board77

Cerin wrote:

Someone is charged with a crime, and they have an attorney who prepares their defense, and the district attorney (representing the state) prepares the prosecution, and then those attorneys get together to see if they can avoid a trial. The way they avoid a trial, is to have the accused admit guilt and accept a pre-determined penalty, usually a much lighter penalty than what the judge or jury would impose if the person went to trial and were found guilty.

As I understand it, even people who are innocent of the crime accept plea bargains in order to get off more lightly than if they were to be convicted, but they must still stipulate to their guilt in order to accept the plea bargain.

Thanks for explaining!

This reminds me of something I had meant to say first thing, but it didn't seem so important then: I think we should make really sure that we don't press people into opting for that process, from fear of the result of a real hearing!
So, I think there should be no lighter penalties just because the member spared the board the trouble of the hearing.
The only benefit should be in the comparative speed and invisibility of the process.

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Yes. If the new position is defeated, I believe I'll be reversing my previous position, and advocating that the admins choose from among themselves someone to oversee each hearing. I don't think the Mayor should have any part of it.

But why don't you think the Mayor should have a part in it?
It's just overseeing, no decisions.

truehobbit wrote:

The only benefit should be in the comparative speed and invisibility of the process.

Good point! So that is an argument against calling it a plea 'bargain.'

We need a word/term to indicate 'admission of violation and acceptance of penalty in lieu of hearing'.

Abbreviated hearing
Plea acceptance
???

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But why don't you think the Mayor should have a part in it?
It's just overseeing, no decisions.

It just makes no sense to me to involve the Mayor in hearings. I see no reason to do it.

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Voronwe, could you describe a hypothetical example of this sort of situation, and why it would not be a matter for Bike Racks if a violation of a by-law is not involved?

Since we have not yet tackled the members rights and responsibilities section I can't give an example. Moreover, even if we had tackled that, by definition, this would be something that we would not have thought of, so I would still would not be able to give an example.

Sorry.

I'm having a hard time imagining situations where plea bargains would be useful in our context. But this brings up a different question that I don't think has been addressed.

Who acts as the prosecutor? In other words, who presents the evidence that proves the community disruption took place? One of the admins?

Voronwe_the_Faithful wrote:

Since we have not yet tackled the members rights and responsibilities section I can't give an example. Moreover, even if we had tackled that, by definition, this would be something that we would not have thought of, so I would still would not be able to give an example.

I asked because you had said this:

As I have said before, I can easily picture a situation where a member disrupts the community in a way that is not covered by the by-laws at the time.

So I guess what I'm asking is, what do you mean when you say you can easily picture such a situation.

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I'm having a hard time imagining situations where plea bargains would be useful in our context.

Any situation where a hearing is warranted, and the member would prefer to avoid a hearing by acknowledging the offense, accepting responsibility, and agreeing to the determined penalty.

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In other words, who presents the evidence that proves the community disruption took place? One of the admins?

As I understand what's been discussed so far, the evidence would be whatever violation of the by-laws prompted the admin to convene the hearing, or whatever violation of the by-laws prompted members to lodge a complaint that caused two admins to agree to convene a hearing. Whoever it was who had noticed the violation would re-state it, and the member would acknowledge it, accept responsibility and agree to the penalty the admins decided on.

Cerin: Could a member decline to be added to the admin list, but agree to be added to the mediator and jury lists?

Sure.

Voronwe: Who acts as the prosecutor?

The admin convenes the hearing, opens the thread, and state the reason for the hearing in the first post. Beyond that, there is no prosecutor. There is no defense attorney. There is no judge.

You guys, the original idea of the membership was much simpler and much more workable. They wanted to guarantee a couple basic things:

- that members could not be banned in secret
- that one person would not have absolute power
- that there would be recourse and transparency

We're coming up with something much more complicated than anything the members envisioned, and far beyond the amount of time I have available to coordinate the constant stream of new proposals.

Jn

truehobbit,

Thanks for not taking offense. My point was that we have to do more than throw a few characters in each other's direction. I know how to discuss that with which I am familiar. I also have a lot of respect in the evolution of a culture's thought. In some evolutionary way, what has survived from the past, survives because it worked. It makes sense to extend from it.

I work in a field that has been undisciplined for decades. It is truly a Tower of Babel because any clever programmer can create their own language with its unique definitions. There are a finite number of problems to solve, but they can be approached an infinite number of ways. This has been recognized as a serious problem for years and we are only now beginning provide solutions to that disaster.

