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Quickie Charter Amendment to Article 8 on Thread Deletions

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tolkienpurist
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Posted: Wed 09 Nov , 2005 10:16 pm
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truehobbit wrote:
If someone doesn't like that, that's their problem. Like I said, we might find a compromise solution, but I really wouldn't like any neglect of our ideals of inclusion of the membership in all matters concerning the board to even begin, you know - no matter how harmless and trifling the actual fact. :)
I know it's bothersome - I find it bothersome, too! But I wouldn't want to slacken in doing things right just because I can't be bothered. :)
I am not intending to start a fight, and I will not pursue this past the original suggestion, but I have to wonder...

If "doing things right" means "inclusion of the membership" and their wishes in all matters, then I wonder what we should do if it is the wish of the membership not to have to address, individually, each "harmless and trifling" question that may arise, particularly once it has reached the point of being "bothersome". Would there be some way to address this wish?

/end suggestion

This thread reminded me of another exchange some months ago:

In June, I wrote (re: the vote on whether to rename "admins" to "Rangers"):
Quote:
Can you imagine what it would be like if your elected officials [in real life] requested you to vote on every name change, stating that such a protocol was the price of living in a democracy? Me personally, I would run screaming for the nearest dictatorship! We select democratically elected officials - both in real life and on this board - and we expect them to act in good faith to make minor, day to day decisions. If they do not, we have procedures in place to remove them. We expect them to consult us on the big picture issues, but not to trouble us over every decision that could have more than one outcome, no matter how minor.
[emphasis added]

At that time,
Voronwe wrote:
This vote was, I think, fairly unique...I agree that every little thing should not be put to a vote.
Prim wrote:
Indeed we can't vote over every little thing. In the committee we have struggled with this, balancing the commitment to openness and member input against the need for us to, finally, just trust the people in the jobs to have good sense and judgment.
Jn wrote:
I agree with you that minor things like that should not require voting under normal circumstances.
I was gratified and reassured to see what each of these three people posted in this thread, in light of our differences on the necessity of the "Ranger" vote.

OK, that's it. I promise. :)


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Frelga
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Posted: Wed 09 Nov , 2005 10:27 pm
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I say we should have a vote to decide whether we need a vote on this subject.

:devil:

But if that's not agreeable, then let's pretend we wear Nike and Just do it. It's just a consistency issue. It doesn't affect anybody's experience of b77.

Sassy, The pursuit of the fastidious into infinity :damnfunny:

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Cerin
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Posted: Wed 09 Nov , 2005 11:05 pm
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truehobbit wrote:
I don't remember what we did with the other inconsistencies we found - I think we put them up for a ratification vote, though, didn't we?
I think we have essentially already put all inconsistencies related to the ToE amendment up for a vote with the ToE amendment itself. The ratification text stated that an addendum of amendments to make the Charter consistent with the ToE amendment would be passed along with the amendment. I overlooked stating this particular inconsistency explicitly, but I believe the ToE amendment passed with the understanding that the Charter would be amended to make it consistent with the ToE amendment. It was basically a courtesy to list those necessary amendments, since it would not have been possible for someone to vote for the main amendment but against the necessary companion amendments.

Quote:
I think changes to the charter text are everybody's business, and it should be made clear that on this board no changes are ever made without a general consensus!
Again, I believe we have already achieved this consensus through the ToE amendment vote. If you voted for the ToE amendment, you voted for all of its provisions and you voted for any changes that would have to be made to the Charter to make it consistent with the new amendment.

Quote:
Like I said, we might find a compromise solution, but I really wouldn't like any neglect of our ideals of inclusion of the membership in all matters concerning the board to even begin, you know - no matter how harmless and trifling the actual fact.

I don't this is about inclusion of all the membership. I believe all the membership were included to the best of our ability in the amendment process, with the result that the amendment (along with its accompanying minor amendments, one of which unfortunately I failed to list) passed.

Quote:
I know it's bothersome - I find it bothersome, too! But I wouldn't want to slacken in doing things right just because I can't be bothered.
I would prefer that Article 12 remain unamended and that the Charter remain inconsistent, than that a meaningless exercise be gone through to affect a change that has in reality already taken place.

Of course I wouldn't object if someone wanted to go to the effort of initiating and overseeing the process, but I believe it would be a waste of time and energy. Whether it passed or failed would have no bearing on the functioning of the board, it would only affect whether our Charter is internally consistent.

