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There's been a lot of discussion about guilds, but I think a fair amount of it has taken place in chatboards and email - this may leave the casual reader with a passing interest at a loss as to what a guild actually IS. You've seen discussion on who can start one, what they are called, what they are about, etc - but so far there isn't a definitive Guilds FAQ and I think that this is an oversight that shouldn't be allowed to continue.
So, without further ado, I'm going to create a basic FAQ. Your job is to comment below and point out any oversights in the FAQ - do you still have questions you want answered? Are my answers unsatisfactory? Is your name Adria and you've been waiting for a week to have your concerns addressed and you think I missed one? Well let me have it.
Disclaimer: I do not work for newsvine, and this is by no means definitive. All answers I provide are provided on the understanding that I'm referring to the conceptual framework that is currently under discussion. This could all go to the dogs, so don't hold me to it - I'm just trying to bring ya'll up to speed.
What the hell is a guild, and why is it relevant to my newsvine experience?
I'm glad you asked. A newsvine guild is, simply put, a user-group. It's kind of hard to be more specific than that, because in the current model that we're all talking about there are many different kinds of guilds. For example, there can be a guild dedicated to science, a guild dedicated to principles of debate, a guild dedicated to a particular religion or philosophy, a guild dedicated to showcasing the work of various artists, temporary guilds that spring up to cover certain events (the most common example used is an Olympics guild, for instance), etc. If you can group people around it, you can potentially make a guild about it.
Well, why do I need user groups?
Depending on how you use Newsvine, maybe you don't. If you're just here because the AP feed is faster than CNN.com and you like the idea of watchlists, you should never have to worry about guilds. But if you want a place you can go for more thorough analysis of contemporary scientific issues, along with moderated debates, a database of "reputation" which highlights those users who consistantly provide insightful commentary, a filter to screen out content in the "science" tag which isn't worth your time, and a chatroom filled with people who love science, maybe you should swing by the science page.
Or, taking it a step further, maybe you write posts that deal with science, but it's hard to get popular on the vine starting from scratch. If members of the science guild see your content and like it, they can vote for it and that will raise your own standing within the science guild. Think of this as a way to make sure that people qualified to judge posts in a certain subject have the opportunity to do so. If we can get professional scientists in here as well, shouldn't their votes be worth more than Joe Layman's?
Or, perhaps as Calvin proposed in a good example, you have a guild of real estate agents. The Newsvine Code of Honor prohibits self-promotion, but if you've got a guild dedicated to some sort of competitive market perhaps the guild could modify the code of honor within their posts to allow for self-promotion.
Or, maybe you and some friends want to start a group column. You could all publish together in one place, but maintain individual accounts. Or maybe you are a professional painter, or graphic designer, or poet, and you're looking for a place to publish your work to a wider audience. In this sense, newsvine guilds become like magazines, but run by you and your friends/comrades. We are still coming up with potential uses every day, so even if none of these sound like anything you'll ever want to use, perhaps tomorrow we'll come up with something you CAN use.
Well, I'm not interested. Why do I keep seeing "guilds" everywhere I look?
The newsvine staff is toying with the idea of a meta- section, where discussion about Newsvine (as opposed to discussion about the news) can take place. If this happens, you'll finally stop seeing all this meta-talk on the front page.
The same should hold true once everything is implemented: guilds should be something non-destructive, non-invasive and entirely optional. If in the end you decide you want nothing to do with user groups, you just want your news, we want guilds to be entirely out of your hair.
Doesn't this sound pretty elitist?
This is the argument raised by many people - that allowing certain groups to spring up will necessarily cripple newbies and keep dissenting voices from being heard. Take for instance my fictional science guild - what if they get a monopoly on science articles on newsvine? If you write something they disagree with, it'll never see the light of day, you say.
Well, there are a few responses to this. First, in an ideal world, if you are writing something that the entire science guild disagrees with it's altogether likely that whatever you have written isn't very scientific. This is a benefit - it causes you to reevaluate your own positions, and that can only ever be helpful. But, we all know that this isn't an ideal world. Maybe cliques will spring up and they will work to silence dissenting voices - well, the beauty of this is that if you are posting something about science and the science guild doesn't like it that has absolutely no bearing on your overall performance on newsvine. The only way someone would know that the science guild doesn't like it is to view your post's science guild rating - but if they just go to the science page, it'll still show up. That's why guilds are non-destructive and non-invasive - a certain guild's overall ranking of your content will only be apparent through that guild's filter. As there will be various guilds - even, most likely, many guilds just within the science niche, the odds that an accurate bit of scientific writing would be phased out approach nil.
Many guilds? I thought that the first post in this series said we would have only a few!
That's a relative term. I think the basic consensus among people voting there was that we should have some sort of standard for starting a guild - this doesn't mean we can only have 5 total guilds on newsvine, we're not THAT draconian. It just means that you can't just start 15 guilds on a whim. To start a guild, you should have a petition and you should have a certain user rating. That's all. These limits aren't meant to be exclusionary - they are simply there to make sure that the guild database doesn't get filled with hundreds of guilds that nobody is using.
Aaaand that's all for now. I know I only answered a few, but I will be updating this as the discussion progresses. What other questions do you have?
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For a list of recent guild discussion, please go here:
Other Posts in the Guild Series
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