Charter reform proposals

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Swift
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Re: Charter reform proposals

Post by Swift »

SwordSaintMusashi wrote:I've been aware of the thread as of yesterday, and I've been looking back and forth at the suggestions.

While it is true LA has the power to Veto something the other admin do, I still am for Castano's proposal of requiring a majority vote for any major change to a major facet of ALFA. A veto should not be tossed callously, and if the majority vote one way, then the potential LA should want to see why the majority doesn't agree with him before he/she just cabashes it.
And if the 'majority' turns out to be 8 or 9 people because only 12 people vote, is that really how major changes to ALFA should be enacted?

This is what is so frustrating about this entire conversation. Everyone seems to admit that we struggle to keep our voting lists up to date, so instead of actually fixing that problem, we should change how voting works for major changes?

How are we even managing to run elections 10 out of every 12 months if the list of eligible voters is and seemingly always has been a problem? Shouldn't that be getting fixed before we consider changes to something that is, in all fairness, rarely used? We have not exactly made many changes to the charter since it was first put in place.
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Re: Charter reform proposals

Post by Adanu »

Swift wrote:
SwordSaintMusashi wrote:I've been aware of the thread as of yesterday, and I've been looking back and forth at the suggestions.

While it is true LA has the power to Veto something the other admin do, I still am for Castano's proposal of requiring a majority vote for any major change to a major facet of ALFA. A veto should not be tossed callously, and if the majority vote one way, then the potential LA should want to see why the majority doesn't agree with him before he/she just cabashes it.
And if the 'majority' turns out to be 8 or 9 people because only 12 people vote, is that really how major changes to ALFA should be enacted?

This is what is so frustrating about this entire conversation. Everyone seems to admit that we struggle to keep our voting lists up to date, so instead of actually fixing that problem, we should change how voting works for major changes?

How are we even managing to run elections 10 out of every 12 months if the list of eligible voters is and seemingly always has been a problem? Shouldn't that be getting fixed before we consider changes to something that is, in all fairness, rarely used? We have not exactly made many changes to the charter since it was first put in place.
And how to you propose keeping lists up to date when we don't have a reliable way of doing so?

Shit happens, people disappear. You're acting as if we can track people when we can't.
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Re: Charter reform proposals

Post by Castano »

I never read the amendment process to count missing votes as nos. the rule says "casting votes" If one does not cast a vote one is not casting votes.
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Re: Charter reform proposals

Post by Ithildur »

Wait, a bit of clarification please; isCastano talking about majority vote among the admins only or DMs/admins or the entire playerbase?
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Re: Charter reform proposals

Post by Castano »

Ithildur wrote:Wait, a bit of clarification please; isCastano talking about majority vote among the admins only or DMs/admins or the entire playerbase?
Castano is talking about a board of directors vote, that could be our current 5 admins forming the board or it could be some new board you guys propose up. I'm not in favor of majority ALFA-wide voting on major things. I think having the republic type democracy we've had so far is better than all out 100% participatory democracy which only ever works well in clone-based societies.
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Re: Charter reform proposals

Post by Ithildur »

That's what I thought; so Swift's concerns about keeping voting lists updated is irrelevant in regards to the topic at hand. Not saying it is or isn't a valid/relevant issue at all, just that it doesn't apply if we're talking about a small board/group of admins, whatever... unless we actually have a history of admins consistently abstaining from votes due to absence or such.

Back on point a bit, if I can ask simply, it may be helpful to succinctly state what you ultimately are after in amending the charter; i.e. 'initiatives to bring about movement/improvements get bogged down because the decision-making process as laid out by the charter is not working', 'alfa's workings behind the scenes is degenerating into endless conflict and people stepping on each others' toes because of lack of clarity in the charter' etc.

Not opposed to change btw, but I think it would be good to put out there what specifically is broken, why it needs to be fixed, etc.

