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Assembling Hearing Procedures in Full

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Jnyusa
Post subject: Assembling Hearing Procedures in Full
Posted: Fri 06 May , 2005 4:50 pm
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Friends,

I do not usually approach the Charter text in this manner, looking for the trend in the general discussion and then writing the whole text as one piece. The only other time this was done was for the Outside Forum stickies and even there we had a lot of subtopic discussions in separate threads.

But I am running out of time to devote to this, and I am disheartened by the lack of participation by any but a few members on any particular issue, and the tendency of the current committee to do something which the last committee also did, which is to re-argue from the beginning too many things that the members had already decided adequately (imo).

We have a current procedure which, in my opinion, only needs to be modified, not rewritten in its entirety. Of course we can argue 24 hour notification versus 48 hour notification for three pages (for example), but such details have been argued already and I’ve been doing almost nothing but guiding such discussions since the beginning of February. I much prefer that we focus on things that have not been decided yet and make sure that the various articles are consistent with one another. When the Charter is put into practice, our errors will emerge quickly enough and we can amend them at that time.

THEREFORE, I am using this thread to post a complete procedure. All the text in black is current procedure which I can see no compelling reason to change. The new suggestions are in blue. In red are the matters of principle that really do need discussion and decision by this committee.

Each paragraph is in a separate post.

I would like to do something novel and earth-shattering - discuss these things until you arrive at consensus, make whatever changes are agreed upon, and then vote each procedural paragraph up or down in its entirety.

Jn

p.s. this is a lot of material so it may take me about 30 minutes to edit everything in.

Last edited by Jnyusa on Fri 06 May , 2005 5:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Fri 06 May , 2005 4:50 pm
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APPROVED TEXT

¶3 Hearings and the Selection of a Jury for Hearings

Hearings are held for violations of the by-laws.

Board77 recognizes three kinds of hearings: Hearings for a Community Disruption, Hearings on a Ban, and Hearings to Remove an Administrator or Mayor from Office.

Hearings are convened by an administrator, conducted in a thread in the Jury Room, and decided by a jury of six members.

Jurors are selected in the following manner:
• Jurors will be selected from the pool in the order in which they entered.

•A sufficient number will be selected at the beginning to allow each affected member to contest two jurors and still have seven jurors remaining. For cases involving a single individual, this would be nine potential jurors. No juror may be a current administrator.

•The administrator(s) convening the hearing will confirm with these potential jurors that they are willing and eligible to serve on this case before submitting their names to the involved member(s). Jury duty is voluntary.

• Each member involved will then have the right to contest two of the proposed jurors. They are not required to contest any but they have the right to do so.

• Of the jurors that remain after the selection process, the first six (in order of entry) will hear the case, and one alternate will attend in the event that a regular juror must leave or be removed. No more than six jurors will make the final decision.
[approved May 9, 2005]

Last edited by Jnyusa on Wed 11 May , 2005 12:46 pm, edited 6 times in total.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Fri 06 May , 2005 4:55 pm
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¶4 Procedure for Hearings on a Community Disruption:

The violation of by-laws is called to the attention of the administrators, either because they observe it themselves or because a member reports it.

If action has already been taken by an administrator, such as restriction of posting rights, the administrator notifies the member at that time that a hearing will be held, and the hearing should be convened within three days.

If the problem is brought to the attention of the administrators by another member, two administrators must agree that a hearing is required and the member in question must be notified by email no less than twenty-four hours before the hearing is opened.

The posting rights of the member in question will not be restricted over the course of the hearing on the strength of another member’s report. Only an administrator observing a violation of by-laws directly, or a jury after hearing a case, may impose a penalty on a poster.

When the twenty-hour hour notification period has passed, a thread is started in the Jury Room, titled with the nature of the hearing, for example, “Hearing on Disruption of the RP Forum.”

The first post of that thread will state the reason for the hearing. If two administrators convened the hearing, either one may start the thread but both names should appear at the end of the first post. Full names should be given so that PMs can be sent with ease.

