What CDS Chancellors Should Do (but Haven't)

[Jon Seattle]

I value my achievements whether or not I get a piece of paper saying I achieved something

Oh, I value your achievements as well. The design-by-contract stuff you have done with Java is very cool. But still, I will not go around advocating either the elimination of Turing Awards, or giving out Ph.Ds without a little bit of study.

Degrees and certifications provide some rough categories, not perfect, but a staring place. But the real issue here is that I think many people get the feeling, I certainly do, that not only is the CDS indifferent to people helping out, but at times outright hostile to anything but political achievement. I would love to see use become less obsessed with politics, and more with craft, design, and creative pursuits. It would do us some good.

In fact, I would say the idea is socialist, rather than libertarian: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

Okay, then, I would disagree with that approach also. Note that modern Social-Democrats (or in US political terms Liberal Democrats) reject that extreme version of socialism. Are you in favor of it?

I just found an old post of mine about this issue: http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=79#p345

Again, I don't think the reward issue is the most important.

[Beathan]

Jon wrote:

Degrees and certifications provide some rough categories, not perfect, but a staring place. But the real issue here is that I think many people get the feeling, I certainly do, that not only is the CDS indifferent to people helping out, but at times outright hostile to anything but political achievement. I would love to see use become less obsessed with politics, and more with craft, design, and creative pursuits. It would do us some good.

I agree with this. However, I think that there must be something we can do to encourage creative and productive activity in our community other than a statue park or some similar mark of fame. This is an issue about which there has been a political consensus for as long as I have been in the CDS (and probably from the founding). However, we have never found a way to accomplish it. Some citizens don't want a road or bridge named after them. Others do -- and want roads and bridges named after people who achieve useful things for the CDS even if the honored person does not want the honor.

Personally, I think that some recognition is good. I would favor a portrait hall in the Schloss on the model of an aristocrat's hall of ancestors. I consider this to not just be a matter of recognizing accomplishment but also of preserving CDS history.

I also think that we need to think of ways to reanimate the school and the MOCA and to use the monastery for meditations and the church for religious services. We have the infrastructure to be more than a merely political community -- but I think that we have not found a way to make maximal use of what we have.

I also tend to agree with Jon that outreach to SL organizations to come and use our facilities is a Chancellor function -- and one that has been underperformed. The more people who use our facilities -- even if that use is by noncitizens -- will improve our traffic, which should improve both our commerce and our immigration numbers and interest. To this end, I would like to request that the Chancellor develop and propose to the RA an "advertising, diplomacy and outreach" program that encourages traffic by leveraging our built space.

Beathan

[AlexiconKurka]

That's quite a long expectations list for a new Chancellor . Thank's everybody for the inspiring discussion. Well it looks like there is more than executive work expected from the Chancellor. I firstly have to get used to this idea. There is much to do on the executive front and I just started with some of the points in the list I inherited. So I suppose the mentioned 10 hours per quarter are just a starter.

I haven't heard anybody on CDS being against proper recognition of all brave CDS citizens that have put so many hours in the CDS project. It seems that some of them have got enough recognition, like Sudane with her street and others not at all, like Jon. There have been several suggestions, but in the end everybody supports a kind of Hall of Fame. I am convinced that it should be created, or at least deeply influenced, by our brilliant volunteers themselves. So speak up.

I though we had a big project before us, the expansion ideas about the CDS does not sound like the smallest project in SL. I am myself a bit worried, how can we carry on making positive steps towards expansion, when so many of our senior volunteers/creators seem to be exhausted from the first three sim’s. How can we interpret the shifting of expectations for creative leadership from the Guild to the Chancellor? And to think that the LRA has just resigned.

My first own initiated project on CDS is the much discussed and wanted web portal. For practical reasons we started with the smallest possible team, in order to accelerate the very first steps around a framework for the realization (and not because we discriminate anyone). Several citizens have volunteered for the content development and we will need technical help soon. The PIO is responsible of the content structuring and has many ideas on public input.

My idea is that the Chancellor cannot be more than one of the (many) initiators on CDS. Yes I agree that you should expect project initiatives from me, but I do expect the same from all of you too. The Chancellor must support on the realization and coordination of (a selection) of these projects, but cannot replace the Guild in creative tasks, neither the creative initiatives of citizens about their passions/expertise/visions/hobbies/dreams/businesses/inventions/creations.

[Jamie Palisades]

Fundamentally I think Jon's right: People who put time in above and beyond the normal to make contributions to CDS ought to be publicly thanked. But putting this at Alexi's feet is unfair to him. We *all* must work on being grateful and welcoming to significant creative contributions.

