Jinx, I think the problem is that fundamentally you're approaching it from ideological position, and all those notions of "full transparency" and "no more lead devs" come from that, not from practical way of doing things. Name me successful game development companies that do not have "leads" in their respective fields in the staff. Hierarchy is there for a reason, plenty of times there can be 'draws' between proposed stuff and so a necessity for a final decision. Just as some people have to keep consistency across the board or at specific area. Voting isn't a cookie-cutter solution that fits all decision-making processes, no need to look any further than RL to know well how botched and misused that method often is. And in closed-knit teams it can create cracks and chasms between people through internal strife and politics. So what may sound nice in theory isn't always so in the end, and I've seen my share of that happening, here and elsewhere. I've yet to see completely flat structure you seem to yearn for, even Valve too has hierarchy. "Weekly or at least bi-weekly meetings via skype with ALL devs" - some task-specific meetings might be fine, although not periodic but rather arising whenever needed. Again, keeping to a practical approach. Instead of ideological-like inclusion of everyone with time allocations - that's just a one big mess. I don't hang around dev chat anymore and it was one of the reasons I left disco in the first place back then, frustration from endless daily debates grows and I'd rather spend my free time productive - that is actually working on things than to walk rounds and rounds of endless circles of discussions that lead absolutely nowhere.
edit: flat structure sure does appeal to broad audience, as I suppose it once appealed to me too but that was long time ago. It is something the audience can relate to personally in an ideological sense, something that many would yearn for, materialized equality and all that lovely stuff, but not in a practical sense, meaning it's just theoretical exercise of a spherical cow in vacuum. Bottom line: not everyone is the same, skillset often varies wildly, even within one type of development there are many ways to skin a catmodel, and so yielding different experiences, mindsets too. Stuff that makes us all individuals we are. A working system is the one that plays on strengths of individuals, makes best use of their skills as opposed to lowering or rising everyone to the same level. Not all opinions are equal for some are merely reactionary responses as opposed to more thoughtful ones with a research done, and it's often the reason why opinion voting systems aren't practical solutions for some problems, large and small. In some cases may work, in some don't. Again, playing by strengths of options and tools available and not weaknesses and known issues, if the intent to be efficient and get the job done. If the intent is to change things by and for ideological reasons, however noble looking they may seem at first.. it's all nice in the abstract, but a very real efficiency, given mounds of work to do, amount of people available and the mod past it's golden age of popularity - I don't see it there.