I would object to compromising the principles of the board if I thought that was what was being suggested by retroactively including this overlooked amendment in the addendum to the ToE amendment, but I don't think it is.

:)

Axordil wrote:
I do agree with TH that this particular thread stay up for a bit, just so no one gets a surprise. Perhaps we could sticky it for a week? Or rather, globally sticky it?
The thing is, this is not a surprise. Everyone who voted for the ToE amendment should have understood that the petitioner threads are deleted three days after the end of the consideration period.


(Note I'm not objecting to stickying the thread or holding another vote, I just don't think the latter is necessary.)


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Jnyusa
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Posted: Wed 09 Nov , 2005 11:16 pm
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Cerin: The ratification text stated that an addendum of amendments to make the Charter consistent with the ToE amendment would be passed along with the amendment.

Cerin, I wasn't aware of this. (See how out of the loop I am now that the convention is over!) But if this is the case, then we really don't need discussion either.

But I don't mind at all leaving the thread stickied for two weeks. The minimum would be 10 days because we never leave less time than that for discussion, and two weeks is also fine with me.

Hobby, to answer the question you asked, when we did the amendments for consistency we did put them to ratification. But there were about three dozen changes at that point to multiple Articles. I went through the whole charter and tried to spot everything that needed modification, and then they all went for ratification at once, along with several other articles. I think there were about seven ratification threads running at once.

In this case, I feel the members would consider it an imposition to have to ratify an oversight, with quorum requirements and all.

To everyone in general: the next time we have to do a serious amendment, I will ask the committee to put up for ratification at the same time an additional paragraph in both the Charter Amendment Article and the Binding Vote article that allows 2/3 of the Loremasters to make a cosmetic change to the charter for the sake of consistency if a contradiction is overlooked. That way we don't have to torture the members with things like this.

We have to find a good balance ... we want amendments to be difficult to enact because we don't want the charter to be ephemeral, but we also don't want trifling issues to make democracy so burdensome that people stop participating.

Jn

p.s. thank you to the people who are giving their input here. I appreciate your bothering to think about this and deal with it.

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Cerin
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Posted: Wed 09 Nov , 2005 11:55 pm
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Jnyusa wrote:
Cerin wrote:
The ratification text stated that an addendum of amendments to make the Charter consistent with the ToE amendment would be passed along with the amendment.
But if this is the case, then we really don't need discussion either.

Well, I hope I'm not overstating the case. This is what the ratification text actually said:

Quote:
A summary of the amendment we are voting on in this thread is given below, followed by the full text of the amendment and an addendum of other minor amendments to the Charter that will be approved (or rejected) along with this amendment in order to make the Charter and the new amendment consistent with one another.


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tinwe
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Posted: Thu 10 Nov , 2005 12:17 am
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I hate to through another wrench into this whole thing, and I’m hesitant to even bring it up, but there is another inconsistency regarding deleting threads that needs to be addressed. It’s so minor as to be virtually irrelevant, but I suppose it should be corrected.

In the “How to be a Rangerâ€

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Thu 10 Nov , 2005 12:34 am
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tinwe,

Now that I'm on a new computer, it's just as easy for me to simply recopy the Charter from the Jury Room. that's actually easier than going in and making minor textual changes here and there.

thanks for alerting me to the fact that there were other changes.

I didn't realize that PM ballots were counted in the SI forum either. That's not in the charter ... we didn't actually specify where votes should be counted, and I guess the SI forum is as good a place as any.

Should I add the SI threads to the first post here? Deal with both issues at once? They all go into the same Article 8.

Thing is ... I'm relaxed about doing minor stuff like this in a fairly official way as long as the membership receives adequate notification. But it makes me nervous to have something like a routine thread deletion being done by Rangers without the members being aware of it.

If we're deleting PM votes in the SI forum, then that fact should be in the charter. It's more important to get that into the charter, imo, than it is to make sure that we form a committee everytime we have to change an 'a' to a 'the.'

