I haven’t seen the ZLs post the ‘arrangement’ of the position in this thread yet so I’ll dump what I heard in the last ZL meeting.

• Pook was an admin and a community leader. He set the direction, we followed
• Pook drove himself insane by taking on way too much and stepped down putting me in charge
• The responsibilities were separated so that no one man took on all of the responsibilities
• As time went on, I slowly removed myself as “Community Leader” and encouraged the ZLs to take this role on collectively. Over the last 1-2 years I’ve acted only in the SysAdmin capacity.
• This solved the problem of having one man being a blocker, but also created a new problem: with so many ZLs, who is leading the charge anymore?
• MrChaos has been appointed as a leader among equals. Every ZL has the same “privileges” and work together to get things done
• MrChaos consults with the ZLs and will always choose the most clearly-consensused path for everyone to follow
• MrC beats the drum, keeps ZLs on top of their tasks, and takes on the role of “leader” to make sure they are all making progress on their goals
• In the event of a “tie” or unclear consensus, it is MrC’s responsibility to gather all of the information necessary from everyone involved (ZLs, community, admin(s)) in order to make an informed decision. MrC will then choose the course he feels will benefit the community/game most while incurring the least amount of drawbacks.
• MrC is accountable to all the other ZLs just like every ZL is accountable to each other. If he makes too many decisions that are seen as hurting the game, he’s “voted off the island” like other ZLs have been in the past.
• Above all else, MrC’s role is to LEAD the community in growth. This inherently means that he will have to boss people around – including the ZLs and myself – in order to get @#(! done.
• The ZLs accept MrC as a leader among equals.
• The head SysAdmin accepts MrC as the community leader.
• This should (hopefully) solve the organizational problem.

Hope that clears up any confusion

–TE

The white smoke has come from the chimney and let the wailing and gnashing begin.

I believe Bacon has some pretty awesome t-shirts for sale in the back of room. My personal favorites are: MrChaos a goofball for all seasons and zomg wtf have you done

Let’s address this one first. Who is in charge? What is your role now?
That was question I was confuzzled about myself tbh. First start a little farther back.

I can only speak forward from my days with Pook, Thalgor, and the Senate. Back then it was Thalgor in the background providing stuff, Pook at the forefront, and the Senate busily flinging poo at each other. After cleaning the living room once to often Thalgor dissolved the Senate and a firmer grip was taken by Pook/Thalgor over the day to day decisions. Thalgor began to wandered off into the woods, where he eventual became a being of pure energy… or got busy with other rl things

A new band of brothers were formed during this time, the ZLs and each was given responsibility for a different area. Poo flinging was deeply frowned on, and a Zen like calm descended on the former poo filled halls. Each ZL has a role and they are in charge of making it go was the mantra heard nightly. That and some weird banging whirring noises from BlackViper’s Halls of Enforcement.

Eventually Pook had enough of the relentless grind of it all and went * poof * leaving his stuff with TigerEye. TigerEye began to taken on Thalgor’s role at the same time, becoming chief, cook, bottle washer, and the dude pretty much paying for the underpinnings of the game. Not to say gents like pkk and Aarmstrong ( yes XT Noir too ) haven’t contributed but the forums you read and the lobby you connect to, the Lion’s share has been paid by TigerEye for a very long time now.

The fables tell of vast rooms filled with intricate machinery requiring unicorn blood to run and only the pure of heart may enter to twiddle the twiddlers to make Allegiance go. Only TE, initially, was able to enter and was forced to do it all in the “sanctuary”. ( for BunBun cause everyone else is following ) The code was pretty specific and given security concerns TE was doing much of it himself. Now before everyone tsk tsks me and explains why I don’t understand a bunch of highly specific technical details, guilty as charged, and shhhh I’m busy doing some major hand wavey stuff.

