board77

I think we should have one consistent requirement. Whatever qualifies one for membership should also qualify for jury duty, ranger duty, etc.

My $0.02

Angbasdil wrote:

I think we should have one consistent requirement. Whatever qualifies one for membership should also qualify for jury duty, ranger duty, etc.

My $0.02

Charter wrote:

Article 3: Rangers (Administrators)

¶2: Eligibility of Members to Serve as Rangers

To serve as a Ranger, a member should be at least eighteen years of age, have been a member for six months while maintaining a continuous, visible, and contributory presence on the board, and have spent enough time on the experimental board to demonstrate an ability to perform the routine functions of a Ranger.

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¶3: Selection of Rangers

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The mayor will be responsible for keeping track of the eligibility of members, the order in which they enter the pool of full Rangers, and the actual scheduling of terms of office.

The Mayor is held accountable for determining what constitutes a ‘continuous, visible, and contributory presence,' approaching members so qualified to obtain their agreement to serve, and entering the names of those who volunteer into the roster of new entrants and then the training pool. Those rosters will be prominently posted, and volunteers will remain on the roster of new entrants for at least ten days.

We don't have a Mayor anymore, so that aspect is no longer valid. But we also do not have post count requirements for Rangers either. Merely a "a continuous, visible, and contributory presence on the board".

It's an interesting question, and one that I think would do us good to discuss. Is it post count? Is it the content of the posts? Whether or not the posts "contribute" to the community? Whether or not the person knows someone who is already an established member? I don't think we want to keep out "outsiders", but it has been more or less proven by time that we aren't going to get many, if any, outsiders anyway. At least not any who really want to become part of this community.

My suspicion is that ultimately it will prove difficult if not impossible to codify what is meant by "established member of the community". Really, it just boils down to common sense more than anything else, and that is something that defies being written into any sort of rule. But I think most of us could tell from a few posts whether a new member "gets it" , as Ax put it, or not.

The question then arises: if a lot of people agree a putative new poster doesn't get it, what happens? How much effort do we expect everyone to expend to explain it to people? A certain amount of "um, we do it THIS way here" is to be expected, but that's not going to help someone who comes here, like democracy, with An Agenda. They don't WANT to be helped, they have no intention of becoming part of a community, they just want to stir things up.

Right now, we have to treat them like one of us if they posted once in 2005, with the Bike Racks, the request for hearings, the jury pool, etc. . That's bullshit. They should be summarily rejected as the foreign substance they are, sloughed off like a bad skin graft. We barely have the energy to fight amongst ourselves, much less deal with interlopers from planet Dingus.

I say 30 days and 30 posts without pulling a democracy is enough to treat someone with more respect than suspicion. I also think we should co-ordinate the jury pool/ranger list eligibility to match that. TOE is fine as is--what we have in place there works.

Axordil wrote:

The question then arises: if a lot of people agree a putative new poster doesn't get it, what happens? How much effort do we expect everyone to expend to explain it to people? A certain amount of "um, we do it THIS way here" is to be expected, but that's not going to help someone who comes here, like democracy, with An Agenda. They don't WANT to be helped, they have no intention of becoming part of a community, they just want to stir things up.

Right now, we have to treat them like one of us if they posted once in 2005, with the Bike Racks, the request for hearings, the jury pool, etc. . That's bullshit. They should be summarily rejected as the foreign substance they are, sloughed off like a bad skin graft. We barely have the energy to fight amongst ourselves, much less deal with interlopers from planet Dingus.

I say 30 days and 30 posts without pulling a democracy is enough to treat someone with more respect than suspicion. I also think we should co-ordinate the jury pool/ranger list eligibility to match that. TOE is fine as is--what we have in place there works.

I probably shouldn't bother posting this it will (hopefully) be my last thought on the matter but I just have to say how...strange...I find it to put this much thought and effort (read: anything more than none) in order to solve a problem that is extremely unlikely to ever occur again.

We thought extremely unlikely before it happened, too, thus the loosey-goosey definition we're stuck with now. The only thing harder than making a prediction with a sample size of one is making one with a sample size of zero.

If we had HAD something in place it would have saved us a bunch of time, effort and posts over the past week and in the weeks to come. The only reason I'm willing to participate in the process at all is that I think this can be done relatively easily.

Axordil wrote:

The only reason I'm willing to participate in the process at all is that I think this can be done relatively easily.

Are you a part of the same board I am??

*backs away slowly*

I think no matter how this is quantified or qualified, there will always be someone who slips through the cracks.

Probably the simplest way like Ang said, is to have one standard for all excepting ToE. The problem is democracy's situation is that he really didn't fit into any category. A poster like that is easily going to qualify time wise no matter what, and all it would take is a few posts to meet the proposed minimum requirements.

Unfortunately in cases like this, the full process can't be avoided. I don't expect this will be very common anyway.
Thirty days/posts seems reasonable.

As for the larger picture, the only thing I can think of to make the process easier is to empower the rangers with certain capabilities.
Draft some guidelines for certain indiscretions and put the burden of a hearing on the person charged to overturn their decision.

Not sure how well received that will be, but it will at least give the rangers the ability to use some common sense tools which they are lacking.

