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CHARTER RATIFICATION: Add to/Amend Articles 4&5: RATIFIE

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I agree to Ratify these additions and amendments
Poll ended at Mon 15 Aug , 2005 3:25 am
Yes
  
96% [ 51 ]
No
  
4% [ 2 ]
Total votes: 53
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Jnyusa
Post subject: CHARTER RATIFICATION: Add to/Amend Articles 4&5: RATIFIE
Posted: Sun 10 Jul , 2005 6:52 am
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Dear Members (and especially our newest members),

It is time once again to ratify a piece of our Charter.


We have already voted on part of Article 4: Office of the Mayor, but we have some new paragraphs to add to it and some minor amendments.

We also have some additions and amendments to Article 5: Dispute Resolution.

HERE IS HOW THE PROCESS WORKS

All registered members may discuss and vote in this thread.

A summary of the provisions we are voting on is given below. There are also links to posts containing the full and complete text of each Article. [Parts already ratified are in small print at the top of the post; parts you are ratifying now are in large print at the bottom of the post.]

Before voting, we discuss in this thread for a minimum of ten days. During those ten days, you should state bluntly in this thread anything you don’t like.. If enough people dislike certain provisions, we will remove them from the text before the voting begins and allow the committee to work on them again until they are more acceptable to the membership.

At the end of the discussion, the vote opens and remains open for ten days, two weekends inclusive. The vote takes the form of a poll in this thread, where you vote either yes or no to approve these pieces of the Charter.

This vote opened late and will remain open until Monday, August 8, 11:59 pm Greenwich Mean Time.

(Translation: voting from July 22, ~8:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time or ~5:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time until August 1, ~8:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time or ~5:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time. )

SUMMARY OF ADDITIONS AND AMENDMENTS TO ARTICLE 4: OFFICE OF THE MAYOR
The full text of the article, including those parts already ratified, can be read IN THIS POST.

First, we have added the requirement that candidates for Mayor be 18 years of age or older, and that nominations of a candidate must be seconded by another member¶1.

We have set up terms by which Elections will be held in ¶4.

Elections will take place once a year. The upcoming election is announced on July 20 and the nomination period begins 30 days later on August 19. Nominations are accepted for 10 days. Voting begins on September 3 and ends on September 12. The current Mayor then transfers records and information to the Mayor-elect, and inauguration of the new Mayor takes place on September 22.

As a registered member, you may nominate or second one candidate, or run for office yourself! Current Rangers may run but they must resign their current Ranger term if they win.

Once nominations close, the current Mayor (who is right now an Honorary record-keeper only) will convene a committee of two helpers to create and post the ballot. Secret ballots will be cast by copying the ballot from the thread and submitting it by PM or email. The committee will count the vote and reports the results promptly.

We have also added a paragraph to this Article describing the grounds and procedures for removing the Mayor from office should this become necessary ¶5.

Because the Mayor is primarily a record-keeper the main concern is failure to update records, schedule Ranger terms or send out notifications promptly to members. We have allowed the Mayor five instances of dereliction of duty before Rangers might convene a Hearing to remove him/her from office. Dereliction of duty means that something which must be done has not been done and the Rangers must step in on an emergency basis and do it in the Mayor’s stead. As with the Rangers, however, the Mayor will never be considered derelict if advance warning of an absence is given.

(The addition to Article 5, which you will read below, is the procedure for Hearings to remove the Mayor if that becomes necessary.)

Other minor amendments to Article 4 include the filling in of a committee name that was not yet known when the article first went for ratification, and an additional constraint that the Mayor may not serve as a Ranger, Juror, Loremaster or Mediator while in office.

SUMMARY OF ADDITIONS AND AMENDMENTS TO ARTICLE 5: DISPUTE RESOLUTION IN THE OUTSIDE FORUM
The full text of the article, including those parts already ratified, can be read IN THIS POST.

Now that Article 4 is complete, we were able to add to Article 5 the Procedure for Hearings to Remove an Elected Official, ¶7.

As with Hearings to Remove A Ranger, the Mayor can only be removed from office for reasons specified in the Charter, and the Jury cannot impose variable penalties on a Mayor. They may only decide to remove or not remove him/her.

We have added the requirement that a Loremaster be in attendance for Hearings to Remove either a Ranger or the Mayor.

We have added statutes of limitations to ¶4: Hearings, ¶5: Hearings on a Ban, and ¶8: Appeals. If a Ranger spots a violation of by-laws, they must convene a Hearing within ten days or else forget about it. In the case of Immediate Bans (for ad spammers, etc), the member has [91 days][three months](See note) to request a reversal; after that the Rangers do not have to save the thread as evidence. A member that wishes to appeal a Jury decision must do so within [91 days][three months](See note) or before the penalty expires, whichever comes first.
[Note: the articles on which "91 days" is based say "three months," technically 91.5 days. If there are no objections we will round this up to 92 days instead of rounding down to 91. Further discussion suggests that it would be better to state 3 months than to translate this into days. ]

Followed by, "All timely requests for appeal must be heard ..."

