Seeing as we are ultimately seeking to understand the guardian phenomena, we ought to apply some of the techniques which have greatly benefited the sciences. One of these is the development of a classification system. If we can begin sorting out the different types of guardians and tracking common traits and grouping them into "types", we might be better able to evaluate them.
From the conversations so far, it seems that there are many different types of guardians with very different means and motivations.
Does anyone have ideas for how such a system ought to be developed and what features we want to make implicit parts of the model?