TW Council - UPDATED w/ structure

[qan]

Thread updated with the initial Council structure and quite a lot more concrete information. Thanks for your patience, everyone.

[Demonic]

TW Council
Legislation within TW

We've had a formation meeting to decide the initial state of the Council. The Council can modify its own rules using standard procedure, as necessary. Its purpose is to promote deliberate, well-reasoned change within the zone, as a collaboration between staff and players.
(Yes, this is going to be a very dry read.)

TW Council will consist of 9 players (elected) and 9 members of staff (selected by department heads). Current staff:

Sysop: M_M God
Sysop: Demonic
Sysop: Beasty (replacing WingZero)
Dev: ThePAP
PR: Shaddowknight
Events: Willby
TWL: Tiny
TWD: Nurse.
Chairman: qan

• Meetings will be conducted using Robert's Rules of Order, with minor alterations to make it compatible with SS.
  • Short 2-page guide: http://www.abateofaz.org/pics/Simpli...lesofOrder.pdf
  • Long guide, but still simplified: http://corp.sbay.org/board/rules-of-order/ubc-sroo.pdf
  • Full text: http://www.robertsrules.org/rror--00.htm
  
  
• A majority vote = 55% of the voting members (not simple majority). This is 10 out of 18 (10v8) if the full Council is in attendance.
• Quorum, the minimum number of members required to conduct business, will be 55% attendance. 4 staff Council members and 4 player members also must be in attendance.
• Players may join the Council by running for an available position (or positions). Players will not represent a specific area of the zone (as will most staff members), but they will be encouraged to run for Council from all areas of TW.
• Players running for Council will have a formalized opportunity to detail exactly why they should be picked for Council, to appear in a forum thread. This thread will be advertised via zone message on TW before elections begin. Players are also encouraged to talk in-game to others in order to garner support.
• Rather than voting for a specific player or players, every person voting will have the opportunity to vote YES, NO or UNDECIDED on each player running for Council. This will provide a +1, -1 and 0 vote modification, respectively. The players with the highest ending vote "score" will win the Council position.
• A verified login will be required to vote, voting can be done only once, and votes may not be changed once entered.
• Both players and staff will serve for a 6 month term, or until they resign, or do not show up for 3 meetings consecutively, or at the discretion of the chairman based on the recommendation of the Council.
• Both staff and players can run for consecutive terms, but will need to be re-elected (in the case of players) or re-assigned by the department head (in the case of staff). Staff may eventually be voted in by their department as a whole, or a vote may taken to provide a recommendation for the department head.
• As the spirit of fair play is absolutely essential to the proper proceeding of the Council, unethical conduct related to the Council from members of staff or players both part of and not part of the Council will be dealt with severely and on a case-by-case basis.
• The scope of Council is not explicitly defined, allowing for a wide margin of legislative potential. Given this allowance, any motion passed within a Council meeting may afterward (outside of the meeting) be vetoed by two current zone sysops. This is to be used only in the instances where protecting the zone from adverse harm requires it, and not to advance any personal or special interests. Sysop members of the Council will not have any special authority or deference within meetings or other Council proceedings.
• Meetings will be conducted when there are items on the agenda to decide and discuss. Any Council member may add an item to the agenda for discussion. The frequency of meetings is likely to be about once every two weeks. A time limit will be set on each meeting.

If you're interested in participating, contact me by in-game PM, via ?message or by :MessageBot:!lmessage qan:msg if you have any questions, or are interested in running for Council. We're in need of more player candidates.

A thread will open up soon to allow those who are running to demonstrate why they should be chosen to represent the zone. When all candidates have had a chance to post (and the dev work is done to make it happen!), the polls will be open, and Council meetings will begin shortly thereafter.

good stuff, I notice the veto by sysops section and figure I would get in there first as im sure others will pick up on this. Now in theory a sysop can veto most changes, but we probably should state under what circumstances "harm" is considered as would a change to twl that sysops think could harm twl count? I don't think it should as we don't necessarily always know best :P The only obvious one should be zone security ie. enable cheaters to thrive or allow players to be hacked etc..

