Proposal for a Charter Amendment Regarding Activity and Voti

[CloudDancing]

Draft Proposal:

*To vote on or run for any Alfa election at any level the persons involved, be Admin, HDMS, ADMs, EADMS, and regular players must have had an active character or dm avatar in the last 30 days.

*Activity is determined by at least three active log-ins for at least one hour during this 30 day period.

*The purpose of this is to directly address that a an administrator must have active knowledge and contact with the player base to accurately make choices that effect that active player base.

*Inactive players are not entitled to vote when the outcomes are both not informed by the present player bases needs NOR if they have no plan for activity to work with or be effected by any of the Admins decisions via actually playing or dming.

And separately:

*All offices under each of the Admin need a yearly review and retirement of their members to not only allow others to volunteer, but to allow the volunteers to rest, and to avoid entropic cronyism.

*All offices under each Admin need to have volunteers that play actively or dm actively with in the same 3 days/1hour/30 day period as posted above.

*If a volunteer or admin or HDM does not log in within the 30 day limit with no announcement of a vacation or emergency or providing a replacement for their position, temporary or permanently, that Admin OR HDM OR volunteer is removed and the other Admin can choose a successor.

The purpose of this proposal is not to insult the current or past PA. I explained this to him. It is more of a response from an active player who has seen various concurrent trends that have led to a great deal of inequity, loss of momentum, and simply inattentive responses to serious issues in the community that reflect a negligent and contemptuous detachment from the active player base. This form of US vs THEM is completely ridiculous and it does not recognize the fact that no matter if you know someone for eight years or 6 months they still can fail, still can make promises they do not keep, behave irrationality, with extreme bias, and ultimately change to various moral and ethical shades of grey which is the nature of all things.

I'd appreciate if the LA or PA would bring this officially to the table and others make serious and useful comments.

[wvincenti]

Hi Cloud,
I've just gotten back in game after a long absence. What are the trends being reported?

-Bill

[Heero]

Yah. No play, no voice!

[danielmn]

Draft Proposal:


*If a volunteer or admin or HDM does not log in within the 30 day limit with no announcement of a vacation or emergency or providing a replacement for their position, temporary or permanently, that Admin OR HDM OR volunteer is removed and the other Admin can choose a successor.

There would need be a charter change here as well:
3.4 Recall
A motion to recall an Administrator can be made by any HDM or any of the other Administrators. The motion requires at least 10% of the sum total of HDMs and other Administrators, with a minimum of three persons, including the proposer, to be carried. Vote-eligible Administrator Staff and DMs are not able to propose, or move to carry, a recall motion.
Once a motion for recall has been successfully proposed and carried, a vote, lasting one week, is taken among the voting constituencies eligible to cast ballots in the election of that Administrator. The recall motion is considered to have passed if affirmed by more than 60% of the votes cast.

An Administrator who is recalled must immediately vacate the position.
Any Administrator in breach of the provisions of this Charter immediately and automatically invokes a recall vote against them.

[Heero]

I have a questio:

Is this about Hialmar? I think the guy does a pretty good job despite not having logged in during the past year and a half. Do you really want to toss him out?

[Burt]

Seems unfair for those that enjoy contributing but do not enjoy playing/DMing.

[Mick]

The elected should be able to relate to and be in touch with their constituents, so I agree with the notion in principle. However, RL sometimes prevents participation every month. Also, Heero makes a good point regarding Hialmar and I suspect his and other positions might have to be given special consideration if this is to be implemented.

*All offices under each of the Admin need a yearly review and retirement of their members to not only allow others to volunteer, but to allow the volunteers to rest, and to avoid entropic cronyism.

Are you proposing that every staff position be emptied out every year merely for the sake of wiping the slate clean, or would these changes be dependent on the performance reviews you propose? Also, could you define entropic cronyism? I think I know what you mean, but your choice of words I think begs a precise explanation.

[Zelknolf]

It sounds like this proposal is in fact two proposals?

Part one being "You need to do the thing that entitles you to vote in the thing you're voting for"

And part two being "You need to be an active participant in the community to hold office"

Or thereabouts?

Seems that we'd benefit from handing each by its own merits; proposed together, objections to one could kill the other.

[Brokenbone]

Put a special dungeon of voting in game. Maybe deep in Throrgar. Only the toughest parties made up of the most dedicated players (or anyone who can use invisibility) shall have their voices and votes heard over the shrieking winds.

Or rely on recall. Attack the "bad" office holder, not the voter quality.

[maxcell]

Ridiculous. You can't put demands on volunteers. If they are checking logs, keeping up with forum activity, available in IRC, and responding to points of Office, they are active in the position they were elected into.

So your Washington Representative doesn't come to your job, or have dinner at your house, so they are not viable as a representative of you. Only those that they do go to their jobs, or eat at their houses, and should be removed from office.

[Castano]

I support this too, many clubs and professional organizations have an active and inactive status for members and different rights and responsibilities for each.

It wont completely solve the issue of people flying in to run for office etc., but at least make sure that our administration is composed of people who use the systems they create, and are subject thereto.

[Adanu]

Ridiculous. You can't put demands on volunteers. If they are checking logs, keeping up with forum activity, available in IRC, and responding to points of Office, they are active in the position they were elected into.

So your Washington Representative doesn't come to your job, or have dinner at your house, so they are not viable as a representative of you. Only those that they do go to their jobs, or eat at their houses, and should be removed from office.

If you can't handle demands, you shouldn't volunteer in the first place.

The whole point of volunteering for these positions is for the person to actually do something with their 'office'. The website is more a reactive thing, mind you... but the point still applies.

[Castano]

By the way the general membership may not know this, but we already do something like this for DMA elections. Inactive DMs are regularly cleared off the voting roster and you cannot add new voting DMs within a window before the election.

[Rotku]

Seriously?

Three points

One. There have been elections where we have been worried that NO ONE will step forwards. When I was LA there were at least two of them when we seriously discussed what would happen if no one were to volunteer. And you are looking at placing MORE requirements on an already difficult position?

Two. I can tell you, that after some bloody difficult disputes or debates, logging in to play is the last thing on my mind. Hell, my free time not dealing with Admin stuff I would want to get away from ALFA. Ask any PA (and likely LAs and DMAs) this and I'm sure they'd agree that there are times when you want to get AWAY, not be forced to play simply to avoid recall. At times, during my latest stint of PA, I was spending 4ish hours a day dealing with Game B bullshit - any other slithers of free time I had, I wanted to spend either away from the computer completely, or lost in some other game that had nothing to do with those past four hours.

Three. We have a mechanism, or even two, in place for avoiding having Admin who are inactive in the community, if it is deemed a problem. It is called an election. You don't like the fact that the person isn't active, don't bloody well vote for them. FUrthermore, if they drop from playing, and you feel like this is a problem, use the recall mechanism. That is the way a (semi-)democratic system works - quit trying to force your views of what makes a good [whatever] on everyone else.

Be thankful for the people who volunteer. IF they do their job well, don't try and force them to do X, Y and Z. IF they don't do their job well, recall them or vote them out in the next elections.

[Castano]

Rotku is right about one thing, please stop all the Game B bullshit - fully, now. Your Admin & HDMs are bloody tired of it. So next time you want to engage in some hissy fit with another player over irc issues or whatevers or jealousy, or farm so you can be of some uber level, please go kill each other/play on WoW.