OpenCommunity Announcements

I may be overly pessimistic, but I don't like where this is headed.
When I got here OC had a calendar filled with events and an active non-toxic raid community.
Now that all has ceased to exist, or at least it does no longer feel like it all belongs together.
Some events are coming back, but it's no longer OC but "someone". It's the same people doing it and they haven't changed their attitude, it just feels different.
But then again thats just me and I really hope it somehow works and starts to fill with life again.

I love the way this is headed. Instead of having this top-down structure, we are getting a tribal structure, an actual community, where everyone can find their own specific mix of interests. From what I understood of the new website implementation, is that you can follow the various layers, like clubs, threads, etc. And if you follow various clubs or their calendars, those calendars will be concatenated into one convenient calendar filled only with the things you want to see. Amazing stuff. I expect to see the various groups and individuals of OC contribute their interests and see the community flourish without putting the load all on a select crew of organizers (a major downside of top-down). Also, I expect many more different things aside from GW2 to appear, like other computer games, board games, arts, crafts, culture, and so on. And all that in a community which intends to be a safe haven. So yay OC!

Edited March 27, 2019 by fenix

5 hours ago, Dawnkeeper said:

I may be overly pessimistic, but I don't like where this is headed.
 When I got here OC had a calendar filled with events and an active non-toxic raid community.
Now that all has ceased to exist, or at least it does no longer feel like it all belongs together.
 Some events are coming back, but it's no longer OC but "someone". It's the same people doing it and they haven't changed their attitude, it just feels different.
 But then again thats just me and I really hope it somehow works and starts to fill with life again.

Thank you for you speaking your mind, I definitely think the changes are massive and there'll be an even more pronounced change in how things will look.

The reality is that these changes were inevitable. The OpenCommunity model was not necessarily unsustainable, it's just that it was unsustainable with just 3 people managing it. Despite repeated calls for people to step up, interest was sparse. If spread evenly, the work needed wasn't that much, at least in the Event and TT Teams, but while there was interest to keep benefiting from it, there was no interest in actually maintaining it.

Commanders would harp on about wanting fewer rules and regulations, but when asked to come up with solutions to issues on their own and democratically resolve them, nobody wanted to do the actual thinking, and when a group of commanders actually did establish an alternative to OC and GW2C, all of their rules and procedures ended up being identical to OpenCommunity's (almost as if we had thought them through, and they were there for a reason). The reality that most commanders don't want to hear is that there's a difference between just tagging up and doing events, and what we were doing at OpenCommunity, and you can't have the same perks without the same hard work.

Same with non-commander volunteering. We kept consistently asking for volunteers who wished to help with community management, or anyone who could help us engage people outside of events, etc. etc., but no one wants to put in the work. So we would continue to put in the work ourselves, stretching our limits temporarily, thinking "in time, the volunteers will come". They didn't, and these changes are not as much a choice as they are a necessity.

OpenCommunity was like... hmm  this will be a stretch of an analogy... it was like a market bubble, and it had reached maximum capacity. It would either pop and collapse completely, or it would need to be de-escalated. We chose to go with the de-escalation route.

1 hour ago, fenix said:

I love the way this is headed. Instead of having this top-down "benevolent dictator" structure, we are getting a tribal structure, an actual community, where everyone can find their own specific mix of interests. From what I understood of the new website implementation, is that you can follow the various layers, like clubs, threads, etc. And if you follow various clubs or their calendars, those calendars will be concatenated into one convenient calendar filled only with the things you want to see. Amazing stuff. I expect to see the various groups and individuals of OC contribute their interests and see the community flourish without putting the load all on a select crew of organizers (a major downside of top-down). Also, I expect many more different things aside from GW2 to appear, like other computer games, board games, arts, crafts, culture, and so on. And all that in a community which intends to be a safe haven. So yay OC!

I think "benevolent dictator" is not really an appropriate term, due to the nature of the community. You wouldn't walk into a restaurant, try to eat from someone else's table and then call the restaurant owner a dictator for not allowing you to do so. We outlined what OpenCommunity is, and just because other people who came in wanted it to be something else, doesn't make us dictators. A library cannot be turned into a swimming pool.

Also, the teams always had the potential to completely self-manage - the Raid Team, for example, was entirely self managed and needed practically no input on my part. However, the commanders from the other two teams never really wanted to take on more responsibilities, they just wanted to have more privileges, but without putting any of the self-management effort. I mean, most of them couldn't be trusted with writing the name of the community they were in properly.

 

That's partially why we are creating this independent space that is outside of the community, so that it's even easier for these groups to self-manage. I really do believe that a platform open to guilds should exist, but it's also clear that OC was too specific of an idea to work as a general platform. Because we recognize that OpenCommunity's ideals are not something that all of our members were here for, and we do still wish to create an actual neutral platform. It just can't be within OpenCommunity.

But, despite the point of it all being to create a free and neutral platform for guilds & groups to exist in, people have this idea that OpenCommunity is somehow oppressive - btw, this idea and the language describing me as a dictator only started when we started banning people with nazi memes in their avatars. We're wondering how this will impact our project attempts, and whether it would've been better to put forward the money for another license and try to start it up on a completely separate TS, rather than starting it here and then moving it after it's become more independent. Another one of the biggest risks we recognize is that even if the project is successful, and attracts multiple guilds and other groups, the likelihood that any of them will be interested in putting any effort in maintaining the platform for everyone is not high.

 

But I'm not too worried about that, even if it doesn't take off  As far as I'm concerned, the fate of that platform really is in the hands of anyone who wishes to use it, we're just creating the option. I'm more focused on all the good stuff that we're actually going to be doing inside of OpenCommunity (especially the board games, arts, crafts, and culture chats!)  

9 hours ago, Lelling said:

I think "benevolent dictator" is not really an appropriate term, due to the nature of the community.

You are right of course, and it adds nothing to the post. Removed.

i know members of nuts love being in the open community and have made some good friends etc and the social aspect is nice and the fact that its expanding to other games not just solely gw2 is good as we have black desert overwatch destiny etc etc groups that run along with xbox and ps4 groups so its nice to see more diversity happening. however the large majority are from GW2 and we thought  all events and calanders with the open community are/have been stopped and PvE guild and commanders taking over??? we may have added 2+2 and came out with 5?  but whats to stop most of the gw2 community that joined OC for the fun commanded events leave when PvE become fully independant?  (NUTS was formed from the games release so officers leaders etc loved the organised things within the OC as people have grown up had kids business owners and dont have as much free time as we did 6 years ago!) like i said we may have come out with 5 and got our info wrong  :S   

p.s sorry for the wall text on my phone

 

On 29/03/2019 at 18:29, Fatal said:

we thought  all events and calanders with the open community are/have been stopped and PvE guild and commanders taking over??? we may have added 2+2 and came out with 5? 

OpenCommunity effectively disbanded its commander teams, but we did wish to facilitate the founding of an independent commanding group, which is what resulted in PvE, but this doesn't mean we wont be organising charity events and the like  

On 29/03/2019 at 18:29, Fatal said:

but whats to stop most of the gw2 community that joined OC for the fun commanded events leave when PvE become fully independant? 

Nothing!  But that's not a problem - since we are not competitors, there shouldn't be any conflict if people wish to join PvE events and also be a part of OpenCommunity. We also understand that OC is intended for a very fringe audience, which is why we're supporting the formation of independent groups from those who no longer feel like OC does what they want from it.