I wanted to thank you all for the comments posted so far.



I do take your point here. Firstly, I don't believe that Moscovian has any conflict as you set out. He has always been a co-ordinator of suppliments - and therefore the best person for this role - and I don't feel that there is any issue in this appointment.

With regards to your other point, it should be kept in mind that the aim is for decisions to be more open in development. While the ERC remain the head of development, each of them does have access to a small team of people, and each of them represents only 20% of the ERC itself. This is a deliberate attempt to firstly get more people involved in development, and secondly to hear more opinions and bring the community closer and make it better organised. Even if one ERC member 'went rogue' (visions of a member with a maveric set of dice and an unstable spreadsheet!) they would quickly get sounded out by the relevant team, who could pass on their concerns to the other ERC members.

Yes, in an ideal world, we would have different people in each of the AC positions, and across the ERC, but this then required over a dozen people willing to dedicate their time and resources to this, and the reality is that this is not feasable. There has to be some dual-role members, and where this happens, it's logical that someone who is interested in one army type would also be interested in other armies of the same type.



This was always going to be a 'no win' situation. Firstly, if the decision of appointing people to the NetERC was open we would have a drawn out process of people arguing for and against members, and the result may well be a team that - put simply - couldn't work together. And I am sure that there would still be people that disagreed with the result.

We have to strike a balance here, between a system that gets things moving as fast as possible, and one that is as open and accessible to people as possible, and often those two goals directly conflict. I am happy to chat about the various concerns of people through PM, but I sincerely hope that people can simply get behind the ERC and we can get the game moving forwards as a community. If there are still concerns in two months, then we can open up discussion on this again and cite specifics, but I do think that we can give these guys the benefit of the doubt at least until then.

Thanks.

_________________
https://www.cybershadow.ninja - A brief look into my twisted world, including wargames and beyond.
https://www.net-armageddon.org - The official NetEA (Epic Armageddon) site and resource.

If these appointments help narrow the gap between Net EA and EUK then that is a good thing for avoiding a split in a niche hobby.

As for people being both AC and ERC member, that is not ideal but probably unavoidable in short term. We need ERC members who fully understand the process of creating/developing/testing new army lists, and the most likely way that they would have achieved this is by being an AC.

C/S has done absolutely everything we could have asked for as members in terms of making this an open transparent process. (With the possible exception of not having disclosed the nominations before deadline but even then it comes down to if people wanted to nominate themselves they had the opportunity to do so).

At the end of the day these guys are putting in unpaid work for the benefit of the rest of us to enjoy our hobby. Hopefully we can get more people involved in future so less duplication of AC/ERC.

Thanks

James

Other than asking people to put themselves forward, nothing has been done to make it transparent.

I happen to think we're grown up enough to be able to discuss who'd be best on the team before the decision is made, especially since that was people's main concern with the last iteration of the ERC.

If there was such a big risk of arguments and bad blood, it could have been done as a poll, with no comments allowed, just vote on who'd be best for the job.

_________________
http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

_________________
My NetEA Lists:
Fir Iolarion Titan Clan List
Dark Angels List

Always looking to Trade!
Angel's Trade Thread

_________________
My NetEA Lists:
Fir Iolarion Titan Clan List
Dark Angels List

Always looking to Trade!
Angel's Trade Thread

And if the poll had generated one result and CS and the ERC had moved in a different direction, I can guarantee we would be having this discussion anyway. If the poll was firm and binding I can guarantee somebody would be posting something to the effect of the poll being fixed, or people voting twice, or it being left open too long or too short, or people who only have certain post counts should be allowed to vote, or any number of issues.

I firmly believe the NetERC should make one of its first missions a more formalized method by which people are selected/elected/replaced, but you have to start somewhere. Since it just dawned on me I am now part of the NetERC I promise I will push the other members to do this. In the interim, however, can we simply accept some positives out of all of this?