These limitations were introduced because members can request that Hearing threads be deleted, and we did not want to delete them so soon that the case could not be appealed or bans could not be reversed. We also did not want belated action taken by Rangers against members.

We have also made a minor amendment so that date-last-served will be shown for Mediators on the list that appears in the Bike Racks.

In order to ratify these additions and amendments, 39 members must cast votes, and of those who vote, two-thirds (67%) must vote in favor.

Last edited by Jnyusa on Tue 09 Aug , 2005 12:15 am, edited 9 times in total.

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Cerin
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Posted: Tue 12 Jul , 2005 5:56 pm
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Quote:
The current Mayor will vote first and convey his/her vote by PM to any Ranger who is not him/herself a candidate, so that in the event of a tie the vote already cast by the Mayor will count a second time as the deciding vote.
This strikes me as a curious provision. Sort of goes against our 'one person, one vote' ideal. Though it seems unlikely that a tie would occur.


Great work, everyone. Thank you so much! :clap:


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Jnyusa
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Posted: Tue 12 Jul , 2005 8:38 pm
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We felt obligated to deal with potential ties in some manner and this was the simplest of all ways suggested.

We decided against the electoral college approach. :D

Jn

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Cerin
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Posted: Tue 12 Jul , 2005 9:06 pm
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:D


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Frelga
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Posted: Thu 14 Jul , 2005 9:25 pm
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It's time for me to ask my traditional dumb question of the week.

Why 91?

Not that I object or anything, just curious.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Thu 14 Jul , 2005 9:52 pm
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Frelga,

Immediate bans are not given a duration. The charter article that applies to such ban reversals says that the member has to wait one month before requesting a reversal, and the Rangers have the option of waiting an additional two months before convening the Hearing. (We did that because the committee was split evenly between making people wait one month and making them wait three months.)

In case the member requests that the ban be reversed, the thread itself needs to be available as evidence of why the ban was imposed, but since the overwhelming majority of these cases are ad and porn spammers, it is very unlikely that the person who did it will hang around and ask for a Hearing one to three months later. And we don't want to keep the thread forever.

The Rangers are going to have to put an expiry date on the thread when they place it in storage, so in this Article I expressed the three months in days rather than months. Technically, an average month is 30.5 days long.

Just btw, this article does not prevent a member from requesting a ban reversal much later, it just means that we no longer have to provide the thread as evidence of why the ban was imposed in the first place.

But you know what, Frelga? I just realized that it probably should read 92 days rather than 91 days ... technically it should be 91.5 days, and it would be more generous to round up than to round down.

Hmmm ... we've got a provision for pulling out of the charter things members object to ... I wonder if I could change that on the basis of your observation without getting into trouble...

I'm going to add [92 days] after the 91 days now shown, and if no one raises an objection, we'll ratify it (or not) with 92 days instead of 91. Generally, we've tried to err on the side of being more liberal where member rights are concerned, so I think that 92 days would be more in keeping with that tradition.

(You're probably wondering why I'm so picky about these things. I wonder about that, too.)

Jn

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Faramond
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Posted: Thu 14 Jul , 2005 10:38 pm
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I meant to ask why it was 91 days before and I forgot.

Please not this is not an objection, for I truly don't care, but I calulate that the average three month span has 365.25 / 4 = 91.31, which would round to 91. But you could argue it's still more generous to round up. :D Someone might come looking for that .31 of a day, after all. ;)


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Jnyusa
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Posted: Thu 14 Jul , 2005 11:01 pm
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On this board, someone would come looking for it! :damnfunny

As a practical matter it will make no difference because we are not going to destroy the threads the minute the time limit runs out. We're going to leave them a window for the sake of people (like me) who add 19 + 20 and get 29. :D

Jn

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IdylleSeethes
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Posted: Sun 17 Jul , 2005 10:06 pm
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Jnyusa,

I have no problem with it. I think somwhere else you stated a policy of always rounding up instead of down.

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TORN
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Posted: Mon 18 Jul , 2005 4:50 am
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WHILE RESERVING THE RIGHT TO MAKE FURTHER COMMENTARIES ON THIS ARTICLE

:devil: :devil: :devil:

I WOULD LIKE TO POINT OUT THAT THE NEW PARAGRAPH ON REMOVAL OF ELECTED OFFICIALS SHOULD, I BELIEVE, BE NUMBERED AS ¶7, NOT ¶6 (THIS PARAGRAPH CURRENTLY EXISTS AND DEALS WITH REMOVAL OF RANGERS).

