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Aliright, so the basic topics would be the usual ED stuff. I was confused by the Naruto Village example and for a moment I had this image of an enlarged chatter box (not the any fandom would in itself do that, just that with so many varied topics and guilds allowed to start any kind of topic between two guilds it would be a little chaotic).

Right I understand people can join mulitiple guilds, but joining a guild just to participate in a guild wars event seems that it would drastically change the dynamic and purpose of the guild system. Right now, the guild system is for people with a certain interest or goal to have space where they can discuss that under whatever rules the founder created. When one expands to guilds debating against one another, suddenly membership is a means to an end. Also there is the problem with existing guilds where the opinions and thoughts of he membership are dynaminc, which while makes for great conversation in a guild setting, does not make for a united front in a guild war debate. Even with our guild now, for example, we entered a debate against another guild over the positives and negatives of ip adress banning to perserve quality of gaia interation, not all of us would agree about whether an action was justified or not. This is why I asked if the members of the guild were required to side with the stance of their guild or if it was just a measure to insure the quality of responses.

Another thing to consider is that if guilds can accept anyone they want to, there will still be a spam problem, just whole guilds of people will be banned for the actions of one. I know this leads to people requiring more for entry to a guild. My problem with this is more of a personal one than an actual on. Once standards get too high, I know I wouldn't be able to get into guilds I wanted to enter. I have, what I consider, the basic someone needs to be allowed into the ED, I do not have the large skill or knowledge others have. I think though, there are other besides me, who have something worth bringing to a conversation, that would be left out if guild standards were in no way regulated. We want smart debate, but we don't want to make it too difficult for others to participate.

One other problem is that there are smart trolls. How can a guild be aware of whether or not they have accepted such until the troll strikes? Even if one does ban a troll, what stops them from doing what they re doing now, which is create a new screen name and apply again?

How does one get a mod to create a topic then, do we pm them and they consider it along with considering which guilds particpate, or can any guild participate once the mod has thrown out the topic? Admittedly it would be amusing to see the literate spam guild and the Fluffy rehab Clinc particpate in a debate together, but I don't know if that would really solve our problem.

Another problem I see, is that it could be harder to keep people off the forums. If one bans a guild and not a person, that person turns to any of the other guilds they are in and continues like nothing has gone on. If one bans everyone in the guild from using gaia, then members who weren't active in the incident have been punished for no reason.

I think the idea is really interesting but it needs to be fleshed out more before it could be viable. It seems in some ways like a very complex solution that might lead us to the same problems, but maybe not. These are just some of the problems I can forsee with this system. It does have a lot of interesting appeals too though.

You know what might work and be fun? If the guild held a competition in advance before the guild war debate that said something like "We are going to have a debate against guild X on Y topic where we will take Q side. There are 5-8 spots for guild members who want to participate in this debate. If you are interested, post here with your best info on the topic. The best 5-8 people will then enter the debate. Here is the criterea your posts will be judged on. At the end of this week a separte thread will be set up where users will return judging sheets on who made the best arguement and the top 5-8 people will participate in the guild war debate. anyone else who feels they have helpful information that might help the debates will post it in the guild at a designated thread. Thank you and good luck."

That would be a lot of work for trolls to sift though, of course it would also be a lot of work for a guild and for guild members who chose to participate. On the other side, it would help to spark debate in the guild and it might help to build a team atmosphere, or it might lead to resentments and inside circles...though I guess if that were the problem one could create another guild or restrict the amount of people in a guild to try and get around these problems.

I think it would depend on how specific the guild was. Even in our own guild, we're all dedicated to trying to maintain the quality of the ED, but we all have very different ideas on how to do this. We all have different levels of knowledge on procdure and what certain changes would require.

If we were going to partake in an agruement about the ethics and effectivity of proxy banning some people in the guild would agree with proxy banning while others wouldn't and still some would not be interested in that kind of debate at all. Do we need to start two separate guilds, one about the positive of proxy banning and the others about the negatives of proxy banning to create a debate? If we don't need to do this, then there will need to be some sort of system inside the guild set up to test interest in a topic as well as test a user's ability to agrue the guild's chosen side compared to other guild users.

Yes but what the mod thinks is the top arguer and what the guild thinks might be two very different things. That's why one would allow the guild a chance to speak, since it is a team effort and all. Besides, since the mod might show favortism, the voting system might produce fairer results...or it might not.

I'm not sure about this idea.

I think we shouldn't care about looking like elitists. We kind of are elitists. We do descriminate against n00bs. But if they quit being n00bs, they can be part of the ED.

We are far from perfect, but we're trying to make it better, right? However, some of the things that could possibly make it better are being stopped by us. There are people who don't like the idea of literacy tests and such because they think we'll come across as trying to be elite and the other forums will see us as snobs. Well we are (elite anyway). If they want freedom or randomness or chill time, they can go CB or GD. Not many people are kicked out of the GD and even fewer out of the CB. If we installed a literacy test or something, and people complained it was 'elitest', we could just send them to the GD or CB, instead of trying accomdate them. See what I mean?