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Committee Rotation for Charter Simplification

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Jnyusa
Post subject: Committee Rotation for Charter Simplification
Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 8:00 am
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Members of the Committee and Members at Large,

I am posting this here in the Jury Room and in the Business Room.

It has become increasingly clear that our Charter is too complicated. The convention committee went too far in the direction of caution and 'protected' us against many eventualities that appear, now that we have opened, unlikely to ever occur. We have a 33 page charter that people do not have the patience to read, even in summary. (And no one seems to know where the summary is. It's in Michel Delving.)

It is my personal belief that the members at large want the board to run smoothly and they want rules they can count on to protect them without inhibiting their natural creativity and posting joy. They want those rules to be enforced fairly and consistently. I believe that the Charter is fair and consistent, but if even the Rangers do not dare approach it because of its complexity, then we have defeated our own purpose.

I have gone through the whole charter over the past two days, and I believe that there are some things which are long and complicated and can simply be eliminated without harm, and that we would overwhelmingly agree that these simplifications are desirable. A readable Charter would serve us much better than what we have now.

There are other things that probably should be changed but are likely to stir considerable debate.

So I would like to propose the following:

• the current committee is not supposed to disband until the ratification vote is complete and the results have been archived. Some committee members have already left, and some are weary of working on this issue. I would like to allow members to depart at this time, if they want to, and for new members to join (up to 13) who are interested in working on obvious simplifications of the Charter.

• the agenda I propose is given below. In my opinion, the 'simple' changes can be agreed upon and executed within one week. I have already prepared simplified text that highlights the few issues that are significant changes from currrent procedure and would require discussion. If we can reach a decision on those few points, we can eliminate 10 pages from the charter with almost no fuss.

• the difficult articles I propose we save for the new year. We would leave this committee convened but allow another rotation of the members after January 1 so that people particularly interested in amending the Ranger and Dispute by-laws could join at that point, and people who don't want to be involved in more difficult amendments could leave.

This amendment committee was formed under Article 3, and we have the right to address anything we consider relevant to the recent recurring problems that led to the use of Extraordinary Powers. It is my opinion that we should seize this opportunity to make the Charter more member-friendly and avoid a situation in the future where the membership is unsure how to handle a problem simply because the Charter itself is so complicated.

Here is the proposed Agenda for Simplifying the Charter. The actual textual simplifications that I will propose will be outlined in a second agenda once we have a committee formed.

Proposed Simplification of:

1. Key Principles
• reduce these to their one word headers.

2. Ownership of Board77
• eliminate. No longer relevant, and may impede us if and when we decide to move.

3. By-Laws
Article 7: Binding Votes
Article 12: Amendments to the Charter
Article 11: Standing Committees and Ad Hoc Committees

• Eliminate the elaborate requirements for composition of committees. and who can start committees. Especially eliminate the requirement that the Mayor serve on every committee. Eru doesn’t want to do this and why should she have to?
• Simplify the size requirements for committees and make them all the same
• Get rid of the elaborate quorum thing and just set a percentage of people who have to vote in order for the vote to count
• If committee composition is simplifed we can get rid of Article 11 completely.

• Add to Article 12 - the one provision we need to simplify our lives: Loremasters by 2/3 agreement can make the cosmetic changes needed for consistency without a member vote.

Article 3: Rangers (administrators)
Article 5: Dispute Resolution in the Outside Forum

• These are the only two articles that might generate significant discussion and disagreement. We can rotate this amendment committee again before dealing with them if people wish so.

People who are interested in working on this should sign up in in this thread. If you want to leave the Jury Room committee at this point, please say so here as well so that I can keep track of the number of members.

Thank you.

Jn

Committee that's forming: Jnyusa, TED, Alatar, Fixer, Prim, Lidless, Voronwe, TheMary, Elian, Eru (still needed at this point)

Room for 3 more members. Committee will start meeting on January 2

Last edited by Jnyusa on Fri 09 Dec , 2005 1:10 am, edited 5 times in total.

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 8:06 am
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Wow. Thanks for this summary. I'm all for being on the simplification committee. I believe alatar mentioned this idea, but he had no desire to start it up until after the holiday season.

