my take on FG's meritocracy

[bomber]

Ah I see your confusion.. what there is here is a meritocracy.

A person gains influence with a small group of 'core' developers (as they wish to be called) through their merit being raised, this is primarily done by siding with the opinions of this 'core' group of people against anyone who voices a counter opinion to them. The direction of the project is debated on a mailing list, but mainly in private and the decision is then passed onto the main group of content developers here on this forum... at which point acceptance of the descision made and showing active support against any counter opinions gains you more merit, allowing you to have more influence on the mailing list.

It's a virtuous merit system and really very simple

I very much suspect Thorsten or others will attempt to use this as an example of me denigrating 'the project'.... time will tell.

[KL-666]

I do not think they will. It looks almost exactly as i have seen them describing their meritocracy themselves. They would not denigrate their own project, would they? On the other hand, knowing their weird lines of thinking anything is possible, they could actually be capable of denigrating their own project.

Kind regards, Vincent

[bomber]

Curt Wrote

Curt Olson is one of the original founders of the project, he currently works at the Aerospace Engineering department of the University of Minnesota. Bomber is more recent to the project. He is an "fgmember" and there is a long tradition of key fgmembers people thinking they are promoting themselves and recruiting other people by trying to involve themselves in acidic and endless arguments here on this forum. If you look at their own forum, you can see that bomber and others get a lot of support over there in their actions of coming over here and provoking arguments. Often they use 'passive aggressive' tactics so they can say 'what us?' we aren't the problem. If you enjoy that sort of thing, and if you enjoy hearing a constant drumbeat about how terrible other people are, then fgmembers has a place for you!

For the casual reader of this forum, there are currently 2 names you can add to your "ignore" list and suddenly this forum becomes a very calm and positive and helpful place.

[jwocky]

The risky part with such closed groups under the delusion of power is, they rather breaks things to pieces than let them go if they feel they can't hang on to their power. Imagine some kind of scorched earth fantasy here. Hooray showed already the first symptoms when he talked a few months ago about just cancelling MP totally. He seems to be psychologically better now, but nobody knows for how long. And we still don't know what Curtis planned with his crowd funding, it appeared as the change of philosophy from open source to a commercial project because somehow he would have to give investors an outlook on a possible profit.

[IAHM-COL]

I was a bit confused why some of us were doing so much Dan Brown's stylistic references to the Franc-masons


But it suddenly hit me (as in "I came to realize"), that some in the other forum think we are a compass and square decorated Lodge:

https://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic. ... 67#p293725

Bomber is more recent to the project. He is an "fgmember" and there is a long tradition of key fgmembers people thinking they are promoting themselves and recruiting other people

I guess the symbology game that confused me and gave SM a headache could be a smart pointing of such fact.

[bomber]

[quote="daweed";p=293852][quote="Bomber";p=293718]this is primarily done by siding with the opinions of this 'core' group of people against anyone who voices a counter opinion to them.
[/quote]

Sry, i don't see here meritocracy ... what i see here is "If you are not agree with Core Dev Team, GO OUT"[/quote]

Be careful, as if more people post up the same feeling about the meritocracy here then very much like the other topic, where people suddenly started agreeing it was wrong for Bugman to delete an image... This topic will suddenly have a massive dose of censorship deletions.

Just a warning to those wishing to test this theory out.[/quote]

[jwocky]

Well, every dictatorship, every cult and every group of people basically ruled by just a handful of top dogs follows the same pyramid scheme.

You have a small peak of leaders
Those are the guys you can't talk out of anything because every compromise, every logical solution would be felt as a loss of power/control and a loss of face. They would rather burn everything down than going even a little step back. David Khoresh initiated rather mass suicide than giving up his power. Examples in FG: Curtis, Thorsten.

You have a thin layer of absolute followers
Those who believe, EVERYTHING, the masters say has to be right without any further checking. Adolf Eichmann "just followed orders" because he believed in the masters and therefore the orders had to be legit. Those followers are usually in normal life quite mediocre personalities who only thrive from the limitied power given to them by the masters, the leaders. They can't do diffferent because what little self-esteem they have stems from the power, their masters gave them and therefore, they will defend the power the masters have.
Examples in FG: Stuart, Bugman

Yu have this big lower end of the pyramid, the regular followers.
They follow in good times. They follow as long as the believe in the masters is not challenged by more urgent needs. According to the FBI literature in case you have to negotiate with a cult, this is the group you may get out of there alive if you act. Not that the FBI was ever especially good in that part, but hey, at least they tried. The messups were on a tactical level.

Soooo, the more of this third group try and get deleted and bullied, the more realize, they are manipulated. Their faith in their leader sin not absolute. It may takes a while for them to open the eyes, to actually read what is already there, but the more often they run into the brickwall, their leaders built to keep their power, the bigger is the chance, they start to think "inofficial things". Once this started, it is a slow but irreversible process. Of course, usually, the two upper levels, the masters, too busy with delusional power fantasies and the absolute followers too busy to enjoy that little bit of power the master gave them, miss the signs. Which is why, when they finally recognize, their big followership crumbles go to extreme measures, like mass suicide (or in FG terms, cancelling MP, right, Hooray?)