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Quickie Charter Amendment to Article 8 on Thread Deletions

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Cerin
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Posted: Fri 11 Nov , 2005 11:53 pm
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truehobbit wrote:
Of course it's a surprise! Very obviously, no one here had realised that this had been overlooked until Jny noticed!
Well yes, no one realized that Article 8 hadn't been made consistent with the amendment that passed. But my point was, it isn't a substantive surprise; it isn't, 'Oh my gosh, I didn't realize the amendment called for the threads to be deleted three days after the end of the consideration period!' The surprise is simply, 'Oops, we forgot to change Article 8 to make it consistent with the main amendment.'

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Maybe people should have understood, but it's quite obvious they didn't, so it's a surprise. I think even you yourself were rather taken by surprise here earlier.
When I said people should have understood, I was talking about the substance of the amendment, not about the fact that Article 8 was overlooked. In other words, I'm saying that everyone knew (or should have known) that the amendment they voted for (or against) calls for deletion of the petitioner threads after a certain time, and I believe people understood (or should have done) that the Charter would be made consistent with the new amendment if it passed.

I agree that I and everyone else overlooked the fact that this included a minor change to Article 8; I still don't see it as any kind of real surprise, because the fact that the amendment, if passed, would necessitate other minor amendments to the Charter was made known in the ratification text. So I don't think we're really disagreeing here. Yes, Article 8 was overlooked when amending the Charter for consistency, but the substance of the changes to Article 8 that would have to be made were understood, being part of the amendment that was ratified.

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I think what Ax means (and definitely what I mean) is that no one should get a surprise in the sense that one day they read the charter and find something that wasn't there last time they read it,

Ah, but this is just the point. If someone is aware of the recent amendment and they are reading through the Charter anew, then they are aware that Article 6 now contains a provision for the deletion of petitioner threads, and they will not get a surprise when they see that provision also included in the Charter text for Article 8. They might get more of a surprise if they didn't see a provision of Article 6 appropriately reflected in the text of Article 8.

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and they had no chance to find out earlier because no one bothered to announce the change and ask for feedback beforehand!
But again, of course they had a chance to find out. They found out when they participated in the ratification of the amendment to Article 6, that there was a provision for the deletion of petitioner threads. If they were familiar with the Charter and were mindful of Article 8 (which apparently no one was) they also would have realized that Article 8 would have to be amended to be made consistent with the new amendment if it passed. So I just don't see this as a matter for announcements and feedback. The matter has already been thoroughly vetted and a technical tidying up needs to be done.

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but that doesn't mean anyone in power to actually make the change should assume that there will be no objections and go ahead without asking first!
The thing is, there isn't a real change being made, there are no grounds for an objection and it has nothing to do with power. The change (deletion of petitioner threads) was contained in the amendment, the power was exercised by the membership in writing and passing the amendment. Since the amendment passed and the practice of the board is now changed to include deletion of petitioner threads in ToE, having the Charter reflect that is simply common sense, not an additional change that someone can object to. No one can object to making Article 8 consistent with Article 6, because Article 6 was more recently passed as an amendment to the Charter.

I think as Jnyusa said, this kind of problem can be avoided in the future by simply added a comment in ratification texts or somewhere, that any overlooked changes for consistency will automatically be made if an amendment passes.

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That's why I suggested to leave the thread up for a decent time, announcing that this and that inconsistency has been found and the plan is to make this and that change to remove it, and if someone has a problem with that to please contact a Ranger.
As I said I have no problem with leaving the thread up or going through whatever process people feel is necessary. However, there is no scenario for someone 'having a problem' with making the Charter consistent with a passed amendment. Obviously the Charter needs to be made internally consistent. If someone has a problem with amending Article 8 to include a provision for deletion of petitioner threads, then their problem substantively is with Article 6, not with Article 8.

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No need for a vote, but everyone interested gets a chance to keep informed and get involved in everything that concerns the text of the charter - it is about inclusion, I think.
I heartily agree that everyone should be kept informed and involved. We were all involved (who wanted to be) when we participated in the writing and ratification of the amendment. We were all sort of involved (though I'm happy to accept that responsibility) when we overlooked the necessity of amending Article 8. And now we are all involved in discovering the oversight and rectifying it.

Edit

Oops, cross-posted with Hobby. Yes, "anything to the contrary thereof nothwithstanding" would take care of things nicely (and it sounds kind of Bilbo-y to boot). :D


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Jnyusa
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Posted: Sat 12 Nov , 2005 12:12 am
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What I understood Hobby to be saying earlier was that making this kind of change in this manner should not be a precedent for making more substantive changes without consulting the membership.

With that I am in total agreement.

"anything to the contrary thereof notwithstanding" LOL that sounds like something that should be in our charter!

or ... "in accordance with the prophecy ..." j/k

I am kind of a stickler about making the consistency changes when we discover them ... and there will be more, I'm sure ... because we really don't know where the board will be in the future and who among the convention members might no longer be here. I mean, one just never knows. And the charter seems to work pretty well for us so far, so I'd like for it to survive me and the others who wrote it. That means, I think, striving to keep it unambiguous and error free.