Also if it is veto'd, would it be a good idea prior to veto'ing bringing it up in the next or ideally current meeting as a potential issue as players may suggest a subtle change, meaning the idea could go through without problems. Everything else looks good tho

[Shaddowknight]

I had actually questioned that Demonic. It basically kills the idea. It would likely be mentioned at next council meeting, but may not be needed as it would be posted on forums and whatnot. The idea would need to be revised and resubmitted from scratch. Of course the sysops can (and would be helpful to) give advice on how to solve the issue that made them veto, or at least give some specifics so the idea could be revised. Of course some things are just flat NO, as in it will NEVER be happening. Basically a dissenting opinion on the topic. Similar to how the US supreme court members have to when they vote no on an issue.

[Crescent Seal]

this council ever being formed

[Gazo]

How can I be elected?

[the_paul]

lol what is this

[qan]

PLAYER CANDIDATE THREAD UP:

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthread.php?44424



If you are interested in running for Council, please fill out the brief questionnaire so people can get a better idea of what you might do as a member.


The first post of this thread has also been moved to the new Council subforum, with slightly expanded info. Refer to that thread for updates on TWC policy. This thread remains for infotainment purposes.

[Kahlan]

Kahlan.
I don't want to be on council. I'm just letting everyone know, much to their dissatisfaction, that I'm still alive.

[kthx]

In game name: Kthx
Years played: Alot

Conditions: you make me unconditional leader of the zone and let me fix it or you can go fuck yourselves.

[Exalt]

In game name: Kthx
Years played: Alot

Conditions: you make me unconditional leader of the zone and let me fix it or you can go fuck yourselves.

Kthx should be leading staff right now, and if that's an impossible thing, I agree that he should be leading this "council" thing. He's by far the smartest person on these forums in terms of someone that knows what's going on in this zone, knows all the political bullshit of staff, calls people out that other staffers are afraid to do due to worrying about their "positions" within the hierarchy, and he is generally liked by everyone in the zone beyond moronic staff members that have no idea how to make anything better.

Btw, this is going to be a popularity contest instead of who is actually "right" for this council thing, qan. You do realize this, correct? You got people like megaman downvoting anyone that isn't a current or ex Dice member, or anyone that isn't a baser in general. People like him, for instance, don't give a fuck what happens to the zone. You'll have a lot of people like that, unfortunately. What will happen is this will turn into a shitfest of who is popular, who begs people to vote for them, who kisses ass the most, etc. What this council should be about is people who DO NOT kiss ass. The entire problem with staff is that it is FULL of ass kissing players who would rather play political games instead of taking action and knowing how to get things done. You also have a large majority of Subspace that do not log into forums and/or do not care enough about this thing to take it seriously and upvote people that should be in it, or downvote people that should not. I'm just calling it like I see it, but this is your deal qan.

Anyways, if you truly want legitimacy of this thing, make Kthx the head council member. I'm not kidding.

Also, why is everyone downvoting a player like Spock! when this thing NEEDS to have players from every viewpoint? If you want it to be legitimate, you add a player from every section of Trenchwars. That means a pure-pubber like Spock!, an ex staffer who knows all the politics and can get around them like Kthx, a baser, a warbird, a jav, a TWL player, a non-TWL but pure TWD player, someone who doesn't play leagues but may play elim/wbduel/.?go javs/etc. Someone that plays a lot of Events. Etc Etc Etc. You need differing viewpoints.


EDIT: Sup Kahlan. How many times u gonna die in a fire and resurrect? You like Jesus, Horus, and Buddha put together.

Oh yeah, and Current Staff members should NOT have a vote. That defeats the purpose of this thing.

[Shaddowknight]

I dont see why staffers shouldnt have a vote. (some) of us still play this zone. I admit I dont as much as I used to (currently Skyrim is to blame), but that doesnt mean we shouldnt have a say. We dont have any voted staffers in it (will likely be fixed before too long), so 98% of staff would get 0 chance to say abything. Agreed on many other points though.

[ogron]

I'd like to nominate Beam.


In-game name(s): Beam
Years playing TW, SS: 1998
Primary arenas played: TWLD, TWLJ, TWLB, and ?go base (shark only)


Zone issues important to Beam: None. But he will shoot down all the terrible ideas all the other Council members will suggest, providing critical analysis and a litmus test as to whether their plan's goal will accomplish anything. He will be the Senate to the rest of the Council's Congress. Or something.

