TW Council - UPDATED w/ structure

[Oranje]

something to think... in the game

cres> who u

[Oranje]

I don't really ... With that said I have zero desire to participate in this so don't even include me on any ballets or whatever you plan to use to vote people in.

Sometimes one ignores it's (lack of) desire for the greater cause.
Cres and I see dis special quality in you.
You are gifted.

Your honesty is well appreciated.
Cres and qpr hereby officially crown you top nominee.

Yours sincerely,

Cr "y" es and q "n" pr
aka Marvin Grossberg and Diego Armando
aka tw's right hand and tw's other right hand

[roxxkatt]

something to think about:

voting should be regulated somehow to only involve those actively participating in the game, so the bot you are making can have a vote open for something like 7 days, and you can only respond to prompts in a chat (not pm) after a small period of time, such as 10 minutes, and there will be multiple prompts throughout the day to avoid antieuro skews

this will enforce that the people making policy decisions are actually actively involved in the game

[RaCka]

I'd like to nominate pee pee sock, amnesti, and guero

[Shaddowknight]

I can set a public forum section only certain people can post on. As for the banner issue, something with changing of rules such as that is something I could forsee the Council voting on. I would think that certain staffing positions on the council woll remain permanent unless there is a reason to remove them. I do agree with eph that we need to make the policy and bylaws and srt them in stone. Changes afterwards will require a vote. Speaking of voting, there should be 4 staff and 4 non-staff minimum I would say, perhaps 5 to make it over 50%.

[Ephemeral]

You say that on one side of your mouth while deliberating for days over a pixelated titty banner. Actions speak louder than words and having to make a decision on something so trivial is frankly embarrassing for you. If you had said "this is stupid we've had players called coathanger abortion for years" I would have felt better that you wont vote with the crowd.

To be fair, I don’t think the tittie banner issue wasn’t really Shaddow’s fault (although he certainly got caught up in it). IMO the real tittie banner issue is that here we are in 2014 still getting clarification on what is, and isn’t, considered porn by the zone. As you know the no racism/porn policy was set in motion when the zone was first started and made a requirement. My understanding is that this cannot be reversed without the possibility of losing the zone. But I cannot understand why it has taken literally years to get clarification on this obviously flash point kind of issue (for the first time we now hear that boobs are ok if they are presented in an educational way).

Hopefully the new Council will look at things like this and document the policies better so that hapless staffers don’t get sucked into having to make subjective calls or have to clarify what is and isn't acceptable.
eph

[Morh]

What happens if a Council member gets banned? and what if a staffer on the Council bans a player also on the Council?

[kthx]

You say that on one side of your mouth while deliberating for days over a pixelated titty banner. Actions speak louder than words and having to make a decision on something so trivial is frankly embarrassing for you. If you had said "this is stupid we've had players called coathanger abortion for years" I would have felt better that you wont vote with the crowd.

[Shaddowknight]

Also what if staff feels that x player is making it hard for their agenda to get passed with the kangaroo court idea, do they just get rid of the player and remove him from the council because fuck it your staff?

I despise this sort of political bullshit, and if it happens, I'll be letting everyone know about it as I inform everyone That the council is a failure and I won't partake in it anymore.

That said, with who is on it from the Staff side, I don't think that will be an issue.

[Ephemeral]

Qan,

1. The staff are assigned/represent certain aspects of the zone (Dev/TWL/PR etc.), will the players also have these assignments?
2. What significance do these assignments have? In other words, if everyone has a single vote that counts the same, what empowerment/responsibilities makes someone be a part of a specific group?
3. You should have a mission statement (purpose or objective of the Council) and then either a procedural or policy document. If you don’t get this stuff down on paper it will morph and get twisted by various interests as time goes by. It also needs to include a statement that whatever the Council decides becomes the ‘law’, period. The council shouldn’t become something that that simply makes ‘recommendations’.
4. I assume that the council operate at a policy or procedural level ONLY. In other words, a council member wouldn’t be voting on a ban or silencing someone specific. Again, the scope of the council needs to be much further defined.
5. You will need to define and adhere to a standard time frame for presenting and voting on topics. If you don’t, it opens the door for a person to shove something through ‘while the time is right’ and they have the votes they need.
6. Forums and online TW-based meetings aren’t ideal mediums for collaboration but unless the group is willing to use something like TeamMeeting I am not sure how else to present ideas and solicit opinions. I can certainly see there being a public/private component to this process. Public opinion is certainly important but the Council should have greater vision and understanding of what is best for the zone and may need to make decisions that aren’t necessarily popular.
7. New ideas and items bought up for vote need to follow a specific format that includes some kind of cost/benefit kind of analysis and metrics. If you don’t insist on this people will just start floating ‘ideas’ for vote with little effort. Bringing new things to the table for a vote should require someone to do their homework. The council is not a brain trust or some freeform brain storming group; it should be an mechanism that deals with the hard operational decisions of the zone in the context of its mission statement.
8. How Council members are hired/fired/join/leave is of the utmost importance and needs to be highly defined and documented.
9. Only once all of these (and all the other issues and questions that have been raised in this thread are answered) should anyone be solicited to be on the council. Why would anyone agree to join up when this much stuff is still not defined? On the hope that the Council will evolve into something significant?

eph

[wicket666]

I can help add me as player I vote fairly and will not gain from it.
1.wicket666

[qan]

how do you plan to prevent the general population from having apathetic feelings resulting in them not voting, allowing cliques of idiots to vote in other idiots?