The names of the jurors will be edited in to the first post of the thread and their posting rights will be enabled. The full name should be used so that PMs can be sent with ease.

Ideally, no more than three days should be spent selecting the jury, so that from the first action taken (suspension of rights or appeal from a member) to the opening of the hearing, no more than seven full days should pass in which the posting rights of a member are curtailed without recourse. Administrators and jurors should strive to act promptly and avoid delays.

Once the jury is selected and their names posted in the thread, the administrator(s) may remove themselves from the case and allow the jurors to take over. Administrators should remain alert to the need for changes of permission and deletion of posts that do not belong. Any procedural questions raised by the jury should be referred to the Mayor who will be responsible for ensuring that hearings conform to the by-laws of the Charter.

The member for whom the hearing is held may state their side of the case and the jurors may ask questions.

Either posters or jurors may request that witnesses be allowed to post in the thread.

Members who are called as witnesses participate voluntarily but should respond promptly to the request.

When the jury has sufficient information to decide the case, they may call an end to the hearing. They will post in the thread that the hearing is coming to an end twenty-four hours before actually beginning their deliberation so that the member has time to agree or present any additional information.

The purpose of the jury deliberation is to decide whether the member has in fact violated the by-laws or committed a bannable offense, and if so, to impose a penalty not to exceed the penalty provided in the by-laws. If no maximum penalty is specified in the by-laws the jurors may use discretion based on the range of penalties contained in the by-laws for similar offenses.

Jury deliberations may be held in private, by PM or email. Jurors should strive to reach a decision within ten days. Agreement by four of the six jurors that a by-law has been violated is required for imposition of a penalty. Four of the six jurors must agree on the duration of the penalty, otherwise the lesser of all penalties considered by them will be imposed.

When the jurors have reached a decision, they will email their decision to the member and then post their decision in the thread twenty-four hours later. Anything they have taken into consideration should be presented honestly when they state their decision.

Any juror holding a minority position may express it in their post

If the jury has decided that the offense was not committed or that no additional penalties should be imposed, any suspended posting rights will be restored to the member within twenty-four hours.

If a penalty is imposed, an administrator will change the necessary permissions within twenty-four hours. Time limits on penalties will be maintained by the Mayor and it is the responsibility of the Mayor to notify administrators when the time limit on a penalty has expired.

If the decision of the jury is to require something of the member, such as removal of a signature picture, the member will comply within twenty-four hours. Members who refuse to abide by a jury decision may be considered for banning.

As soon as the jury has posted their decision and that decision has been implemented, the thread will be locked. At the request of the member, it may be deleted.

Elements of the case may be summarized and preserved in the Archive with the name(s) of the involved member(s) and witnesses deleted.

Last edited by Jnyusa on Fri 13 May , 2005 3:12 pm, edited 17 times in total.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Fri 06 May , 2005 4:57 pm
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¶5 Procedure for Hearings on a Ban:

Hearings on a Ban are convened and conducted in the same manner as Hearings on a Community Disruption, except that a recommendation by a jury to ban a member is not final.

If the recommendation of the jury is to ban the member, the members at large will then vote on whether or not to accept this recommendation. The vote will be held in the Business Forum for ten days.

If the vote of the membership is tied, the recommendation of the jury will hold.

If the recommendation to ban is overturned by a vote of the membership, the poster will be on three-month probation. If new bannable offenses are committed during that period, a new jury will be convened according to the same terms as above, but this time the decision of the jury will be final. Please focus discussion HERE. Probation period was not decided by members prior to committee

The Hearing thread will be locked as soon as: (a) the poster has not been banned by the jury, or (b) the vote of the membership has concluded, or (c) a probation period has expired, whichever of these comes last.

The locked thread may be deleted at the request of the member.

Elements of the case may be summarized and preserved in the Archive with the member’s name deleted.

Last edited by Jnyusa on Wed 11 May , 2005 12:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Fri 06 May , 2005 4:58 pm
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A shorter option is below this one

¶6 Procedure for Hearings to Remove an Administrator
(Most of this is taken directly from Article 3 and cannot be changed at this point. Anything new is in blue)

An offense requiring removal of an administrator comes to the attention of the other administrators, either because they observe it directly or because a member reports it. In all cases, two administrators must agree that the charges against their fellow member are sufficiently serious and not manufactured, and that a hearing is justified.