The NetERC is back in place.
It is more representative than before.
The Army Compendium is on a bullet train headed for Completesville.
Cybershadow still loves us enough to deal with all of our drama.
Epic, despite GW's best efforts to destroy it, continues to grow.
I'm better looking than ever before.

_________________
author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

_________________
My NetEA Lists:
Fir Iolarion Titan Clan List
Dark Angels List

Always looking to Trade!
Angel's Trade Thread

I can't comment on the last point but the rest sound good.

Cheers

James

I see AoC is quicker typer than I

+1. Lets look at the positives. Whichever way it was done people would have been unhappy. Personally I prefer things being worked out informally by the existing ERC rather than there being a public vote.

Lets move on and let the new ERC get to work, the proof is in the pudding or somesuch.

My main concern about the ERC right now is Chroma, Since he's been effectively absent for about two years on and off, but he's seeming a bit more active lately.

_________________
Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

yeah, i was talking about ACs, not SubACs. there are plenty of Sub-ACs perhaps without the time commitments and potential conflicts of interest of being primary ACs as well as their ERC positions

as to transparency, i'm not entirely clear (teehee) about why the submissions where handled in private. discussions on the merits, sure if need be, but it would have been good to see the list of interested parties in the open.

and WI: you say that anything to shorten the gap between the NetEA and the eUK is a good thing. for eUK perhaps, but so far all i see is the NetEA world gets closer and closer to the eUK world. its hardly reciprocal, and to my mind they're two distinct groups with different goals, merging them into one group will simply cause both goals to suffer, unless only one half does the merging (as seems to be the case here) where one group suffers much more. eUK already have a system they're happy with, why should they also get to make decisions about our system too? we're certainly not entitled to do the same to theirs.

_________________
~Every Tool Is A Weapon, If You Hold It Right~

I'm hoping that it will be a 2-way street with movement on both sides to at least reduce the differences for at least the more established lists. But that is more a subject for another topic.

I think the one thing C/S could have done is to announce the list of candidates. But beyond that I have no real problems with way it has happened.

Cheers

James

yeah, i'd like it to be a 2 way street (or actually, i'd like it if the fact that we have different goals would be enough to keep our lists divided but comparable.) but i just dont see any of that happening from the eUK side of things.

to my mind, the eUK philosophy works for the eUK group. it produces lists (generally) quicker at the expense of versatility. in general though, i find their lists to be fairly bland.
but in general, i have no issue with people wanting to take eUK lists to my NetEA tourney

however, NetEA lists, while they often take longer to get done, in my opinion, produce more interesting and varied lists. (we also have a much greater variety, cause anyone who wants to make a list just gets on it and does so) and while there are more NetEA lists i would have balance concerns about at my tourney, there are also a whole lot more lists that i wouldnt.

two different (and fairly mutually exclusive) goals and priorities. one much more conservative than the other. neither side will benefit from an even merger, so why do it?
cant we all just get along? no. well cant we all just agree to leave each other alone and be groovy?

_________________
~Every Tool Is A Weapon, If You Hold It Right~

Also, who are these "teams"? It's been mentioned a few times that each ERC member has a "team", but no mention of who they are...

_________________
http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

my understanding is that the team refers to the ACs under their command, in much the same way as an AC has a 'team' of SubACs?

so Steves 'Team' would consist of:
Steve, Dobbsy, Rug, Steve again, and presumably also E&C

Chromas 'Team' would consist of:
Chroma, NealHunt+Tiny Tim, Chroma again, Yme Loc, Dave+Zombocom, and Zombocom

I guess Moscovians team is
Moscovian, "anyone else who is working on or has worked on a suppliment"

Dunno if Mephiston has a team

and Dave's team presumably is
Dave, Steve, Chroma, Moscovian and Mephiston

team is perhaps not a great word for "group of subordinates" but its common enough parlance that we can probably get away with it.

_________________
~Every Tool Is A Weapon, If You Hold It Right~