There's a thread in the Business Room here ... Voronwe started it awhile ago, to keep track of charter things that need to be done eventually.
I'll dump the thing about empowering Loremasters to enact minor changes into that thread. We just have to remember to look at it next time we do an amendment. :)

Jn

Last edited by Jnyusa on Sat 12 Nov , 2005 4:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Thu 10 Nov , 2005 12:40 am
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Just a thing about the PM vote counting—

I believe this started when I was a Ranger, because we realized that we had to have some record of each vote to eliminate the possibility of duplicates or mistakes, and to show that a particular person's vote was received, if a question arose.

However, these votes were PMs, sent with that assumption of privacy, and ballots, assumed to be secret at least from public display.

I don't think a thread made up of this material, which was confidential from the start, needs to be treated like a thread where people posted intending their words to be public and to stand. I think it's an administrative convenience, like scratch paper on which people tally votes when counting, which needs to be disposed of at the end to maintain confidentiality of the vote.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Thu 10 Nov , 2005 12:46 am
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[Alert - I just realized that we're talking about Article 8, not 12. oops. I've corrected the title of the thread and the first post]

Prim, so do you think that it doesn't really need to be in the Charter?

I can sort of think of arguments both ways. On the one hand it's just scratch paper and no one's post count is affected. On the other hand, it would be good to have it fairly immutable that all votes are counted there where all rangers can see them. And there might be some corollary concern about Rangers being able to delete threads in the SI forum on their own authority ... it should not, you know, be used as a precedent for deleting other things.

How do people feel about this? I won't add anything to Article 8 about the SI forum unless there's a consensus here that it should be done.


Jn

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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Thu 10 Nov , 2005 1:32 am
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My thinking is that people don't expect their PMs to be pasted into posts—these really aren't posts at all, by intention anyway. I think this is a special case.

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Cerin
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What is being suggested to be added to Article 8 about the SI forum? The fact that the votes are counted there, and/or that they are deleted after being counted?


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Impenitent
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Posted: Thu 10 Nov , 2005 1:58 am
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Axordil wrote:
I do agree with TH that this particular thread stay up for a bit, just so no one gets a surprise.
I don't see any harm in the thread staying up for a bit, but what possible surprise do you anticipate? I suggest that no one would be surprised if the petitioner for ToE announcement threads are deleted because that was intended and agreed to when Article 6 was amended. Article 12 simply does not reflect the new reality due to oversight.

EDIT: Cerin already addressed this. I hadn't read the second page when I posted (I'm so hasty! Treebeard would despair of me).

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Voronwë_the_Faithful
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Posted: Thu 10 Nov , 2005 2:29 am
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I just realized looking at the thread titled that this thread is a "quickie sticky." Or maybe a "sticky quickie."

Just sayin'. :Wooper:


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Jnyusa
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Posted: Thu 10 Nov , 2005 2:34 am
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Um ... how come the sig pics have all disappeared ?

Wait, not all. Cerin's is still showing. But mine and Prim and Voronwe's is gone.

Jn

edit: gaa? Now they're back.

Too weird

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Axordil
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Posted: Thu 10 Nov , 2005 2:35 am
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Impy--

I always assume someone will be surprised, it's easier that way. :neutral:

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truehobbit
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Posted: Fri 11 Nov , 2005 8:03 pm
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Cerin wrote:
Quote:
Like I said, we might find a compromise solution, but I really wouldn't like any neglect of our ideals of inclusion of the membership in all matters concerning the board to even begin, you know - no matter how harmless and trifling the actual fact.

I don't this is about inclusion of all the membership. I believe all the membership were included to the best of our ability in the amendment process, with the result that the amendment (along with its accompanying minor amendments, one of which unfortunately I failed to list) passed.
But I was talking about the more general idea that I seemed to read here, it was ok to make minor changes to the text of the charter without taking care that such changes are duly published.
If this became a practice, who knows what "minor changes" are next.
Quote:
Axordil wrote:
I do agree with TH that this particular thread stay up for a bit, just so no one gets a surprise. Perhaps we could sticky it for a week? Or rather, globally sticky it?
The thing is, this is not a surprise. Everyone who voted for the ToE amendment should have understood that the petitioner threads are deleted three days after the end of the consideration period.
Of course it's a surprise! Very obviously, no one here had realised that this had been overlooked until Jny noticed!
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.

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, and they had no chance to find out earlier because no one bothered to announce the change and ask for feedback beforehand!

I don't think anyone will have any objections to making the change, 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!

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.

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.

