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Charter discussion

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
Post subject: Charter discussion
Posted: Thu 27 Nov , 2008 10:20 am
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I am taking CG's advice about opening a new thread to discuss my charter questions. I noticed something that the charter doesn't cover, which happens to be a current issue. I don't post this as a dig at the current rangers, or the current situation. I have questions that are not handled by the charter, and I am curious as to the memberships' opinion.
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TheEllipticalDisillusion wrote:
Not that I want to get involved here, but there is the point that CG is making that the charter doesn't handle: if the rangers act unanimously, but one pushes the button, how would a member call a hearing against all of the rangers when two of them have to agree. If the rangers stand united on a decision, either people may not be willing to push buttons so as to avoid blame, or the membership would be at a disadvantage--democratically speaking. An independent review is supposed to be done by two rangers and a juror. If the issue is with the rangers as a whole, who may be standing united, what would a member do? I suppose we will all find out. Actually, I think this is kind of an interesting issue.[/quote[

Distraction over.

ETA:
rebecca wrote:
Well, you're one of the only posters who thinks the Rangers broke the rules.
Does there have to be a majority of posters who think the rangers broke the rules?
This is my post from a busy thread here in the business forum.

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Jnyusa
Post subject: Re: Charter discussion
Posted: Thu 27 Nov , 2008 1:05 pm
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TED, I'll tell you the thinking of the 21 people who drafted the charter, and I'll tell you my opinion about it, but the nature of the board is different now so you guys on the committee should do whatever feels right for the present time.

1. You can't avoid rangers making mistakes. We're human and mistakes are inevitable. In drafting the charter we only tried to avoid systematic mistakes, so:
• Ranger terms are staggered so that you don't have the same people making decisions together all the time
• Rangers have to be asked to serve in the order in which they signed up, so you can't have a clique volunteering en masse to promote their own agenda

If the rotations have been followed, and all the rangers agree on a particular decision, then that's the end of it. If someone doesn't like what a particular ranger did, wait three months and their term will be over. Join the ranger pool and put your own stamp on the tradition. That's the recourse that posters have.

There's no provision in the charter for suing all the rangers or something like this because there's no reason to believe they are not acting in good faith unless the ranger selection process itself has been deliberately sabotaged.

2. Posters are given means to protest a ranger decision and they should use it. But no matter how many layers of protection you build in for the posters, there's always going to be those final two or three people who actually make the final decision. When you join the board you agree to abide by that, so if you don't like the decision, suck it up. Again, if a poster feels that a particular ranger has it in for them, wait three months and they'll be gone.

My opinion: The big "claim" of B77 was that everyone here was an adult and members could be trusted to self-moderate. The charter was written with that as its premise.

If members are not behaving as adults, the whole thing falls apart. Even if we had it to do over again, I don't know how we could design democratic rules for a board without relying primarily on the common sense and good will of the posters.

There are really only two choices: either you control your own self, and then you can organize using a charter, with a referendum processes for problems that arise (either ranger plurality or member vote), or else you are not able to control your own self and then someone else gets empowered to control you.

Being a sensible grownup is more than being allowed to say "fuck." It's also having sense to find the path that is best for the whole community. You can't enforce that with a charter. Either people have the community at heart or they don't.

Although it's my opinion that the rangers could be given more power without endangering the liberty of the posters, you also can't expect that giving rangers more power will actually make the board a more pleasant place to live. People don't like to punish their friends, even when their friends are being giant slugs. Unless there is a culture of agreement that immature and quarrelsome posts are not going to be answered in kind, and/or support for the rangers when they take action, then you're going to be held hostage by anyone with a keyboard and a grudge. And a person with a keyboard and a permanent grudge is just as much a tyrant as a permanent mod with a ban button.

There's no perfect system, you know.

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
Post subject: Re: Charter discussion
Posted: Thu 27 Nov , 2008 7:09 pm
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I completely agree with you, jny. I don't bring up this post because I believe the current rangers are ruling the board with an iron fist or anything. I find the situation unique, and I think that a discussion is here somewhere. Whether the discussion results in an amendment or nothing more than a better understanding, I do not have a goal with this thread beyond that of a discussion.