Anyhoo TE looked about, decided this wouldn’t do and began to distribute as best he could the pieces and parts of his “empire”. TE formed things in a fashion more along the lines of Knights of the Round table with everyone having an equal say. At best TE was first among equals, but there was no King Arthur in the Allegiance court.

At first there was a flurry of activity. Huns beaten back storming the gates of the game, new releases ( no really new releases ), the introduction of the worst/best/who gives a crap ranking system, even the public hanging of Slap was an indication that someone was watching over us. Ahh good times, good times.

Things… well slowly began to not run as smoothly as before and that my friends is saying quite a mouth full indeed. A roadblock would be encountered and that would be that in most cases. Projects just seemed to wither on the vein. Oh the mail still came, and the street lights came on but that was about it. Many times work was getting done that was not get implemented for a wide variety of reasons. This was pissing people off, no results were gotten, and all the many months before the person burned out in a blaze of glory in fine Allegiance tradition lost to us. Poor Xeretov I miss that mother $#@!er.

So as more of this happened and people started leaving without enough new blood the question was asked, “what is to be done?” ” but who is the King?” ” where was that rope we used on Slap again?” The answer was, ” King? There is not a king but an autonomous collective ( sorry I’ll stop now )” and a merry round of finger pointing, hand wringing, and epeen wagging would be had by all.

As much “fun” as the above is that by itself doesn’t keep people happy, so when the mail started arriving late, and the street lights took longer to light because the special North Korean bulbs couldn’t be ordered given no left spoke Korean anymore. People, as they often do, began slipping away to take up bowling and those that remained calming went “ZOMG THE SKY IS FALLING AND WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE! WHO SHALL FIX IT?!!!!???!?!?!??!!?!?”

That my friends brings us up to today.

I MrChaos am not going to carry Allegiance on my shoulders back to its former glory days. Nope, ain’t going to happen. Then who is going to do it? You are. And you. And you. And you. Oh hell we all are.

From taking the time to idle in NOAT, as Dome suggested, or twiddle with AB before CSS shows up like Phantom mentioned, or getting SF their forum back ( oh right that is already done ), or even when you accept a challenge and hit a roadblock modify the idea and get back to work like BunBun will do, or Baker returning to tame the monster he created as he has indicated he is up for, or people like FIZ who when simply asked volunteered their time and money immediately ( good show ) etc etc etc

Yeah yeah but what does this mostly unfunny ( in before Broodwich ) tale have to do with you MrChaos?

Well the ZL voted and I am proud to say after some firm ass kissing, bribery, black mail, and spiking the punch. My title is ” Poop stick Holder Third Class”. Okay okay it is “Community Leader”

Why me? Honestly? I volunteered to help, I’m pretty active, Raveen rl is to full atm, and no one was crazy enough to volunteer.

But who is King? The best answer I can give is there is no King. Put down the pitchforks and torches let me finish. TE is an integral part of things for the foreseeable future and I have neither the desire or time to learn all of the pesky technical whirly gigs nor willing to shell out the kind of money he has for a long time now. Even then I wouldn’t be the fluffy benevolent dictator like Pook was from days of old. That would require me to do just about everything and i don’t need to given the awesome people working in the background. Stop squirming you ZLs we are going to put you to work, me and the community.

So think of me as the dude holding the poop stick who you can come to when you want to get things done. Before you make a mad rush for the pm box let me crush many of your fantasies right here, early and probably often. It requires more then just you thinking its a good idea no matter how sure you are if someone would just do it. Which brings me to:

Word of caution
Many times I’m going to ask you to actively participate on a particular issue and many times the work to begin with will be ditch digger rather then shouter-and-pointer person. I’ll make sure you have the resources you need, if they are available, try my damnedest to get them for you, and then get the heck out of the way so you can get it done. The ZLs are going to help you make it happen and NO ONE is going to perform swoop and poop management. * glares menacingly * especially me

Ok that was much to much and epic level tl;dr
Btw no refunds

More specifics to come