sounds reasonable. 

I've got 7-8 active designers on my personal short list, with 3 historical designers and tom as also having a choice. add in a different designer depending on the board, you get 13 as a max # of members, but likely less than 10.

I don't like the direction this is heading, at all. I don't like language like 'elders'. I don't like that an active designer gets merely a seat at the table to discuss changes to their own board. I don't like that consensus is all that's required.

I think it SHOULD be easy to come to a 'no update' conclusion. I think that should be the default.

to be fair, there aren't many (any?) recent designers, but i'm with you about using the term 'elder' too prolifically. 

the idea that a 'consensus' can be vetoed by a single - or at *most* 2 'no' votes for it to not happen seems to be (to me) a pretty easy bar to hit to dis-allow frivolous/bad ideas. and i think the group that makes this group up would be pretty amenable to dissenting opinion. i think we've proved that again and again when vetting out all the ideas that have improved this site over the last dozen years. personally, if the original board designer were to dislike the ideas presented; it would hold great sway for my vote (that's assuming we ever don't agree that original board owner doesn't have complete veto ability).

Also, its easy to have a dumb idea, a lot harder to actually execute it.

Is there really any risk someone is actually going to do the necessary work to go against a vote anyway? It's not like we have teams of alternative designers chomping at the bit to make absurd adjustments to beloved maps...

weathertop wrote:

..the idea that a 'consensus' can be vetoed by a single - or at *most* 2 'no' votes for it to not happen seems to be (to me) a pretty easy bar to hit to dis-allow frivolous/bad ideas. and i think the group that makes this group up would be pretty amenable to dissenting opinion. i think we've proved that again and again when vetting out all the ideas that have improved this site over the last dozen years. personally, if the original board designer were to dislike the ideas presented; it would hold great sway for my vote (that's assuming we ever don't agree that original board owner doesn't have complete veto ability).

+1

If the OD doesn't like it, I would vote with them every time - so I guess that means I'm fine with OD veto power.

Personally, if one of my boards was on the block I'm pretty sure I would welcome and support most of the suggestions that were agreed upon by consensus - especially if they're presented as scenarios.  I do a lot of creative work in collaborative settings, both virtually and in RL, and in my experience things almost always come out better when I listen to and take the advice of others.

I'm turning 62 in a few months, so I'm okay with the term "elder," ;P  ..but I agree with @asm; there's probably a better term out there. 

Aiken Drumn wrote:

Also, its easy to have a dumb idea, a lot harder to actually execute it.

That's precisely why we have always had huge discussions on things with lots of input (not just a couple stale good 'ol boys making decisions in a closed room). We want this vetting out all those unthought of aspects. That's why the younger years of this site worked so well; there was a large vocal subset of the community that jumped in on discussions. I forsee that happening again with where this goes.

weathertop wrote:

...the group that makes this group up would be pretty amenable to dissenting opinion. i think we've proved that again and again when vetting out all the ideas that have improved this site over the last dozen years.

That's certainly true!

I'm not suggesting there's much danger of frivolous/malicious suggestions, or voting, or anything of that sort. I guess my concern is more an issue of runaway good intentions.

perhaps a better name, instead of site/designer 'elders', is site/designer 'stewards'

I'd like to nominate this board for a graphical update

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Land+and+Sea/About

It's one of the most interesting boards on the site in its category, but it gets extremely short shrift because it looks so unspeakably bad.

asm wrote:

I'd like to nominate this board for a graphical update

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Land+and+Sea/About

It's one of the most interesting boards on the site in its category, but it gets extremely short shrift because it looks so unspeakably bad.

Man, I'd forgotten about that one! That is a fun board. I think the bigger graphical issue is that the board mechanics are not readily apparent in the visuals, particularly the fact that the ports are the only way to move between land and oceans or that capitals can attack the whole continent. 

So this idea died!?

>it looks so unspeakably bad.

Hah.  That's my board.  And the first one I made on this site.  I honestly don't think it looks so terrible, but I'm not much of an artist.  I have learned a lot since then, so I could give it another pass to improve it.  If nothing else I could make it look more like Pangea and Panthalassa, which is a similar concept. 

I would also take be more than happy to let someone else improve the graphics and pass them along to me to update if anyone wants to.  So, let me know if you'd like to take a shot at the board, otherwise I will take another try at it.

In the meantime - any suggestions on that board for the gameplay?  I get a lot of bad reviews from people who clearly have no idea how capitals work, so maybe I should just ditch that scenario?  Or can I make it more clear to newbs?  Any other suggestions?  Or we could play a few games to get a sense of what changes would make sense? 

Throwing this out because it happened to come up in a game I'm in Kjeld and Ozy, another option for a board that could, with a little tweak, make a couple of steps forward ->   WarGear / Boards - https://www.wargear.net/

All gameplay can stay the same, just editing the image file to that the Gila monsters' backs have a gap in their stripes to make reading the unit counts easier.   And I'm sure that Ed (who is a very reasonable person) is the kind of person who would be open to the change.

Or maybe someone else has Ed's email to ask?