Beam isn't afraid to tell people what he really thinks and will cut through the red-tape and politics that have bogged down an inept and do-nothing staff that has run this game into the ground.

Beam is highly resistant to conformity and will provide a 2nd member of the council the courage to stand-up and challenge the majority consensus on important issues, as proven by the Ashe experiment, stating thusly:

Asch also found that having one of the confederates give the correct answer while the rest of the confederates gave the incorrect answer dramatically lowered conformity. In this situation, just five to ten percent of the participants conformed to the rest of the group. Later studies have also supported this finding (Morris & Miller, 1975), suggesting that having social support is an important tool in combating conformity.

Beam isn't the Council Member people want, but he's the member the council NEEDS.

[beam]

i accept

[Exalt]

I dont see why staffers shouldnt have a vote. (some) of us still play this zone. I admit I dont as much as I used to (currently Skyrim is to blame), but that doesnt mean we shouldnt have a say. We dont have any voted staffers in it (will likely be fixed before too long), so 98% of staff would get 0 chance to say abything. Agreed on many other points though.

It isn't really that staff shouldn't have a say because they don't play or aren't active. On the contrary, I think staff shouldn't have a say because I view this entire Council thing as a check and balance ala Congress or Parliament is to the President or Prime Minister of a country. The Council seems to be a way for NON staff members to have a say in the decision making of staff members, and also a way to coordinate staff members who may be too embroiled in staff politics to get anything done in this zone, which we've seen countless times in the past.

Basically, if the President was allowed to choose his own Congress, he'd be a dictator, and it would defeat the entire purpose of the Congress. Giving staff voting powers into a non-staff council just means more staff-friendly players will get in, and it will be another repeating cycle of what we already have. This Council thing is such a great idea because it is the first time in the entire time I've played subspace that I've seen Trenchwars Staff force themselves to be accountable in some way/shape/form to the community that are not staff themselves.

Staff has always had politics involved in who becomes staff and who doesn't, and personally, a player like me (for instance), who started playing in middle school and was pretty immature most of my time calling everyone a newbie or EZ or stirring shit up just to cause chaos instead of trying to actively make things better... basically anyone with a bad past... has always been automatically disqualified from staff due to that bad past. That being said, even if it was/is warranted even, there are plenty of players like this who have great ideas, good intentions, and have the ability to get things done in this zone, but they are not afforded the time of day with staff due to them not being "liked" by the upper staff members. They are ignored, and staff has ALWAYS become a closed-knit group of LIKE-MINDED individuals, and the FEW people who make staff and have DIFFERENT opinions quickly get axed and/or they get buried and stuck in a low-level staff position like ZH or ER and thus never had much of an impact. This meant that the only people who ever could make a difference in this zone were people that knew how to suck up to the right people and who also THOUGHT in the same wavelengths as those upper staff members. This leads to the status quo remaining largely the same, and very few things ever got done in the 15 years I've played this game. There have been plenty of great ideas on the forums by players, and staff usually just ignore it because it's either an idea from a player upper staff doesn't like and so it isn't taken seriously, OR even if staff DO like the idea, they may not be able to coordinate the efforts due to political problems within staff.

Get my point here?

TL;DR Staff members are already staff, and the Council is for players in the community that are not staff. Players do not get to vote in who becomes staff, so staff should not get to vote in who becomes Council members.

[Spock!]

I would have to agree with Exalt on alot of things. From the beginning I feared this thing would be popularity contest, and being that League players seem to be involved/integrated/know each other more/more popular than alot of more obscure pubbers, it seems like they will be the ones getting elected and not the ones who could actually help the whole zone in general. (I'm not trying to promote myself here)

That is why, (I forget who had the original idea) that people should be elected from all different aspects of pub and put in categories. Otherwise we will just have a gob of TWD people all voting for each other and on the same thing with the same biased viewpoint.

And I agree on staffers not getting a vote, they already have their bit of power, but this election is for the non-empowered players to have a voice in pub, not the already empowered players getting more of a say.