The administrator who is considered for removal is notified by PM and by email twenty-four hours before the hearing is opened. When the notification has expired, an administrator will open a thread in the jury room stating the reason for the Hearing and the names of both administrators who convened the hearing should appear in the first post of the thread. Full names should be used so that PMs can be sent with ease.

The administrative powers of the member in question are revoked and the member is restricted to the Jury Room for the duration of the hearing.

The Charter by-laws specify those offenses for which an administrator can be removed from office and the additional penalty associated with each of them. No administrator shall be removed from office for any other reason. The deliberation of the jury is to determine whether or not the offense in question has been committed, and to remove the administrator if they decide that it has. The jury may not issue warnings or impose partial penalties or place any other restrictions on the action of the administrator as an alternative to removing them from office. The administrator either stays in office with full powers or is removed with those penalties specified in the by-laws.

Penalties associated with removal from office have to do with the time that must elapse before that member can serve again as an administrator. It is the responsibility of the Mayor to maintain a permanent record of these time limits so that he/she or his/her successor can restore the member to the pool of administrators promptly when their penalty has expired if they wish to be so restored.

Nearly all of this is taken directly from Article 3. In fact we don't need to repeat it. I going to suggest the following short form instead

An administrator cannot be removed from office for any offense not specified in Article 3 of the by-laws.

Hearings to remove an Administrator are convened and conducted in the same manner as Hearings on a Community Disruption except that Administrative powers are revoked and the member is restricted to the Jury Room for the duration of the hearing.

The deliberation of the jury is to determine whether or not the offense in question has been committed, and to remove the administrator if they decide that it has. The jury may not issue warnings or impose partial penalties or place any other restrictions on the action of the administrator as an alternative to removing them from office. The administrator either stays in office with full powers or is removed with those penalties specified in Article 3 of the by-laws.

Last edited by Jnyusa on Thu 12 May , 2005 6:52 am, edited 4 times in total.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Fri 06 May , 2005 4:59 pm
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Discussion of this is postponed until we complete the Article concerning the Mayor
¶7 Procedure for Hearings to Remove An Elected Official from Office

All of this is new, and if you wish we can postpone the final discussion of this paragraph until we have written the Article on elected officials. What is here is based directly on the rules for removing an admin, with the added provision of a petition by the members as suggested by some people.


Offenses for which the elected officials can be removed from office are [will be] specified in the by-laws and they may not be removed for any other reason.

A Hearing can be convened in one of two ways:
• Two administrators must agree that the elected official has either been derelict in his/her duties or has committed an offense requiring removal. They may then convene a hearing.
• The members may petition for the removal of an elected official by opening a poll in the Business Forum. The poll must run for ten full days, and requires a quorum as defined in the by-laws. A simple majority (51%) of the voting members must agree that a Hearing should be convened. If a Hearing is to be convened, it must be convened within three days of the closing of the poll.

The elected official is notified by PM and by email twenty-four hours before the Hearing is opened. When the notification period has passed, an administrator will open a thread in the jury room stating the reason for the Hearing. If the hearing was convened by two administrators, both their names should appear in the first post of the thread. Full names should be used so that PMs can be sent with ease.

The elected official will be restricted to the Jury Room for the duration of the Hearing. (Building on what was decided for removal of administrators)

The deliberation of the jury is to determine whether or not the offense in question has been committed, and to remove the elected official if they decide that it has. The jury may not issue warnings or impose partial penalties or place any other restrictions on the actions of an elected official as an alternative to removing him/her from office.

No elected official shall be subjected to a Hearing for Removal more than once during a term of office.

Last edited by Jnyusa on Thu 12 May , 2005 6:53 am, edited 4 times in total.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Fri 06 May , 2005 5:01 pm
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¶8 Appealing the Decision of a Jury

Only decisions that result in a penalty being placed upon a member can be appealed, and only by that member.