ABOVE AND BEYOND. Sudane's right: ALL of our roles, including government officers, ARE volunteers. But when we're talking about the need for incentives, there are some further distinctions that could be made:
-- Those who run for political office, and do no more than the office requires, are getting their "pay" in the sense of the position, power and recognition they sought. I'm not as worried about their motivation or morale.
-- Those whose Creator name is on a large proportion of key community structures, their time and creativity donated out of generosity, are in a separate class. Moon's the most obvious example. In A.M., *lots* of people contributed pieces. Kudos to Arria for posting a "thank you to contributors" sign in the Monestary. We can be genuinely grateful to everyone who laid a sidewalk in CDS, and post such signs where relevant, without putting them all on the same level as Moon, though.
-- Those who put on significant, major community-changing programs are in a special class as well. Analogous to the "Knight" recognition that Caledon has granted to a few who, our of sheer love alone, put on major events like their Relay 4 Life series of the Library. Do we have a couple of those? Hmm. Maybe. But they'd need to be the kind of obviously extraordinary contributors that few could possibly question.

WHAT TO DO?
-- ThePrincess' suggestion to have a regular honor roll [1] seems perfectly reasonable.
-- It also sounds like it might become a long llist, though, and easy to politicize. So I think we might also need to return to the old idea of street naming or something special, for special cases.
-- Sorry Cindy, we just disagree about plaques. I get weary of those hospitals with the Myron & Ethel meeting room, the Morris & Susan hallway and the Fred & Agnes water fountain too. But in SL it costs us nothing to post a few non-tacky signs like Arria did.
-- Improving the political climate will help too. Moreon that elsewhere.

Cordially Jamie

[1] http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1623 (Proposal about Hall of Gratitude)

[Bromo Ivory]

Good ideas Jamie - though I do think that putting extra signa/extra textures on all buildings won't add to the overall quality - a click of the mouse can tell you the owner (or in my case I set it to tell me upon mouse pointer hover).

I do think a monument and list in SL and perhaps on the web portal would do it?

Anyway ... perhaps I will go in world and look at what Arria did before I really form an opinion.

[Dnate Mars]

Have you guys seen the beta wall in Plum(?), maybe we can do something like that?

[Pelanor Eldrich]

Jon,

I respect what you have to say. I did advocate for RL or at least substantial salaries for civil servants. This was not intended in any way to deter volunteers. It was instead an attempt to find a second way to get work done because we couldn't get enough volunteer resources to work many of our projects.

Although the CDS treasury has an increasing cash balance, I recognize that our economy doesn't support US minimum wage salaries for civil servants. SL as a whole supports only about 500 residents who make their RL living from SL.
So you are right that we need to focus on attracting volunteers here. Perhaps also, candidate SL (and possibly RL) resumes will have an increasing impact in elections and gov't postings.

BTW for recognition I like roads and bridges. I also like portraits in the Schloss and maybe even statues in CN. Given my history here, maybe some can name a beer after me at the pub.

[Diderot Mirabeau]

5. We do not recognize people who do volunteer.

The eternal challenge for building a democracy in SL is that to become efficient beyond the point of a direct democracy to regulate covenant contents you need some institutions of public works and bureaucracy. Although public works may to some extent be satisfactory activities in themselves by virtue of the creative challenges, learning and opportunity to put your imprint on the CDS there is still a big challenge to face about how to reconcile the need for stable, on-demand government services (in terms of public works and bureaucracy) with the volatile, RL-influenced, on and off nature of the voluntarism on which CDS bureaucracy basically depends.

As Jon hints at in the above one of the factors regulating the extent to which voluntarism flows in is the degree to which it is recognised by our community in a positive light.

I would suggest that one way of encouraging more voluntarism would be to adopt some of the incentive mechanisms from computer games: Establishing an 'honours system' for the CDS based on "public service points" rather than on payments of L$ could be a way of establishing more transparency around who contributes how much to the community and to which extent is it actually meritable.

Every term the RA would issue an "honours system budget" setting out how many 'points' would be awarded this year in total, specifying the individual items of public works and bureaucratic services needing to be fulfilled and how many points they would each be awarded. It would then be up to individuals and teams of volunteers to propose to take care of the service in question. Upon succesful completion of the task the group would be awarded the public service points and would distribute them among themselves.

Whether the public service points would work more like points in a computer game and thus be non-transferrable and basically be aggregated into a 'hall of fame' or whether the points would be transferrable and work like a 'local currency' in the sense that they would allow private individuals to commission further services of public benefit is a political question really. The main tenet of the idea is I believe to provide some structure around the discussion of "what services does this community need, how much should they be prioritised and how do we actually honour these services". It seems to me that going the way of the honours system is more feasible than paying symbolic L$ wages or relying solely on the enthusiasm of builders for grand, new sim projects.

[symokurka]

I find this debate very interesting indeed. Why don't we shift to the idea of "competition"? See for instance my last post in
http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=1687