In the discussion for this group, it talks about Journey Members and Vested Members, but what about Apprentices? I know we're trying to be egalitarian but an apprenticeship is both an important screening process to protect the integrity of the guild and a valuable training period for the new person. The mentoring of an Apprentice could also be a valuable learning tool for a Journey or Vested Member.
Also, the text talks about a Vested Member being one who has paid their dues. Are we talking cash or completion of tasks or something else entirely? I'd recommend that it not be based on the former (at least primarily), as being able to hand over cash has no real impact on the ability to build a good site. I'd suggest some combination of mentoring (and/or other community contributions) and portfolio review process.
Just my thoughts. I'm interested to hear other opinions.
Comments
Apprentices & Vested Members
I agree with you about apprenticeships being a valuable tool. I was a little concerned about the idea of, say, merlinofchaos joining a Views Developer's Guild as an apprentice, but hey, we all have to start somewhere... ;)
My concept for a Vested Member is simply to try to make the voting process difficult to game, considering that ideally the entire organization would be run democratically. One thought for that is to require an annual due. However, other methods might be requiring meetings (at least those affecting the Bylaws) to be run in person, most probably at Drupalcon. Another might be to simply define a Vested Member as a member who is at least a month old, who has logged at least once during the past month (for purposes of determining the quorum).
I'm interested in other ideas for these as well, and none of this is written in stone...
Aaron Winborn
Drupal Multimedia (my book, available now!)
AaronWinborn.com
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Yeah, somehow there needs to
Yeah, somehow there needs to be a way to have previous experience count in your favor. The difficulty seems to be managing things before the guild is established. Once you have a recognized panel of "Master Craftsmen", they would (IMHO) have the authority to accept a new member at a level other than Apprentice. Before you have that panel, though, how do you determine who's eligible to sit on the panel? The best idea I have is that at some point when you've recruited a decent size pool of people, you call for the membership at large to nominate members to the panel and vote from those nominations.