>From the way I understand the way things work in immland for
>ideas or changes is the following: An idea pops up, it gets
>sent to the appropriate staff, it gets discussed, hashed out,
>tests are run, it gets scheduled for implementation, gets
>coded and implemented.

This sounds reasonably accurate. We're not always as organized or focused as we might be at our day jobs, but when things are running smoothly this is pretty much the gist of how it goes, yeah.

>Now for the juicy question part: What would happen if the
>discussion of new ideas by the staff was done in the forum,
>visible to everyone but on a private forum that only imms
>could post in?.

No way. This would be bad for a number of reasons, including:

1) No offense to you folks, but if you could see this stuff, especially in draft stages, you would be giving us both barrels of your opinion way too early and with too little understanding regardless of whether there was an approved forum for it or not. There is a reason why professional development companies, authors, movie producers, and so on and so forth do not do this.

2) We muse about things that we never get around to or that we agree are kind of neat but nobody feels inspired to commit the wrench time too, and being volunteers that is okay. I don't want to be hounded by people about every single thing we talk about doing but for one reason or another don't get around to doing (or doing quickly enough for some people).

3) Everyone treats internal and external discourse differently. Our time is limited enough without having to make sure that we're working together as staff members in a way that is always appropriate for broadcast, so to speak.

4) A small but vocal subset of the players would draw the most absurd and royally stupid conclusions, conspiracy theories and conjecture from this stuff ... I just ... no. That is a Pandora's Box I'm staying the hell away from, sorry.

But! Perhaps we can and should do a better job of being more transparent with regards to the direction of the game. That I will think on.