All requests for an appeal must be heard, and decisions made by an Appeals panel are final.

The Appeals panel will consist of three current administrators chosen by the Mayor based on their availability and willingness to hear an appeal. The administrator(s) who convened the hearing should not be part of the Appeals panel. If there are not sufficient current administrators to choose from, the Mayor may select from among those Administrators who completed the preceding term of office.

The member will present their Appeal in writing. Each member of the panel will review the Hearing Thread to seek confirmation of the Appeal. They may confer among themselves in private by PM or email. Agreement by three of the four members of the panel will constitute a decision. Their decision must state whether to uphold or overturn the decision of the jury, and whether to void, reduce or uphold the penalty imposed by the jury. Any factors which they took into consideration should be stated honestly in their decision.

The decision will be sent to the member by email, and posted in the original Hearing Thread twenty-four hours later. The names of the Appeal panel are posted with their decision.

Ideally, an Appeals process should not take longer than seven full days.

Jury decisions and penalties can be appealed under the following circumstances:
• A decision can be appealed if the Hearing procedure specified in the by-laws was not followed. It is the responsibility of administrators and jurors to convene and conduct a hearing properly, and it is the responsibility of the Mayor to ensure that this is done. If the Appeals panel decides that the member was disadvantaged in any way by a breach of procedure, such as failure of notification, failure to announce the close of the hearing, failure to pursue witnesses, etc., they may overturn the jury decision and void all penalties. The hearing must then be held again for that offense. The posting rights of the member cannot be restricted over the course of the second hearing until a proper jury decision has been reached.

• A decision can be appealed if the statement which opens the Hearing Thread, or the statement of the jury’s decision exhibits any bias based on nationality, ethnicity, religion, native language, gender, age or collateral relationships that administrators or jury members might have with the member in question either in person or on other websites. A jury decision can be overturned and all penalties voided in this case. If demonstrable bias exists, no second hearing will be held for the same offense.

• A decision can be appealed if new evidence comes to light before a penalty has expired.

• A penalty can be appealed if there were delays in executing the hearing, or if jury deliberations took longer than seems reasonable for the type of offense in question. This might happen if the responsible administrator was off-line at a critical time, or if witnesses did not appear promptly, or if jurors did not deliberate promptly. If the member upon whom the penalty was imposed was restricted to the Jury Room for the duration of the hearing, they may appeal for “time served” to be deducted from the penalty.

• A penalty can be appealed if the jury had discretion in determining the penalty, and the penalty they imposed is excessive by comparison with other penalties specified in the by-laws for similar offenses.

Last edited by Jnyusa on Fri 13 May , 2005 3:20 pm, edited 17 times in total.

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Voronwë_the_Faithful
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Posted: Fri 06 May , 2005 5:10 pm
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Jn, thanks for all your hard work. I won't have time to address all of this fully probably until over the weekend, but I will. :)


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Jnyusa
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Posted: Fri 06 May , 2005 5:22 pm
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Thanks, Voronwe.

Editing is now done. Members can have at it.

Jn

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Axordil
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Posted: Fri 06 May , 2005 5:52 pm
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RE: paragraph 4. Like the alternate, can live with two rejections per affected individual. In the interest of brevity can we reword the first clause to:

A sufficient number of jurors will be selected at the beginning to allow each afffected individual to reject two jurors and still have seven jurors remaining. For cases involving a single individual this would thus be nine potential jurors.

And then pull the redundant language out of the third clause:

If a hearing is being held for more than one member at a time because more than one person was involved in the case, then each member will have the right to reject two jurors.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Fri 06 May , 2005 6:24 pm
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Good call, Ax. I'm going to go ahead and change it. Thanks.

Jn

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Axordil
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Posted: Fri 06 May , 2005 6:30 pm
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Quote:
The posting rights of the member in question will not be restricted over the course of the hearing on the strength of another member’s report. Only an administrator observing a violation of by-laws directly, or a jury after hearing a case, may impose a penalty on a poster.
Innocent until proving guilty is good for me. Would it be redundant to note than admin-imposed restrictions are subject to review, since that's elsewhere in the charter?

