by Lucky777 » Thu Dec 13, 2012 1:57 am
Hmm. Well, it's been an interesting discussion, to be sure. I CONTINUE TO WAIT AND SEE IF SIS SHOWS BACK UP.
Edit:... Huh.
WELL, this edit is sort of late to the party, since the discussion is basically done already, but I guess I'll just clarify a bit because my thoughts have gotten slightly clearer.
The more I think about it, the more I think that what determines if a project is "dead" or not is whether or not the original vision for that project will continue.
That's part of why I was having some kind of inexplicable difficulty with group projects.
Say for example only the creator knew the full original vision for one project, then if that creator dropped the project permanently, THAT is when I would say that it was dead.
Even if the creator herself were to take the project in a different direction, then unbeknownst to us the original idea and so on would have died.
Like in this case, with axmanjack's sort of "vote to choose your own adventure" story, originally it was going to go in a direction I far preferred, but that plan unfortunately died.
Wouldn't even have known that, though, unless the man himself had revealed it.
But if that vision were somehow laid out with complete clarity so that someone else could end up producing the same project that the creator had in mind, then indeed I'd say that even if that someone else took over the project, and completed it in that way, it would still totally be the same project. At that point, I'd actually agree with you and say that the project wasn't dead until everyone capable of grasping the fullness of the creator's vision had decided to discontinue it. No problem in theory, only in practice.
In my head for some reason, it seems that in a group project, multiple people would have access to the same basic vision, even though I'm sure that's not quite practically true. Basically, it seems more likely that at least SOME sort of plan would be laid out and shared among the members. Therefore it would be more likely for the same project to unfold in the same way as planned even if certain members of the team were to come and go... in theory.
Of course, plan or not, the absence of a given person who has decision-making power or a "main" or "central" role DOES mean that certain on-the-spot decisions are likely to be made in a different way, and in that sense the end result could still be different without them, so in practice, barring the theoretical (and highly unlikely) event of a perfect plan for all eventualities being set out before the main creator's decision to drop the project, the absence of that person would still probably qualify THAT project as "dead", and qualify the project which goes forward as a new and separate project, but ... as I fuzzily conceptualised and didn't express very well, I think it really has more to do with the ideas and intentions OF the project's creator rather than merely being quite so black and white as whether the creator, "in the flesh" was still working on the project or not.