltaire, "I do not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.". That is how I view such a guild rule, especially since I would never stand by and allow myself to be governed by it. I would fight it in word and deed, even if I had to leave the guild to do so. However such a conflict in my opinion, can be interesting, and even enjoyable.

Also it should be noted that a person can look at every last guild and find laws that may be objectionable to some. For example, I would object to my guild telling me who I can and can't profit from. Or dictating who what race my wife should be. However, the fact that I would object to these things does not mean that it shouldn't be possible. Nor do I believe that anything is set in stone, power is nothing something that can be retain easily no matter what domain it may fall in.

Where there is weakness, there is opportunity and nothing screams weakness louder than position protection rules.

There are unwritten rules of sportmanship to cover those situations, because unreasonable or grossly unbalanced competition is just as unenjoyable as no competition at all. Which is where I think people are getting at with the 'get rid of these rules' angle - if the groups in power legislate themselves into a politically unassailable position, they kill competition in the political arena just as much as if elections were removed by admin fiat.

I guess that is where we differ, I consider such leaders to be willfully turning their back so that they may be stabbed.

If a guildleader legislates theselves into an unassailable position.. and a vast majority of the guild wants them gone.. you could always go to the City/Commune council. No council is going to let a single member cause a large portion of their city to up and leave. So, if you could bring enough voices against the corrupt triumvate, you could have the city council oust all of them, which automatically knocks them out of their guild positions.

Problem solved without the Admin having to make silly OOC rules.

Or.. simpler than that. Just contest. These 'unassailable positions' are dependant on either (a) strong support from a significant proportion of the guild (B) absolutely no other acceptable leaders...

Well, by unassailable, I assumed the person using that word was ignoring the fact that you can't be outguilded while contesting anymore. So even before the whole non-outguilding thing, there was a way to go against the unassailable.

Yes, I was considering the situation before the no-outguilding policy, -and- City/Commune intervention. Consider the following scenario.



Therefore -some- kind of OOC policy must exist (and does) to prevent the creation of unassailable positions.

The only way for a leader to be completely unassailable is if they have 3/5ths of the city of their side. Now, if they manage to keep 3/5ths of the city on their side.. they obviously are doing something right.

So I disagree that there has to be some sort of OOC policy now that there are 5 leaders per city/commune.

That was the fun part of what happened - and to be honest I enjoyed it immensely. Even so, by the time the announce was posted, the situation in the Ur'Guard was mostly over, and even though Kayde lost the election the main laws that people had a problem with were going to be looked at - but I see the announce more as a way to pre-empt something similar happening in a smaller guild where there is less chance of someone opposing it relatively successfully.

A mechanic existed before the new rule change, which protected any contester from outguilding.

Which was also created in the wake of power abuse. I don't think this change is particularly necessary, but I do think it can make a lot of hassle avoidable; it's not fair that guild administrations should be hampered by people creating "unassailable" positions. Even though this may add to the fun of the people directly involved with the political process, it's damaging to the rest of the guild.

The laws weren't merely being looked at. The people in power don't know how close they came to a full revolt of the Marshals. At least three of them were angry about the rules, and the rest were only holding their tongues on the assumption that it would be fixed. And people were doubting that the more the situation dragged on. So in any number of respects, it could be worse.

This would be true, except that those people in power also control the requirements to contest. The problem is not just with the law itself, but with the RP atmosphere it propogates. Any individual who rejected the laws of the Ur'guard and went up publicly against its leader would be disfavored to Nil and back (and most likely outguilded) before they had any chance of contesting. The only way that such leaders could be replaced would be if an already trusted and very powerful member decided to rise up against the leader - which is far less likely to happen.

This very theory is why oppressive monarchies can last for so long. It's true, people can attempt to rise up, but somehow those oppressive leaders always convince hordes of people to follow them, and the rebellions are usually squished. In the same way, incumbant leaders (even if they're bad leaders) can usually use the laws to rally support, especially in an organization where the individual is expected to sacrifice for the good of the whole. Eventually, yes, they could be overthrown, but a lot of people will give up long before that happens. Those are the people the Admin are trying to keep around.

I'm never good at wording things here, so don't hold nothing I say against me please.

I would like to comment on the recent Ur'guard election people keep brining up. First off, I personally was the cause of the rule change that was implemented. Bhairan and Zalana were against it, but at the time, I convinced them to give it a shot.

Let me regress a little as to the reasoning behind this change. This was NOT an attempt to keep myself in power. The other leaders aswell as Ildaudid can confirm this, but the main reason I took Champion of the Ur'guard was to give Ildaudid a break while he was busy OOC. Him, or Ixion were being planned to take my place once things were under control in the guild. So, as I said, there was no personal agenda for trying to keep myself in power and I am taking full blame, considering I pushed it on Bhairan and Zalana.

Now, the reason I suggested such a change and pushed so hard, was due to the fact I wanted to make the Ur'guard more military oriented. When I took over for Ildaudid, I followed under him and "learned" from him IC so it would fit more into the RP of hte guild when I took his place. I also sought out ALL three leader permissions before challenging. Now, I did not expect other to follow to do as I did, but I also saw it as to easy for people in the guild to keep challenging repeatedly. Thus the change.

We all felt horrible over the issue that arised from this change, BUT nothing was EVER said concerning this new law until AFTER the contestation and Kayde used it as her excuse for running. Though the law really never had anything to do with her running, but that is not the point of this post, so I will not delve into it. We all agreed (me, Bhairan, and Zalana) to change the law as soon as concern was raised. We did not want people thinking we were trying to keep the leadership from ever being toppled. Hell, as I mentioned above, Ildaudid should be replacing me again soon. The reason it was not changed right away was due to Kayde and the rumors that were abounding.

If we changed the law immediately, it would have made our leadership look weak, when all we were trying was to strengthen the guild. It would also have supported Kayde's false reasons for running. She had multiple issues with the leadership, so this was not the only concern, just a major one voiced. As soon as the election was over, the law was going to be changed. If we ever though such an issue would arise within the guild, we would never have made the law.

I'm the one at fault, I really did press Bhairan and Zalana for the change and they both suffered for my mistake. I am sorry that this blew up as badly as it did, but it was never intended to be abused, I only sought to bring stability and better RP to the guild.

-CJ

The nice thing about Ur'Guard is, hostile challenges have been EXTREMELY rare. I think I can only count two, and those without the last 10 years.

No one's holding things against you, bro. You had your reasons, they were wrong. Just accept likewise and let's get back on track.

(Funny thing is, I'm sure I've said this to you in-game, too.)

Ohh, I don't mind having things be held against me. I wanted Zalana and Bhairan to be seen as innocent of the issue because I caused it yet they received the brunt of the hate. Also to clear up people thinking it was done for evil or selfish purpose when it wasn't.

Yeah. But they shouldn't be held against you, and I don't. Just to make that clear.

I dunno, i think the two other leaders are largely to blame. The point of having 3 guild leaders is a check-and-balance system. They let themselves get pushed into a bad move. They should be held accountable for that.

I hate accountability culture. Excrement happens. But everyone always feels a need to identify the anus of origin.

/offtopic rant

This is another one of those bizarre instances where we agree. While in some cases, accountability culture is appropriate (people should be held to account for their mistakes), this is not one of those cases. I am not incredibly concerned about who passed these laws; in fact, I doubt that the Ur'Guard was the only guild guilty of this sort of thing. Any attempt to lay blame completley misses the point. The idea isn't to rake them over the coals, it is to prevent future problems which might occur.