FOLLOW ME

OK, as with many things in life, there are many pro's n con's to anything, or in another phrase, there is no right or wrong answer.

Leadership of a Temple (in this case) is kind of tricky, mainly because being humans, we are bound to not entirely agree on a solution, especially with near 1000 members.

So here is my view on the various formats, you will notice I dont actually propose any single solution as I do not believe one exists and therefore a democratic solution is the obvious answer. Please bear in mind all I have put here is just my view and relates only to website communities, I have set up/run etc many sites over time and these are my findings from personal experience.

Single Person Leadership:- The first thing is how is this person chosen, on what do you base this decision, and does a single person 'in charge' not actually become a kind of dictatorship.

The Council:- Ahh... the council... well, like any groups like this, the only result that ever seems to truly comes from these is to agree to disagree. Like I said before, group people together but not everyone will agree. Again, who is selected to be on the council? how are they selected in the first place. Any council immediately bring up politics which serve only to delay any decisions.

Run by the members:- Well, the problem with member run sites is that like tides, the membership ebbs and flows, people join and participate and eventually drift away (with real world issues taking priority). The other thing is as members come and go, various viewpoints change too, different people naturally have different ideas and ideals. Also, who is ultimately responsible for decisions? is it better to have 1000 people disagree or just 10 (ie a council)? How is the running of the site managed? if you nominate a manager, you are immediately giving rank status which defeats the object.

In my view, using our temple as the template for what i am about to say the leadership etc would work as follows.

There would be a separate group that deals with the day to day running and maintainance of the website, ie a 'webmaster' and admin/mods. They simply keep the computer side of things running smoothly.

The next group would be the Temple Council. These would be made up of the Arch-Bishops of the Rites. Lucky for us, there are 5 Rites and this is a good democratic number for final votes on issues. Under these would be two or three Knights of the same rite (ie Arch Bishop Of 5th and 3 th Rite Knights) and these knights would be elected buy the rest of the membership of that rite (all ranks). This position could be on 3 month shifts or whatever. These 15 would be the main council, thy would report to their arch bishops who decide final out come on whatever.

A site such as this needs a leadership simply to hold it all together, and I do feel we have a top notch bunch of people already running things. I do also feel that the members a whole could do a little more to help the temple as a whole, I dont think many quite appreciate the amount of work that goes on in the background, unnoticed and generally unrewarded. I am not talking about the financial side of the temple either, but this is another subject that each and every one of us should think about. In a recent post, there was $0 in the coffers... now, if we have 800 members and lets say for ease of argument that half are young or low income, thats 400, each only needs to donate $1 per month to not only keep it running but get a slops bowl of spare cash flowing for development of the temple.

When you look at it this way it seems so easy... sadly it isnt quite that easy, but things could be made easier. As for the 'looking back' part in relation to jediism, I have always felt it is a little naive to utterly block the past or previous events, surely we learn from history, learn from mistakes and use the experience for the benefit of now and possibly the future... is this not wisdom?.

So yes a mistake was made in the past, dont ignore it, dont dwell on it, learn from it and try not to make the same mistake again, and if you see others headed for same mistake, try to guide them on it.

Thank you for your time, i'll shut up now

MTFBWY - A

I agree with Br. Shaun. It is hard to put on the brakes when something just stops right in front of you. However there has to be balance to all things, including this discussion. Each and every member needs to have a say in this and must be unanimous.

I'm not sure that it is really up for discussion as to if we should have a council or other leadership entitiy in place. The Members decided a while ago, not to have an actual council, that the college of bishops would pretty much decide things as they came up, with input by the members who would actually put in the input. No perfect democratic solution could be exacted due to those ebbs and flows of \"real world life\" some people cannot come here often enough to always input things. The college of bishops was sort of developed sort of like a senate or house of representatives. People who were knowledgeable, and were in the mix of everyday life in the temple so that decisions could be made by the general concensus of the Membership. If and when a decision is made that goes against the majority of the memberships views, they usually have no problem in staging a minor word revolt. If people are unhappy, they tend to let other people know.

Now as for a comment on tsukimaster's original comments, I disagree with one statement entirely, that is that a leader can have only one goal or mission to focus on. If that were true, our (U.S.) military would never be able to work the way it does. Leaders, even lower level leadership is given multiple missions and goals that all need to be met, many times simultaneously. It can and does get accomplished more times than not.

DK

haha DK, i was just using that as an example. making intelligent thought amongst the members. I am aware that it's not up for discussion lol

So as I thought, the current 'system' is fine... I wasnt aware of rumblings anyway, just giving my thoughts on potentials

Dont worry... no one is before the firing squad... YET muhahahahaha

Seriously though, I think what we have here works perfectly well, well, not perfect but as good as it gets for the internet