Hey Star Army,
Behind every active faction there's usually a person or small group of people who maintain its articles and basically manage its day-to-day business. This faction manager is the central point of contact for GMs who want to know if their plot ideas make sense in the context of that faction.
Lately due to a personal disagreement much of the site leadership has been involved in a dialogue about what rights a faction manager does or doesn't have, and we've concluded that it's not exactly clear at this point.
For reference, here are the currently listed responsibilities of a faction manager:
In particular, I'm concerned with a balance. I don't want to see FMs as lords up in the castle looking down on player peasants. Building a faction is hard work and those creations should be respected, but making a collection of wiki articles doesn't necessarily qualify someone as a leader or site staff member. Anytime we give site members power over other site members, that needs scrutiny and careful consideration. Regular players should be empowered too, but obviously not to the point they can wreck a whole faction on their own.
So I'm asking your opinions:
Behind every active faction there's usually a person or small group of people who maintain its articles and basically manage its day-to-day business. This faction manager is the central point of contact for GMs who want to know if their plot ideas make sense in the context of that faction.
Lately due to a personal disagreement much of the site leadership has been involved in a dialogue about what rights a faction manager does or doesn't have, and we've concluded that it's not exactly clear at this point.
For reference, here are the currently listed responsibilities of a faction manager:
Responsibilities
Responsibilities of the Faction Manager include:
What's not clear is what the "powers" of a faction manager really are, and that's what we hope to clarify in this thread. @Kyle has helpfully made a proposal for FM rights. It's my feeling since some of these will affect everyone, we need transparency and input from all users before we move forward.Responsibilities of the Faction Manager include:
- Overseeing consistency and continuity within his designated faction
- Approving factional characters
- Final authority controlling NPCs of the faction
- Recruiting and approving factional plot Game Masters.
- Ensuring factional compliance with the Military Buildup Limitations
- Roleplaying the leadership and other NPCs of his faction as necessary
- Designating an assistant and/or backup FM who can run his faction should the FM become indisposed
In particular, I'm concerned with a balance. I don't want to see FMs as lords up in the castle looking down on player peasants. Building a faction is hard work and those creations should be respected, but making a collection of wiki articles doesn't necessarily qualify someone as a leader or site staff member. Anytime we give site members power over other site members, that needs scrutiny and careful consideration. Regular players should be empowered too, but obviously not to the point they can wreck a whole faction on their own.
So I'm asking your opinions:
- Should faction managers have the ability to keep their faction's tech or species from being used out of the faction? Even when it goes against the actual roleplay canon?
- Should faction managers have the right to remove underperforming game masters from their faction? Or is that the staff/admin's job?
- Should faction managers be able to make RP threads non-canon or retcon if they feel their faction wasn't played right? If so, how would we protect against abuse of this right?
- Can FMs "faction ban" a player? If so, for what reasons?
- Should GMs need to ask an FM before they use their faction's, or another faction's assets?
- Is it a problem if an FM is also a GM?