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@morreafirebird The initial post was probably a little confusing as to why exactly we’re considering some changes. The reasoning behind the guild weekly discussions (from the get-go) was to help foster a close sense of community within the guilds. However, we’ve found that the weekly discussions aren’t really a tool that helps community develop in that way. It’s a helpful tool, but as you said, more for invidivual learning than for community-building.

After realizing this, the question naturally arose, “Why are we keeping the weekly discussions closed off inside the guilds? Why not open that feature up to the whole forum to incorporate more voices for a more vigorous discussion?” In addition, we thought of ways we could restructure these weekly discussions to encourage involvement (and thereby spark more meaningful discussion and interaction on the forum). This led to the aspect where questions are submitted by forum users and answered by the Guildmasters (the idea is actually based off the model I started in the Weekly Wonderings section of our forum).

So to sum it up, we’re thinking about opening up the weekly discussions to the entire forum, and changing their structure – because it isn’t something that we have found pulls the guild together, and may in fact be more helpful to more people if it was carried out on the general forum.

There are other tools and techniques that are far more helpful for community-building that we do have in the guilds: Word Wars and Guild Wars rank really high on this. Which is why we’re not going to mess with those features. We’ve found that the community within the guilds is knitted more closely when challenged to work together for the wars. And there are other things that I’m sure we haven’t found yet, which we are trying to identify and implement as time goes on.

At every turn, however, we are faced with time limitations that the guildmasters come up against in balancing their own writing and personal lives with running a guild. Perhaps the most effective community-building tools may be a little out of reach until we find simpler ways to implement them that are not so time-intensive.

Does that explain our thought process a little more clearly?

Fundamentally, I agree with your point that communities which get together face-to-face are more reliable, close, and effective as writing communities.

I think we’ve gotten somewhat close to this with the Hangouts chats (as @princess-foo mentioned in her comment), but your suggestion about live video-calls is a way to take that one step further. It’s definitely not out of the realm of possibility! I think a monthly call to field questions or have a discussion about a particular subject would be awesome.

In person meet-ups seem less likely to happen because of the logistics involved in that kind of event; but I’m definitely open to the idea. We should talk about it further. 🙂

Edit: I just had a mind-blowing moment of awesomeness happen in my head. Picture this: Weekend event for all the SE Guild members.

Real-life Guild War/Workshops.

Guild costume contests.

Mock battles.

Write-offs.

Poetry slams.

…now THAT would be freaking awesome.