[quote=Brovo]Except you should never bet on people being anything less than stupid, ignorant, bigoted, and selfish. Call that pessimism if you want but I call it practicality: When you plan for the worst and hope for the best, you're ready if shit hits the fan, but pleasantly surprised if it doesn't!...[/quote]

Well at least I know you're not in agreement with Kestrel now who seemed to think all players could reasoned with and were reasonable people. :lol

I would admit a GM less system is best reserved for a group of players who already know each other and their skills and maturity. Basically it's preferable in a closed/private group.
Such as say you started a Private RP with just Jorick and Kaga, there really shouldn't be any doubt on ability or skill. You're all familiar with one another, you know each others skills and limits and can plan and function around it.

In general though, I agree with your philosophy of it's better to prepare for the worst. 

[quote=Brovo]Or because GM's simply and have since the 70's, but hey, what do I with my extensive 10+ years knowledge of D&D, Pathfinder, Rolemaster, and PbPRP knowledge know about these things?[/quote]

A GM system working or your experience in RP's has never been questioned Brovo. 

[quote=Brovo]I'm sorry, but... What? How is a person's creativity by having a GM? That doesn't make any sense. In fact, all having a GM here would do is help ensure that the world makes coherent sense as one person ultimately decides what does and does not fit, instead of a few or even several minds all simultaneously adding to the world and each potentially causing errors to one another's works ranging from chronological to physical to scientific and so on.

In my experience both as a GM and as a player the level of creativity a player has is not affected whatsoever by their GM. It's affected exclusively by themselves, because, uhh... It's creativity. If they wanna add a village, they can do that. If they don't, they wouldn't without a GM anyway. In fact I would almost wager you that if a group of people came together without a GM and a person just wanted to make a character, but felt they had to add more in order to look like they were contributing, it would actually be less creative and less fun than simply having the GM there who has all this stuff set up already, and is willing to take suggestions from those who want to add more than a character.[/quote]

Pachamac already covered this but I'll repeat it because it was what I was going to answer with regardless. There are times a player can have an idea and it's simply shot down because it doesn't fit the vision or plan of the GM. And really if you want to prevent a lot of conflicts you just need make a system to help track it.

For example, on an old site I used to use we made a timeline system for RP's so there wouldn't be confusion as to which event happened before or after one another. Because it was a problem we started to mention, with references to events both in past and future as if someone was flying around in a TARDIS so we had to sit down and figure out how to fix this.

Also when I was in this system there was no standard or level of effort or production expected from players in terms in ideas or plot hooks. Everyone contributed when they had an idea and no one felt forced to add more or less than they currently were. Yes someone who is constantly paranoid about putting in effort is a potential problem, but like I said this system may not work for all players. But also many times this can simply be solved by explaining to them that they're fine the way they are.

[quote=Brovo]Except that (assuming the GM is not a railroading dipshit) you can probably just continue whatever it was you were doing anyway. Unless that thing is waiting on the GM to respond with an NPC or something, in which case if the GM was merely a player controlling the NPC, that would in no way magically make that person suddenly less busy or inept at responding in a timely manner to the other player's inquiries.

Again, this in no way is an improvement from the system of a GM. If anything, if this was a player holding up another player, the GM can simply step in and go "nope now this is fixed" and blam, it's fixed. If the GM disappears altogether, then you simply replace the GM with another GM, one of the players can step forward to take over. If that's not the case and the idea dies, the idea would have died if that same person was not a GM and abandoned ship anyway.[/quote]

But the GM get's that responsibility/control over a lot more things than the typical player, so the progress and speed of the RP becomes far more dependent on that one person's time schedule than anyone else's. In all RP's you'll get cases where you can't do ________ because ________ isn't online at the moment. But generally the more even spread the control is the easier it is to find other means to keep the posts flowing when someone isn't available to reply. 

And this also applies in regards to the GM clearing other players inactivity because the more you rely on them the more dependent the RP's pace becomes on if they're online at the moment or not. And if you're able to solve this just by changing DM's then the whole "Creativity/world of the GM" argument becomes a bit void because now it's another persons creative mind in charge. It simply becomes about ability to control and keep things going, where the more even spread it is the less room there is for stalling or restriction on the players.

[quote=Brovo]Then why bother? If it requires so much "maturity" to pull off, then there is no point when the GM equivalent simply functions better. Not to mention it's much easier to determine things like thread ownership in this way. Say a player starts to repeatedly flame in one of my RP's, I just have to call a moderator over. I made the thread, so they know that it's my RP, and I'm allowed to drop someone if they're misbehaving.

Again. It's not that it's impossible. It's fully possible... It's just incredible pointless.[/quote]

If a certain therapy only works for say a small amount of people (mainly because only a small amount of people are in a position to need it) should we then simply not bother because it doesn't work with everyone?

The GM equivalent simply functions better only when the players lack the maturity to self-regulate. If you're with immature players or a group you don't know then yes it's simply better to have a GM. There's too many unknown factors to predict otherwise. You're free to disagree with that creativity can be hampered by a GM, or to say you simply wouldn't work as well in a GM-less RP. But that doesn't mean everyone feels that way, or that everyone functions better with a GM. There are people who simply perform better when someone else isn't given authority over them to regulate and approve or disapprove of their ideas and actions. 

Thread ownership honestly doesn't count for anything, whose name is listed at owning the thread or having the original idea doesn't really matter much. It's the result and the collaboration of all the involved roleplayers that matter, and this is something that applies may you have a GM or not. If not there would be no point for a GM to gather interest in an Interest Check.

Even in a GM-less system for organizing the RP there will still be accounts with permissions to edit and alter features simply because that's how the engine works. The person who for example created the site would have those rights by default and this could be shared with everyone or simply those who felt like they wanted such access. In a case where a player is flaming it's just as easy to use those powers to get rid of them, or leave it to a group vote first. And if the vote honestly is not majority "remove the guy" then that's a clear indication it's not just one person causing trouble but there is an apparent conflict in the group that players need to be addressing and resolving.

It might be pointless for you, I can understand that. But there are players who do function better in such a system, or simply have more fun in such a system. Those are the players such a thing is meant for, I am not trying to prescribe this as the standard or 'better' RP system over all. It is preferable for a certain group of players, definitely a minority mind you. But just because it's preferable only for a minority doesn't mean it's pointless or should be ignored as a possible option.