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Fri 06 May , 2005 6:37 pm
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Ax,

When I made your suggested change above, I had to tweak some other things to make it smooth. Please look a those points about jury selection again to make sure this is what you had in mind.

And ...

admin-imposed restrictions are subject to review

in this case, the hearing is the review.

Contesting admin decisions is a much simpler process and used for inconsequential things like edits.

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Cerin
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Posted: Fri 06 May , 2005 6:45 pm
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Jnyusa, I'm so sorry to hear that you are disheartened, though it is certainly understandable that you are getting sick of this. If only there were someone else capable of carrying more of the burden along with you. We need several yous, whom we could then rotate in and out. :)

Quote:
¶4 Hearings and the Selection of a Jury for Hearings
Please focus discussion on ‘six jurors,’ the presence of an alternate, rejection versus selection by the member, and selection in order of entry to pool
I like six jurors, an alternate, rejection by the member, and selection in order of entry to pool.

Quote:
From ¶5 Procedure for Hearings on a Violation of By-Laws/Community Disruption:
(Currently, only two administrators are required to remove another administrator from office. I do not believe that lesser offenses should exceed that requirement for consistency’s sake.)
IF the set of possible member violations of by-laws is larger and more ambiguous than the grounds for removal of an admin (and therefore involving a greater amount of subjectivity), then I think a larger number of admins to convene such a hearing might be considered without a concern for violating consistency.

Quote:
¶5 Procedure for Hearings on a Violation of By-Laws/Community Disruption:
The posting rights of the member in question will not be restricted over the course of the hearing on the strength of another member’s report. Only an administrator observing a violation of by-laws directly, or a jury after hearing a case, may impose a penalty on a poster. Please focus discussion HERE. There is a principle of protecting members from vindictive accusations.
This provision seems adequate to me.

Quote:
¶6 Procedure for Hearings on a Ban:
If the recommendation to ban is overturned by a vote of the membership, the poster will be on three-month probation. If new bannable offenses are committed during that period, a new jury will be convened according to the same terms as above, but this time the decision of the jury will be final. Please focus discussion HERE. Probation period was not decided by members prior to committee
What is the reasoning for having a probationary period?

Quote:
¶8 Procedure for Hearings to Remove the Mayor from Office
All of this is new, and if you wish we can postpone the final discussion of this paragraph until we have written the Article about the Office of the Mayor. What is here is based directly on the rules for removing an admin, with the added provision of a petition by the members as suggested by some people.
It doesn't seem as though the Mayor is going to be very visible to the membership, although the idea of a petition by the membership for removal seems like a good idea on principle.

Quote:
¶9 Appealing the Decision of a Jury
(All of this is new and I made it all up based on the very few suggestions made so far, so ... hack away!)

Jury decisions and penalties can be appealed under the following circumstances:
How about evidentiary grounds for an appeal?


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Axordil
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jny--the wording looks fine.

And I agree the hearing is the review...so I guess the answer is yes, it's redundant. :D

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Fri 06 May , 2005 7:42 pm
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Cerin: IF the set of possible member violations of by-laws is larger and more ambiguous than the grounds for removal of an admin (and therefore involving a greater amount of subjectivity) ...

Ah! I see the logic of this. But actually the grounds for suspending posting rights and banning members are quite narrow and all are specified in the Charter, as are the grounds for removing an admin.

The things that are less well-defined are "violation of member rights," There will be a list of member rights but the jury will still have to decide whether a violation actually occured and I can imagine this being a gray area in some cases.

Thing is, it's not the admins who make this decision. They only have to decide that the original charge is not frivolous; that some member has not complained just to get another member in trouble. It seems to me that if two current admins agree that something really did happen, that ought to be enough. The admins also serve in the order in which they entered the pool so the odds of getting a faction that would be both biased against a particular member and willing to disserve their office are pretty slim.

What is the reasoning for having a probationary period?

Only so that members are not called upon to vote on the same ban over and over again. If a member commits two bannable offenses in a short period of time, 'convicted' by the jury both times, chances are good the member does deserve to be banned and the membership doesn't have to vote on this again.