Well hell, we already do use some common sense tools which, technically, are lacking from the charter. Just yesterday I deleted an account that looked to me to be a spambot. It had all of the tell-tale signs - suspicious looking email address, link to some bogus website. I just waved my magic wand and made it as if the person had never existed. There's nothing in the charter that gives me the power to do that - I mean this could very well have been a legitimate poster. They didn't post any spam, no ads, the website was not a porn site (it looked to be in Russian or some other language). It's just that I was Rangering last year when we were inundated with spambots, and this looked exactly the same. So I zapped it.

I have no problem with a thirty day / thirty post probationary period., during which time the Rangers could have discretionary powers to suspend an account, and, say, a person could be permanently banned with a simple vote from the active membership. That would suit me fine.

A vote by the active membership? That's a good idea, but how would you limit it, timewise? Over a week or so?

I realize there are dozens of people who post here all the time that I don't see, since I rarely go outside this thread. But aren't there "active posters" who don't post very often?

What I'm driving at is, would you send out a mass pm? So people know they should vote?

Unless things have changed, I don't think there is a mass PM feature. It would have to be email.

And I didn't mean to say the rangers had no common sense abilities. Just that they were lacking some.

vison wrote:

A vote by the active membership? That's a good idea, but how would you limit it, timewise? Over a week or so?

I realize there are dozens of people who post here all the time that I don't see, since I rarely go outside this thread. But aren't there "active posters" who don't post very often?

What I'm driving at is, would you send out a mass pm? So people know they should vote?

Actually, that was kind of the point - not to send out a mass email so that every Tom Dick and Harry who hasn't even logged on to the site in two years doesn't come in and vote to keep the person. By active membership I meant just that - the people who are here, now, posting, now. We could sticky a global announcement to let people know there is vote taking place, let it run for a week or so, and then act on it.

Holbytla wrote:

And I didn't mean to say the rangers had no common sense abilities. Just that they were lacking some.

Speak for yourself muffin man!

tinwë wrote:

vison wrote:

A vote by the active membership? That's a good idea, but how would you limit it, timewise? Over a week or so?

I realize there are dozens of people who post here all the time that I don't see, since I rarely go outside this thread. But aren't there "active posters" who don't post very often?

What I'm driving at is, would you send out a mass pm? So people know they should vote?

Actually, that was kind of the point - not to send out a mass email so that every Tom Dick and Harry who hasn't even logged on to the site in two years doesn't come in and vote to keep the person. By active membership I meant just that - the people who are here, now, posting, now. We could sticky a global announcement to let people know there is vote taking place, let it run for a week or so, and then act on it.

Holbytla wrote:

And I didn't mean to say the rangers had no common sense abilities. Just that they were lacking some.

Speak for yourself muffin man!

Does he live in Drury Lane - O?


I see, tinwe. Makes sense.

Holbytla wrote:

Unless things have changed, I don't think there is a mass PM feature. It would have to be email.

And I didn't mean to say the rangers had no common sense abilities. Just that they were lacking some.

I think our Rangers have common sense. (lacking only in the sense that people have varying degrees of common sense as part of their personality) It's just that applying common sense would mean ignoring the charter, and they are reluctant to do that.

Oh will you peoples learn to read for crying out loud?

Quote:

Not sure how well received that will be, but it will at least give the rangers the ability to use some common sense tools which they are lacking.

I said tools!! Rhymes with jools.
Tools at their disposal to act at need within a given set of guidelines.
What I said has nothing to do with the common sense of the rangers, whether applicable or not.

So you're saying I don't have any common sense, are you? Fine. I get it. The Charter's a sledgehammer and I'm gonna whack you upside the jools with it.

Warning - please note that this post is sarcastic. I personally think Holby's a sweetie who looks just divine in a little strapless chiffon number and heels.

He would?

Now, that, I wanna see.

There are a few very commonsensical people here, like tinwe and TheWatcher, and then there are a few nonsensical people here.

Naming no names.

I was just saying that because I know how much he likes a compliment. Don't make me dig up the picture. Please.

yovargas wrote:

Axordil wrote:

The only reason I'm willing to participate in the process at all is that I think this can be done relatively easily.

Are you a part of the same board I am??

*backs away slowly*

Yovi -

I am part of the same board that you and Ax are, and I see his points. There is no need to give up the basic intent of our charter when all it needs are a few good tweaks.

And, yes, when you enter into part of what claims to be a democratic board, we are going to see our share of people who disagree with common consensus, it is their right to do so, that is what democracy, not the poster but the principle, is all about. As long as it remains civil and contained to threads where such things are encouraged to be spoken up about, I guess I say, fine, the board still goes on, people who do not want to get involved have no need to do so, "Que Sera, Sera" sort of stuff.

Those who do want to be involved will still do so, I have not yet seen any fallout from this attempt except for where the Hof splitoff occurred, and there, frankly to my mind, some people clearly made up their minds what sort of board they like to visit. Sorry, but B77 cannot be everything to all members, I guess we already have realized that.

vison wrote:

vison's post was in response to that which was above mine which inadvertently posted in the middle. :D:D