Heck, I'll up the ante a bit :) let's not beat around the bush, for example something that's been as controversial as Warlocks: did the charter/decision making process in place fail or prove to be ineffective concerning how they were handled? How does the proposed change improve/fix the problem?
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Re: Charter reform proposals

Post by Zelknolf »

Castano wrote:
Ithildur wrote:Wait, a bit of clarification please; isCastano talking about majority vote among the admins only or DMs/admins or the entire playerbase?
Castano is talking about a board of directors vote, that could be our current 5 admins forming the board or it could be some new board you guys propose up. I'm not in favor of majority ALFA-wide voting on major things. I think having the republic type democracy we've had so far is better than all out 100% participatory democracy which only ever works well in clone-based societies.
Probably of note that we need to get a vote from DMs to pass a charter ammendment, the vote there being "at least three Admin, and at least ⅔ of a combined vote of the HDMs, vote-eligible Administrator Staff as defined in section 3.5, and DMs casting votes, for the matter to be implemented"

Which, depending on how you parse that sentence, either means that "you have to vote to count, regardless of who you are (except admin, which we need 3 of supporting)" or "DMs who are neither admin, HDMs, or vote-eligible staff must vote to count." In either case, untidy DM lists don't sabotage ammendments.


The two different votings (making the change to the charter vs. using the change to govern) seem like they're causing confusion.
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Re: Charter reform proposals

Post by Castano »

exactly Zelk, this is for the proposal to amend the charter, not the means by which we pass that amendment. If we can hash out a proposal we are likely to get admin to agree upon, then we can look at the way to get it approved.
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Re: Charter reform proposals

Post by HEEGZ »

I'm following this as well. I don't have anything concrete to post at the moment.
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Re: Charter reform proposals

Post by Regas »

My understanding was dms were counted the same as the other classes of voters in charter amendments- with abstentions viewed as no votes. I may have been running off of what I thought Veilan told me (which I may have mis-understood) or I may have mis-understood all together. Sorry if this is a bit off topic, I figured it was worth bringing up if we're looking at how we make changes to our rules, and especially if we are going to be making a change to the charter itself- at least to make sure we're all on the same page as to how we vote for charter amendments (after reading the above posts I'm not sure I'm clear on it, it sounds different then I understood it).

As for the OP's goal of adding a process of review and oversight of major changes to ALFA- two thumbs up. In the recent past this is how Admin was handling most big decisions and I believe it makes sense to continue doing so. To formalize that process makes good sense as well. I agree we don't want to simply run alfa with a majority vote of members too. I will say though I think it's important to engage the whole community in discussion on any big change; and, to allow both an open comment period and a non-binding poll of the community to help ensure admin is well aware of the community's position on proposed major changes before such changes are made. Formalizing this makes good sense too.
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Re: Charter reform proposals

Post by Ronan »

Swift wrote:This is what is so frustrating about this entire conversation. Everyone seems to admit that we struggle to keep our voting lists up to date, so instead of actually fixing that problem, we should change how voting works for major changes?
Only counting actual votes isn't perfect, because it lets organized parties push things through when the opposition happens to be away.

So you say to maintain accurate lists of active voters. Ok, but what constitutes "active"? I routinely go a week+ without checking the forums. What if I'm generally active, but not around when an important vote happens? This approach has problems too. It also happens to be a hell of a lot more work than just only counting actual votes.
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Re: Charter reform proposals

Post by Regas »

Ronan brings up a good point about folks being away.

I still think we should just count the votes up or down- but maybe it makes sense to hold charter amendment votes for longer than a week, and since we have fairly small lists of eligible voters, maybe we could send a special e-mail alert out to members eligible to vote announcing that there is a charter amendment vote pending and in need of their attention.

Voting an amendment issue doesn't really take that much time and it's not something that happens very often.

If an vote eligible member gets an e-mail and has several weeks to log in and vote, that should go a long way to keeping things fair for everyone.
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Re: Charter reform proposals

Post by Castano »

I agree with Regas, we could also email people..we do have their email addresses. I think this is one instance where it is crucial to get all voters notified.
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Re: Charter reform proposals

Post by boombrakh »

I havn't read every post here, but I saw the last two and got the impression that the list of "eligible voters" is somewhat limited. Is there a reason why the community as a whole isn't asked to give input on the change of something that it will have to adhere by? I mean, the Charter is the oh so holy book of dominance that some people point to every time they want to enforce their will on another member. So those members should at least have a say in the matter, right?
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Re: Charter reform proposals

Post by Ithildur »

The community has always given input Boom; that's what the forums and polls are for. Having a vote is a different matter; not sure if that's what you're getting at, that every member should get to vote on every decision... which is probably not functional unless ALFA becomes 8 players playing tabletop with rotation of DMs taking turns or something.

Things would bog down even more than they tend to currently.
Last edited by Ithildur on Fri Oct 04, 2013 10:44 am, edited 2 times in total.
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