There is some concern, on my part at least, that our very liberal practices are not used against us, i.e. to disrupt the board by tying up people's posting time in juries and votes and frivolous hearings.

One of the things this committee has to deal with, beyond procedure, is the definition of some additional offenses and their penalties, and what to do with people who bring frivolous or vindictive complaints or lie as witnesses and so forth. One of the reasons I want to get through procedure fast is because I think these sorts of things will require a lot more discussion.

It doesn't seem as though the Mayor is going to be very visible to the membership ...

We're not done with the Mayor yet. :) If that person ends up being the spokesperson for the board, as Voronwe suggests, they might be quite visible and also potentially quite harmful to us. Which is why I think that we could postpone this paragraph if we wanted to until we figure our just how visible the Mayor is going to be.

How about evidentiary grounds for an appeal?

Excellent point! And I really don't know how to address this for a couple of reasons, but maybe others will have some ideas.

'Perjury' is the only evidentiary problem I can think of in our sorts of cases. (It's not strictly perjury because no one takes an oath, but we do expect people to tell the truth.) The question is, how would we find out about a lie? Presumably if a witness said something a 'defendent' knew to be untrue, they would object and also try to find another witness to support their own version. Suppose this can't be done? Suppose it is a matter of a post that has been edited? He said/she said, but the evidence is gone. How would even the appeals panel determine the truth?

The trend has been for penalties (when specified) to be relatively light. There are, for example, no permanent bans, and indefinite bans can be petitioned for reversal after 30 days. I'm thinking that if a 'perjury' did not surface through some witness over the course of the hearing, the penalty is very likely to expire before it does surface.

On the other hand, people lying about one another can be absolute poison. We've seen the result of that on TORC.

If others have ideas about how to deal with this, I would welcome them.

Jn

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truehobbit
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I'm sorry, but I don't understand the difference between what we are discussing here and what what we are discussing in the old thread? :(

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Jnyusa
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This thread has six posts full of text and the other thread only has one. The text that is in the other thread has also been incorporated here.

Jn

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TORN
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:clap: :clap: :clap: I vigorously applaud this approach of writing everything up and working from that -- in fact, let me put some more vigor into it: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

Drafting piece-meal is much too time-consuming if done by committee. I would urge you (or someone else, as you have already done about 1000x your proper share) to simply write up a basic proposal for everything that's left to be done, then have the committee work from that. Much for efficient, much more directed, much more prone to consistency and much less prone to uncontrolled growth and complication.


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TORN
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Posted: Sat 07 May , 2005 2:27 am
THE GREAT AND POWERFUL
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Joined: Sun 06 Mar , 2005 2:30 am
 
Jnyusa wrote:
The things that are less well-defined are "violation of member rights," There will be a list of member rights but the jury will still have to decide whether a violation actually occured and I can imagine this being a gray area in some cases.
I would like to make a suggestion that I suspect will not get much support, but I'll make it anyways -- convictions of violations of member rights should be limited to circumstances where the violation is "serious" or egregious or some other standard that is able to withstand complaints arising from the confluence of (i) a list of member rights that I suspect will end up promising members a broad range of good things, and (ii) the inevitability of what I will call "thin-skinned" reactions to fairly minimal violations of this broad range of rights. Which is to say, I would expect a fair number of violations of member rights to occur and that a very significant number of these violations -- although appropriately classified as violations -- will end up being of the type that would cause the vast majority of Board members to roll their eyes if someone were to actually seek enforcement through a proceeding. A year ago, I would have assumed that the vast majority of people who suffered this type of violation of their rights would refrain from instituting formal proceedings, but viewing the TORC debacle and some of the to-dos even here have nudged me toward the position that there is quite a bit more thin skin and hair-pin triggers around than I would otherwise have expected.

The gist of what I'm proposing is that member rights operate at two levels -- a precatory level that says "these are the high standards that we as a community strive to achieve", and an enforceable level that says "these are the minimum standards by which you as a member of this community must abide."


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