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Angbasdil
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Posted: Mon 18 Jul , 2005 9:41 am
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To get even more pedantic, the average number of days in a month is completely irrelevant. There will never be a specific case that deals with an average of all the months. Each individual case will deal with a specific three month period. Therefore, one has to figure the maximum number of days in any hypothetical three month period.

There are seven months that have 31 days. If you look at which months they are, you'll find that at no point in the year do three of them occur consecutively. So your maximum number of days in any three month period is 92 days, consisting of two months of 31 days each and one month of 30 days. So 92 days is the correct figure here, but it has absolutely nothing to do with averages. Your conclusion was correct, but for an entirely wrong reason.

Just wanted to point that out.


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TORN
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Posted: Mon 18 Jul , 2005 12:59 pm
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On the other hand, using a nice round number of 90 days is commonly accepted as a sufficiently close substitute for 3 months without quibbling over the issue of 30/31/28/29 day months -- if I were drafting from scratch, I think I'd go the 90 day route for simplicity myself -- in the alternative, I'd go with the same day of the month 3-months after the start date (i.e., if the start date is April 11, then the end date is July 11). The 90 days is a good standard timeframe, and the second formula gives you an easy to figure timeframe. Using 91 or 92 is pretty unstandard and does not give you an easily figured end-date, to boot.


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Angbasdil
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Posted: Mon 18 Jul , 2005 4:39 pm
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TORN wrote:
On the other hand, using a nice round number of 90 days is commonly accepted as a sufficiently close substitute for 3 months without quibbling over the issue of 30/31/28/29 day months -- if I were drafting from scratch, I think I'd go the 90 day route for simplicity myself -- in the alternative, I'd go with the same day of the month 3-months after the start date (i.e., if the start date is April 11, then the end date is July 11). The 90 days is a good standard timeframe, and the second formula gives you an easy to figure timeframe. Using 91 or 92 is pretty unstandard and does not give you an easily figured end-date, to boot.
Let's keep it simple and just say "three months".
After all, why specify "months" in two places in the charter and "days" in another? By my math, one month plus two months equals three months. However many days that might end up being is irrelevant.


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Frelga
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Posted: Mon 18 Jul , 2005 5:15 pm
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But won't that shortchange the unfortunates who were banned in February?
:devil:
Actually, three months makes better sense to me, as well. I mean, I don't plan on doing anything bannable, but if I did, there's no way I was going to figure out which day was the 91st or 92nd from my banning.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Tue 19 Jul , 2005 6:45 am
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TORN - thanks for catching the misnumbering. Fixed now.

Better to state it in months? I'm OK with that.

I don't know why I did it in days anyway ... probably because some of the additional time periods we voted on for holding on to the threads themselves were given in days ... but as it turned out we voted to hold the evidentiary threads for one month extra in all cases, so it probably makes more sense to state this article in months rather than days.

Objections? Let me give it a few days - if there are no ojections I'll change the 91/92 days to three months wherever that appears.

Jn

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Mon 25 Jul , 2005 9:53 pm
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People, in both the first post of this thread and in the link to the actual charter text, I've put in brackets the "three months" with a note below it.

I don't know why I got all fancy-schmancy converting months to days when I wrote the text for this article. The Article this is based on says three months, and that's really what it should say here, too.

Regarding February, what I am discovering while doing the record keeping in Michel Delving is that as a matter of practicality it always takes the Rangers a couple of days to execute anything requested by the Mayor ... just getting the announcement reiterated in Forum Mgt. and the Ranger who knows exactly how to do it seeing and doing it and posting the result ... it takes about three days from start to finish.

These penalties and bans, etc. will be records maintained in Michel Delving and it is the Mayor's job to alert the Rangers when time periods have expired, and the associated action does not happen instantaneously. There's also a window on the other end, as I said above, where evidence is kept for an additional month before being deleted. So I don't think it likely that a person banned in January, for example, will be unfairly disadvantaged by the fact that their 3-month period includes February. That eventuality is not something we should have to account for in the Charter. Better to have the Charter be clear and simply - "three months" everywhere that this time limit appear - than to overly complicate it by trying to protect people who happen to get banned in February.

Don't you think?

If people really want this expressed as days, I will leave the original wording, but otherwise I will amend this to read "three months" before we actually start the ratification vote. We've still got four days of discussion.

Jn

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Tue 26 Jul , 2005 3:23 am
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People, I missed the moment when this poll had to be opened. So I'll put up the poll now but it will have to run until August 8 along with the other ratification votes.

Jn

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IdylleSeethes
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Voted

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Anthriel
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Voted :D


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Voted

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