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Frelga
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Posted: Fri 11 Nov , 2005 8:40 pm
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Voronwë_the_Faithful wrote:
I just realized looking at the thread titled that this thread is a "quickie sticky." Or maybe a "sticky quickie."
You know, if Lidless said this, it wouldn't take me two days to figure out.
:devil:

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Voronwë_the_Faithful
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Oh come on, Frelga. Lidless and I are two peas in a pod. Virtually [pun fully intended] indistinguishable.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Fri 11 Nov , 2005 11:14 pm
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Next thing you know, Lidless will be making posts about labor law. :damnfunny:

Prim, I've removed from the first post my suggestion that anything be added to Article 8 concerning the SI forum. Cerin, to answer your earlier question, I would have put in both provisions, but I think Prim is right that the Rangers using the SI for scratch paper does not really constitute posting for purposes of the charter.

But meanwhile I found another inconsistency with Article 8. I noticed it because it happens to affect me personally.

I've been wanting to delete my Bike Racks thread with Wilko (because I feel strongly in retrospect that the dispute was contrived, and also because non-members are mentioned), so I looked up in Article 5, ¶1 to make sure this can be done, and it can.

Articele 5, ¶1
Locked threads in the Bike Racks are deleted only if the posters request it to preserve their privacy.


But that provision is not in Article 8 for a routine thread deletion either. Only Hearing threads are mentioned.

We gave attention to Hearing threads, iirc, because we had to make sure we kept them long enough for the poster to appeal. That's not an issue with Bike Racks threads, but it occurs to me that some Bike Racks threads might end up prompting a Hearing. What we did with threads that might result in a Hearing is the following (two Articles apply here):

Article 8, ¶1:
Threads moved to Deleted Thread Storage by a Ranger because of their objectionable content will be held for one month beyond the period in which a Hearing may be convened under Article 5, ¶4.

Article 5, ¶4:
If the Rangers intend to convene a Hearing, they must do so within ten days of the time that the violation of by-laws comes to their attention. If a thread has been edited or deleted, the date signature of the Ranger will be taken as the date when the violation came to their attention and they will have until midnight GMT ten days later to convene a Hearing if they intend to do so. After that, the member may not be called to a Hearing and no penalty may be imposed.


So I think that adding something to Article 8 about allowing a Bike Racks thread to be deleted at the request of the poster is a cosmetic change, but when we start to decide what expiry date it should carry, then that might not be considered a cosmetic change any longer. We have a precedent - it should remain 10 days + one month in Deleted Thread Storage to be consistent with the other two articles - but this feels less like a correction and more like a provision to me, and I don't know whether we should add something like that without a vote.

(Gosh, I wish we'd thought earlier of empowering the Loremasters to deal with this kind of stuff.)

If we feel like that kind of addition should really be voted on, then I would suggest that we add now to Article 8 that Bike Racks threads can be deleted at the request of the poster, because that much is already in the charter and ratified, and throw the issue of expiry date into the Charter Issues thread to deal with next time we do some other amendment. The thread that I started and would like to see deleted could just sit in DTS until the issue is resolved charter-wise, with a note to that effect in lieu of an expiry date.

(Why do I go back and actually read the Charter? It raises as many questions as it answers. We need a frigging Supreme Court around here.)

Any opinions about this?

Jn

Last edited by Jnyusa on Sat 12 Nov , 2005 4:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

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truehobbit
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Posted: Fri 11 Nov , 2005 11:41 pm
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I think by the time we did thread deletion we were all very tired and maybe didn't remember to list anything we allowed to be deleted elsewhere.

I also think the whole strictness about almost never deleting anything that we have in article 8 now is because at the time some people panicked at the idea of deleting anything and there was an almost board-wide move against deleting anything that we would not have seen any harm in deleting a few months earlier.

To sum up, if we decided that bike racks thread can be deleted at the request of the parties involved, then that's it, IMO. I'm not sure there needs to be any time period - if both parties say it's ok, then away with it.
(Unless we did name a time period - don't remember right now.)

Plus - I don't know, but I guess I took article 8 to be about deleting threads for which there was not already an agreed on policy.

LOL, you know, when people were talking about integrating their favourite formulas from different constitutions, which I found a bit silly, I was thinking of suggesting my own favourite formula, which is something I used to read in English historical laws: "anything to the contrary thereof nothwithstanding" - I think I should have brought it up after all! ;) :D

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