Ultimately, you can't please everyone. A member is requesting a hearing, but the normal process may or may not be inadequate because of the uniqueness--a hearing against the rangers in total--the provisions in the charter require two rangers to agree, but none have, as far as I have read, explicitly agreed, or disagreed. Maybe what happens is that a hearing go through because of an addendum, or the member has to suck it up.

There may not be a perfect system, but with a system such as this, you need these discussions to make sure that the system is functioning as close to perfect as humanly possible.

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Jnyusa
Post subject: Re: Charter discussion
Posted: Fri 28 Nov , 2008 12:56 am
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TED wrote:
There may not be a perfect system, but with a system such as this, you need these discussions to make sure that the system is functioning as close to perfect as humanly possible.
Oh, TED, I agree completely. I wasn't saying that it should not be discussed. Rather, it's not the case that we 'overlooked' the possibility that all rangers would have to be put on trial together. The staggered terms and pool rotations are supposed to prevent conspiracies of the sort that CG is accusing here.

It's correct that we did not make provision in the charter for rangers conspiring behind the scenes to sabotage their own selection process ... at the time the charter was written there were too many people in the pool for that to be a concern. If the pool is so small now that the same people are repeatedly being called upon, then a different mechanism should perhaps be considered to avoid the proverbial group-think.

But you can't hold a hearing now to pitch out all the rangers based on something they did yesterday because there's no provision for a process like this. You have to amend the charter, first. See below.
Quote:
A member is requesting a hearing, but the normal process may or may not be inadequate because of the uniqueness--a hearing against the rangers in total
The process is not inadequate. What CG is proposing is forbidden. It is forbidden by virtue of the fact that a different process is mandated for what he wants to do.

If he wants the charter amended so that all rangers can be tried simultaneously for conspiracy to abuse their power, then he has to call for an amendment committee in the business room and 5 posters have to agree with him that an amendment is needed for this purpose.

Do you see five posters demanding that there be a way to trash all the rangers at once? I don't. But I'm just reiterating now what Estel already said in the other thread.

That the charter needs amending, I agree with this from the rooftop. But:

A. not because extraordinary powers were used. There was no need to invoke extraordinary powers to begin with. Those are for situations that no one could foresee, where we've got to add something to the charter that wasn't covered before, or take something out that proved damaging. You want to tell me that the charter committee did not foresee bitchfests in the Symposium? That's what the Bike Racks are for ... and the hearings if it descends to real bullying.

The rangers definitely should have held a hearing before banning sf and CG for a week, but the board really needs to streamline the jury process first. The hearings were designed for a board with 300 active members, where we didn't want penalties to be levied "in secret," while 300 people hang out having fun oblivious to the one guy who's being hanged. I fully understand why the rangers would feel that a hearing was just an impossible route to go when, at this point, half the board would need to participate. But conceding that this was a breach of protocol on the part of the rangers, the penalty they imposed is exactly the one suggested in the charter.

Conspiracies? ... abuse of power? ... come on, guys. Get a grip. This is what I meant by putting the community above the self. Give it a rest.

B. Unless CG can assemble five posters who want to amend the charter so that all the rangers can be ditched simultaneously for conspiracy, give that a rest too.

The charter committee that's being formed, I think you should go ahead with it, because there certainly seem to be more than five people who think the charter is overblown for the current needs of the board. I had to look through it a couple times recently, and there's just all kinds of stuff in there that's totally irrelevant now. Voronwe is going to start a non-profit organization to buy the board? Um, hello? And practical changes have been made meanwhile ... like *E*'s status, and Judes ... I haven't followed all of that, but the charter should probably describe how those responsibilities are currently laid out, just for the benefit of new members. There's no mayor, all those committees are never going to happen, and so on.

Pick a date and do it, you know? And while you're at it, clarify some short-term powers for the rangers so that they don't have to embark on a month-long process to stop a fight in progress. Give them a hot pursuit provision or something.

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
Post subject: Re: Charter discussion
Posted: Fri 28 Nov , 2008 1:21 am
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Jnyusa wrote:
But you can't hold a hearing now to pitch out all the rangers based on something they did yesterday because there's no provision for a process like this. You have to amend the charter, first. See below.
Good point. I know that I put in my support for CG's request, but I did so because I don't see it actually happening. It does put the cart before the horse, though.

I don't buy the conspiracy aspect. I don't think what the rangers did, though a breach of protocol, constitutes a conspiracy.

I don't have any more to say after that post. Well said, Jny.

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