Don't know if we can escape apathy, but I was thinking that rather than voting for 1 or 2 people, considering the # of votes will be fairly small, allowing people to +1, 0 or -1 on each person. No limits. If you want to -1 everyone or +1 everyone, great. Thanks for voting.

Still thinking about how to make voting work securely, though. Few different options.

[roxxkatt]

how do you plan to prevent the general population from having apathetic feelings resulting in them not voting, allowing cliques of idiots to vote in other idiots?

[kthx]

1.Majority is 14 votes, that means if staff or players are trying to strongarm the vote they have to convince half of the other side +1 on the argument.
2.For an in person meeting, minimum of 10, must be five from each branch.
3.Removal from the council would be determined by not logging in for a two week period without a reason why, failure to vote or comment on subjects up for discussion, or for personal attacks against any member of the council on either side.
4.An agreement that whatever is decided is decided and that staff must take all possible measures to implement the change immediately, and also removal from the council for attempts to silence another member of the council with threats or disciplinary action.
5. Three months, then up for reelection from the general populace, this ensures too much time doesn't pass without actual changes. Same for staff and players.
6. Everyone on the council writes their top 3 problems with the zone, keep a tally and the problems with the most people suggesting them is the first place to start. If 18 peoples problems are all fixed then you can start asking the community.
7. Presented, one at a time, one week period to get opinions in on the subject, vote, and then a one week time period for staff to enforce the changes or get the ball rolling if its dev related, anything voted and passed is top priority and is the only thing dev works on during that time other than regular maintenance. During the staff portion of the time period there will be another subject up for vote.
8. Members can only abstain from a vote if by voting if it were something that might impact them or their squad positively. For instance if someone suggested no resolution caps in twld and you know you would gain a huge advantage on it because your starting lineup all have newer age monitors etc.
9. To list and solve the zones problems, one at a time, with speed and urgency.

[qan]

Here's how I imagine some of these questions being resolved. Again, in no way binding. This is just my personal opinion. I expect there to be oversights, problems and other unforeseen bits of ugliness.


1. What constitutes a majority?
Probably a majority of 2. We could always experiment with different numbers -- 1, or 3, or a percentage. You need to win by this majority to pass. So with 18 members all attending (unlikely) you could have 10 for, 8 against and pass. 9 for, 8 against and 1 abstaining would not pass. Majority of 2 would keep things moving somewhat slowly, but still efficiently enough -- not recklessly. This is especially important w/ lower attendance.

2. What is considered quorum (min # members for the meeting to be valid)?
Quorum (min # members needed to pass a motion) is usually 50-60%. I would go for somewhere in there -- lower because it's a video game and not everyone will be around, higher because that means better decision-making. Tweak it like a car. Or a bot. Heh.

3 & 4. How do we prevent staff abuse/rank strong-arming? How is someone removed from the Council, whether player or staff?
We need to have a system set up for reviewing the actions of a Council member (or members of staff or the community) using inappropriate means to influence a vote. Some kind of review -- possibly the Council minus any involved parties, or a special review board set up ahead of time just in case of such unfortunate incidents. The same goes for removing someone. I would prefer not to see the Council or staff remove someone from Council, though, but rather a vote be taken by the community (personally). If they aren't doing anything against the rules, disrupting the process, and are participating, there's little to complain about.

5. How long is a term on Council? For players? For staff?
I'm guessing players will be the first to have terms. 2-3 months? 1 month is far too brief. Longer than 3 months and you're likely to see people who go MIA and have to be removed. As to whether staff (and Chair) will have terms, I'd like to see that, personally, but I'm guessing that won't come up for awhile, and that the various departments will be represented by a changing cast of members anyhow.

6 & 7. How are new motions/topics of discussion presented? Is there a time of deliberation after they are presented?
In the world at large, typically, the meeting in which a motion is presented isn't the meeting that the motion is voted on. So you are either submitting new motions, discussing new or old/tabled motions, or voting on old motions. If you think that a motion still hasn't been discussed enough, or there are unresolved issues, you can table it until the next meeting. Thinking of a very pared-down version of Robert's Rules of Order, for those of you who are familiar. Adapted to spaceships. I'd also like to see forums as a component of discussion. Public, ideally -- maybe only viewable by public, to keep them from getting cluttered, but transparent discussion among members nonetheless? PMs and messages would still be available for private discussion of ideas. Also, in my mind, all Council meetings should be open to the public, but only Council members with the floor can speak (thus the need for the bot to quickly grant time and keep things moving), unless someone from the audience has been invited by a member of the Council to give testimony. This is again for efficiency. Rambling discussion with Council members should be done outside the meetings themselves... IMO. I would prefer to have more meetings, but very short and efficient ones, instead of long meetings you can only endure once every couple of months. Serious, thoughtful and long-winded discussion probably best taken to the forum anyhow, where people can really think out their ideas before presenting them.

8. Can members abstain from a vote?
Yes. In my mind this would not count against majority needed to pass a motion, though. If 9 abstain, a 5-4 vote would not pass (if we were going with needing a majority of 2 votes).

9. What is the scope of Council?
I don't know.