__Ahem. It is my belief that a good leader in a group as small as this ought to settle the unrest of those following whether by agreeing to the whim of those mentioned prior or by laying one's foot down with trust of their own inner wisdom, depending on what the situation calls for. Often this leads to compromises, but to say "a compromise is always the best solution" is not always true, because truth cannot be found in such a generalization. Therefore I cannot yet rule out the idea that compromising may possibly not be a better solution than going with my conviction now and then on the decisions I want to make for this group.
__I turn your attention to the two similar requests to completely change the review template to be one that contains neither restrictions nor any text giving personal advice that can be accepted or ignored freely. There is a philosophical law, with a name I don't recall, which goes: whoever provides a new alternative to the currently accepted thought or way should first provide a counter argument against the original and then provide reasoning to back their new way once their counter argument is stated. In this situation, I ask that you first explain to me, in detail, why my template is needing changes, amendments, or even a replacement. Until you do that, and convince me, I see no reason to change my template. For now, it stays the same.
__I now change the subject to whether or not to remove the position of VE. As with above, it was told more than once why the position was not need but not told to me why removing the position is needed.
@Rusty wrote that by giving control and responsibility to both a VE and a Secretary, I would be making my role near useless. In the first post, I stated that the VE is like a substitute. Only if I am not around, which I predict to be fairly often yet not so often that I ought to be replaced, someone should be able to make decisions and to form discussions by asking questions and guiding members with a light hand. Once things are settled, I can imagine us talking about things like "is it bad to judge a game's worth by it's difficulty?" and other such fun questions. Without a person with a designated role of making sure discussion is kept orderly, several questions could be asked at once, bickering could occur and possibly go unseen by the staff for longer than it ought to, and other such events. It is then that having a VE would help to settle this problem. You might ask, "Why not make the Secretary do the job when you are not around?" I would respond by stating "The Secretary should not be given more work than reasonable if work can be divided up to make things easier for all." I believe that inequality in the labor of members is a problem and as an extension I don't like the idea of asking someone to do a great deal of work when alternatively I can divide the work load in half and getting a second helping hand. If you believe the exemption from having to do the reviews is wrong, I will consider removing that if requested, but even that is part of my philosophy that the work should be divided fairly among us.
__It is here that I want to remind you all that I am the leader, and that my leadership should not be undermined. If neither I nor a replacement existed, I imagine nothing getting established in this group, and that is generously assuming the group still existed. Had I not made this group, I very strongly foresee one never getting made in the next three years. I have waited 18 months for a group like this to form; this has been a want of mine for that long, and nothing ever came of it. I asked myself, "Why is it that so many people post their indie games here yet almost no one bothers to give them feedback?" I felt helpless to review those games myself because I did not have the time. To compromised, I took reviewing jam games very seriously whenever I did have a little bit of time for it.
@Rusty, maybe instead of asking if I have been a leader before of something similar (which I kinda am; for the last four months, I have been the project leader of a big game that has seven people working under me), you should have asked yourself if you would have ever made a topic like this or if my leadership is truly as bad as you make it out to be, because I find it insulting that you and
@nacho_chicken constantly belittle my decisions and refuse to make an effort to understand my point of view.
As a side note, I fixed the two errors on the original post. Thank you for pointing those out
@rui.rosario
This post does not have a summary because I think it would be best if you all read my words in their entirety.