Maybe sometime during or after the upcoming holidays I'll go through the Charter Issues thread and just put a bunch of consistency amendments up for ratification at one time, including the provision that votes will not be needed for that sort of thing in the future. People might feel refreshed enough by then to show up and vote and turn some power over to the Loremasters.

Jn

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Voronwë_the_Faithful
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Posted: Sat 12 Nov , 2005 12:22 am
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Jn, I'll repeat what I said before: if the Charter as it currently stands makes it clear what rule should prevail, there is no need to amend it. Generally speaking, it is a widely accepted rule of statutory interpretation that a more specific rule trumps a more general rule. Unless there is some indication that the more general rule (in this case, the rule against deleting threads) is meant to overturn a more specific rule (in this case the rule allowing deletion of ToE announcement threads or bike rack threads), then we should just accept that the more specific rule applies and not worry about it any further.


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truehobbit
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Posted: Sat 12 Nov , 2005 12:29 am
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Cerin wrote:

When I said people should have understood, I was talking about the substance of the amendment, not about the fact that Article 8 was overlooked. In other words, I'm saying that everyone knew (or should have known) that the amendment they voted for (or against) calls for deletion of the petitioner threads after a certain time, and I believe people understood (or should have done) that the Charter would be made consistent with the new amendment if it passed.
Maybe I got this wrong then - I thought that mentioning of deleting threads had been overlooked in article 6.
From what I remember Jny saying in the first posts here, the text for article 6 had mentioned what to do if there is a poll, but not what there is to do if a thread remains empty.
You can't really say "they should have known that" when it's not in the text.

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And now we are all involved in discovering the oversight and rectifying it.
Yes, and that's a good thing, and that is all I'm saying here!
I'm speaking generally more than about this particular case: I think that whenever such a thing happens, this is a matter to be presented to the public, not something that anyone should rectify on their own and in private just because they personally judge it as unimportant or a minor change.
And in order to make anything public, it needs to be posted in a thread for a sufficient amount of time, so that everybody who is interested can take notice.

Quote:
Oops, cross-posted with Hobby. Yes, "anything to the contrary thereof nothwithstanding" would take care of things nicely (and it sounds kind of Bilbo-y to boot). :D
Bilbo-y? LOL! :D
Yes, I love it because it sounds so cool - and it's usually at the end of a sentence that runs on for half a page. :D

Last edited by truehobbit on Sat 12 Nov , 2005 12:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Sat 12 Nov , 2005 12:30 am
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Hobby and Voronwe,

Thanks for your response to that question. Yes, I agree that in this case the specific provision of Article 5, allowing the BR thread to be deleted, prevails over the general rule of Article 8 that threads are not deleted.

I think we can add the BR threads to Article 8 without controversy.

Where I'm afraid there might be controversy is interpreting the rules of Articles 3 and 5 regarding expiry dates to apply to Article 8 as well. It seems to me that they should apply, but I don't want to deny the membership the opportunity to say that this is something they'd rather vote on.

Since you've agreed that the deletion itself is cosmetic, I'll add that to the first post so that people looking in for the first time see it right away. If there are no objections, when we make the cosmetic change I'll also put in an expiry date provision, since all other DTS threads would have an expiry date on them. But if members say not to do that, then I won't. I'll wait until a good time to do a charter amendment for that.

Jn

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Cerin
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Posted: Sat 12 Nov , 2005 12:38 am
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truehobbit wrote:
Maybe I got this wrong then - I thought that mentioning of deleting threads had been overlooked in article 6.
No, mention of deleting the threads had not been overlooked in article 6. This is what the text says:

The petitioner's thread will be left up for an additional three days, after which time a Ranger will delete it.

It doesn't differentiate between threads that get objections and a poll, and threads that do not.


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truehobbit
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Posted: Sat 12 Nov , 2005 12:40 am
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It's late and I'm groggy, maybe otherwise I'd know, but - what's a DTS thread?

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Sat 12 Nov , 2005 12:40 am
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Deleted Thread Storage.

Jn

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truehobbit
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Posted: Sat 12 Nov , 2005 12:47 am
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:doh1:

Thanks, Jny!

The petitioner's thread will be left up for an additional three days, after which time a Ranger will delete it.
Ah, ok - sorry, then! :)

(LOL, I really need to get to bed now, before the next long post I read throws me completely off balance - I realise that what I had meant to reply to your long post at first would have been a little more sensible, but now I see how I got myself confused during trying to sort out your long reply.)

(I still think you can't be too public with any kind of change, though. ;) )

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Rowanberry
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Posted: Sat 12 Nov , 2005 10:48 pm
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I haven't had time to read through everything that was posted here, but my common sense would say that, delete the threads for the applicants that nobody resisted, and store those for the ones who were resisted in the Deleted Threads Storage for an appropriate time - which, IMO, would be until they might be granted access to the ToE.

I'll get back to this on a better time.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Sat 19 Nov , 2005 12:47 am
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People, this thread has been up for 11 days and dead for a week. I said I would leave it up for two weeks, and I will, but I am going to unsticky it now because we have a real amendment thread going and I don't want this cosmetic-change thread to distract from that.

I will make the cosmetic changes indicated in this thread ... but if anyone objects between now and Nov 23, I will of course remove them and we handle this as a genuine amendment.

Thanks for your cooperation in putting this minor issue to rest peacefully.

Jnyusa

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