(http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/workshops/_files/Ancient-Greek-and-Roman-Philosophy-Workshop.jpg)
This is where you should tell us what you think of the Council and Council system
The Council is a system that alleviates the workload for the Admin and simultaneously allows the rest of the community to influence forum decisions. If you have feedback on how the Council is doing, how it's selected and what principles it follows, post it here.
For instance, would you like more transparency on Council decisions or discussion? Would you mind if decisions took longer as a result of investing time in more transparency?
If you suspect somebody is slacking off like that one bald guy on the steps, don't post it here. Let us deal with it.
We do have newsletters and newsletter writers. There's a staff position for it, and Council has stepped up to create the newsletters when the newsletter writers haven't been able to.
I mean something where it is made specifically for showing the changes made by the council, showing exactly what the council is working on. Sort of a Newsletter specific to the Council and made such that the community understands that the Council is making progress on something rather than just hearing that 'Well X project finally finished, and we are proud to announce that it is starting up'. For Guilds we were just given hype and then a forum event that really just didn't work right. I don't know if this could've stopped Guilds from failing or if it would've just made Guilds fail faster than before, but the idea is to give an incentive for the Council to get things done as well as providing the community with the ability to see what the council is up to. We are improving the level of Council Awareness.
I agree a tablet with all the decision the council make should be submitted somewhere. In the same way like the patches are. So like:
Council 1
XXX changed 12/2 2010
xxxx was added 17/2 2010
Council 2
... etc etc
And preferingly make everyone in the council able to update this list to make council more flexible.
I'd like to add that the new council will work a bit differently which is explained in the application for the new council.
Further on I'd like the council to have it's own thread for suggestion and feedback instead of as it is now with the bug section. I think this could make the community more involved with it and create a more direct contact for council to look at the suggestion tablet.
Spoiler for how the current suggestion thread looks like.
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/forum-bugs-suggestions-and-feedback/ (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/forum-bugs-suggestions-and-feedback/)
The council having no actual influence on the game itself, new events being suggested by the Event Organisers and the community voting for them, the same happening with pretty much every other aspect of the forum, I never really expected the council to do much more than appoint staff members for the various sections and tasks that arise on the forums and guarantee the smooth organisation of pvp and forum events.
So as long as things work, I don't really care to be kept up to date on who will be replaced by whom for whatever reason, regularly updating the staff members thread should fulfill that purpose anyway and I don't really see what else the council could achieve as I think most other aspects of the forum/chat seem to be decided and organised by the administrators and every aspect of the game depends solely on Zanzarino.
tl;dr:
I don't care who's on council, or how it's appointed/elected, as long as it works.
The bald guy on the steps isn't slacking off, he's at the heart of the council, reading something terribly important. The others are just waiting for him to be done so they'll finally get some guidance on what to do with themselves.
Hello all.
As we already said in chat to some of you, days ago, the Council is trying to contact our developer, Zanzarino. We're sending him an e-mail (our lovely Naesala will materially do it) asking him about the game, his current position about the game, etc.
We'd like you to know that, since the letter is on behalf of the Staff and the whole Community.
Here below, the letter we're sending, written by the Council.
Thanks for your attention.
Hello Zanzarino,
It has been awhile since we've seen a post from you on the forums. Thus, we have decided to write you this brief email to ask you few things about Elements, a game many feel has been abandoned. We were wondering if you might be busy or have lost interest in developing the game.
As you know, the game hasn't been updated since December 2012 when you released 1.32. While stagnation continues to be a problem, the community is still quite active and new members are joining the forums. But this could be improved tremendously by your presence. You used to update the game much more often, appear in chat, and give us more feedback. Now, the forums seem forgotten or neglected.
As you may or may not know, efforts have gone into an "Open Elements the Game" that runs similar to the original game, but has been used to test balancing issues, to add much needed cards, and to experiment with other features. We would like your opinion on oEtG; whether it can be allowed to continue existing or if you might have any issues with it. An official word from you on this matter would halt the project from being a problem to you or allow the project to move forward without the concern of whether or not it should exist. A more extensive link is here: http://elementscommunity.org/forum/general-discussion/openetg
We are also experiencing some pvp issues again. It works most of the time but tends to break when more people use it at the same time. Even a weekly tourney could get it out of balance. We are concerned that war will cause another full failure, and that a quick fix might not be enough to keep everything working. As such, we would like to ask permission to use oEtG "vanilla" in order to play these events if you cannot make a fix.
The community also feels that the addition of a few new cards might do more good than the coming update. We ask that you consider adding some new cards to the game. As always, the community is filled with ideas and balance testers should you need our assistance.
We do not mean to pry into your personal affairs, but we feel that an explanation is warranted. If you were to add something as small as a monthly update (even if it were just notification that you're to busy to work on the game this month) so that we could rest assured that you still had interest in the game, it would mean a lot to the community. And if you no longer have an interest, we would like to know that as well. Please, even if you're busy, write us back as soon as you can.
Sincerely,
The Staff and all members of the Elements the Game Official Community.