If the current committee wants to do anything, I, personally, wouldn't object, but I think it would be better if we waited until after the new year as there are still about 20 days for this amendment, and no one wants to be on committees during the holidays.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 8:16 am
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I think this one will go REALLY fast, TED, and I will consider that post to be you volunteering. :D

There's so much unnecessary junk in the charter right now (lots of things actually appear twice), and the convention committee was just too burned out after five months to do an adequate overview. I was putting in a 50 hour week at school while we were drafting the Charter. My eyes were crossed looking at the computer screen.

AND, we just had no idea what we would confront upon opening. So we added a lot of provisions that we thought would protect us but ended up making our life more difficult.

We don't need three different ways of convening every committee, for example. I don't think there will be any argument at all about making those things easier to do.

Jn

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 8:42 am
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Quote:
We don't need three different ways of convening every committee, for example. I don't think there will be any argument at all about making those things easier to do.
I very much agree.

I'll be honest, I've never read the whole charter. Mostly because it was so long that I felt I didn't need to. I'd just look up stuff when I was curious or it was necessary.

You can take my post as volunteering.

Do you have an idea for when the first part of the simplification committee would convene? I count the first part as all that is above the ranger/dispute stuff.

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Alatar
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 9:39 am
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I'll take part in this also.

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Holbytla
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 11:00 am
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I want off please. :)

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halplm
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 2:22 pm
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I think it would be better to use the charter as reference, and start from scratch. And no, i am not volunteering

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Fixer
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 2:45 pm
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I didn't have plans on leaving the committee, but I would like to recommend we not start this simplification process until after New Years. If it won't take long, it still won't take long after New Years. Just let everyone have a break for the holidays and we can all return to things afterwards. It is in everyone's best interest to rest a bit.

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fisssh
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 3:07 pm
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I gave notice earlier that I would like to leave the committee after the Bike Racks amendment.

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Sassafras
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 3:14 pm
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Mark me down as leaving after the BR amendment is finished, please.


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tolkienpurist
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 3:26 pm
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I'd like to leave as well. If I have any thoughts on anything, I'll just post them in the BR thread.


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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 3:44 pm
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I will join for this.

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Lidless
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 4:03 pm
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Me too.

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Voronwë_the_Faithful
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 4:16 pm
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Really? That's great news. :)

I'll stick around too.


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Jnyusa
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 5:23 pm
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Super!

As far as the holidays are concerned, why don't we do this.

I'll go ahead and post in the Jury Room (today or tomorrow) the things that I suspect can be cut from the Charter with little argument, and the simplifications that can be done to Binding Votes and Charter Amendments with minimal discussion. The stuff that needs discussion and a poll in the committee will be in blue text.

Once it's posted, look at it. :)

If you think it really is controversial and will require debate, we'll wait until after the New Year to meet in committee. If you think it's all no-brainer stuff requiring little discussion, we can do it in committee now, and put it up for Ratification after the New Year.

How's that?

Jn

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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 5:36 pm
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That sounds good to me, Jn. :)

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 6:58 pm
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Sounds like a plan to me.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 7:03 pm
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I've posted the fuller agenda in the Jury Room for your review:

http://www.phpbber.com/phpbb/viewtopic. ... d77#184672

Tell me if you think a simple discussion and committee vote on these items - deletions and simplification of existing text to the text in blue - is something we could resolve quickly before leaving for the holidays.

If not, we'll postpone until January 1.

(when we will also take on the federal budget.) :)

Jn

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Voronwë_the_Faithful
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 8:40 pm
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I think its a good idea to take care of the non-controversial stuff right away, so that the more difficult things can be tackled after the holidays, but I'd like to hear more from Fixer as to why he thinks even the non-controversial stuff should wait.


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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Thu 08 Dec , 2005 8:42 pm
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As long as the non-controversial stuff can be dealt with quickly, I have no problem with it. I definitely don't want to be doing this committee stuff over Christmas and New Year's.

As for the text changes, I have no problems with them. I am posting that here because I can't post in the JR to agree.

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