Please don't mistake this for wanting to ignore other proposals. It is difficult for me to understand alternatives that aren't explained and I mostly get no real alternatives.

You have suggested, at least twice, that we not be confined by anyone's predispositions. I'm not against the idea, but I like some evidence that anything proposed is known to have worked in some venue. Ad hoc solutions almost always have to be discarded later.

Jnyusa is obviously frustrated with us and I understand why. She offered a pattern from her cultural perspective early on in our discussion of process that seems rather simple and now we are off in the weeds with no resolution in sight. I'm as much a believer in KIS as Impentitent. I'll go along with any process that has some history of use and acceptance.

I would suggest we scrap the idea of a 'bench hearing', however it is defined.

As I see it, if a member is pulled up for having offended one of our by-laws, and admits the offence occurred, it just makes for a speedier, less complicated and more amiable hearing.

Let's leave it at that and not complicate things overmuch.

Jnyusa wrote:

We're coming up with something much more complicated than anything the members envisioned, and far beyond the amount of time I have available to coordinate the constant stream of new proposals.

I guess ignorance really is bliss. I thought the only new proposal was the plea agreement proposal (to avoid a hearing).

Sorry, Jnyusa! It must look really different from your vantage point, because you are the one trying to coordinate everyone's ideas.

I'm also going to say that we should scrap this idea of a bench hearing and go with what we have.

Jn

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So I guess what I'm asking is, what do you mean when you say you can easily picture such a situation.

What I mean by that is that no matter what we come up with for by-laws, they will not cover every possible situation in which someone could disrupt the community. We are not omniscient. So whatever we finally come up with for by-laws I could imagine a situation that will need to be addressed that is not specifically covered by the by-laws.

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I'm having a hard time imagining situations where plea bargains would be useful in our context.

Any situation where a hearing is warranted, and the member would prefer to avoid a hearing by acknowledging the offense, accepting responsibility, and agreeing to the determined penalty.

But that is not a plea bargain. That's just a guilty plea. A plea bargain is where the accused accepts a lesser sentence then she would receive if convicted. I still can't imagine any situation where that would be appropriate here. But of course if someone wants to admit to the disruption and accept the proscribed penalty without requiring a hearing they should be allowed to do that.

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I'm also going to say that we should scrap this idea of a bench hearing and go with what we have

I strongly agree.

Voronwe_the_Faithful wrote:

But of course if someone wants to admit to the disruption and accept the proscribed penalty without requiring a hearing they should be allowed to do that.

But I believe that is the very idea we had arrived at (from TORN's initial suggestion), which was erroneously being referred to as, first a 'bench hearing' and then a 'plea bargain': That a member be allowed to admit to the offense, and accept the determined penalty, rather than go through the hearing. It would only need to be determined what to call this option.

So to be clear, are you three saying you want to scrap the idea of allowing a member to admit to the offense and accept the determined penalty, rather than go through the hearing with a jury?


Edit

Perhaps this could be very simply addressed by adding a sentence in the appropriate place, to the effect that a member entitled to a hearing has the right to waive the hearing and accepted a penalty determined by the admins who found cause to convene the hearing?

Look, I took it out, because there are people who don't want a private hearing, and all the decisions we would have to make around that option are worse than not having the option.

If a person says, "yes, I did it. Sorry." the jury can tone down the penalty accordingly. The member has the right to ask that the thread be deleted, per above. That's enough.

People, I've been trying to sit still and not say anything, hoping that dispute resolution would go quickly becaues the members had discussed so much pre-committee, but we are getting far deeper into this than just adding things at the margin, and I need to let you all know now that I am running out of time.

Once I get rid of my graduating seniors at the end of next week, I have to start devoting time to research (in RL). I won't be able to sit in the threads every day fishing for compromise. My mind will be consumed with other things.

I was really, really hoping that we would get these Hearing paragraphs out of the way by the middle of this week and move on to what I consider the hard part, which is defining the offenses and penalties. If we're going to agonize over every detail of the hearings, I won't even be able to finish dispute resolution with you much less get through member rights.

Please think about what it is you consider *most important* and worry about that. I'm even going to look at those next paragraphs coming up and see if we can't gut them somehow - (like removal of admins) - and make them as summary as possible so that there will be less to disagree with.

Jn

Oh my... you've definitely dragged my brain into the weeds with this - and there I thought it was simple
(but it certainly was a very interesting and illuminating read. You guys simply know too much )

And to be clear

Voronwe the awesome wrote:

..are you three saying you want to scrap the idea of allowing a member to admit to the offense and accept the determined penalty, rather than go through the hearing with a jury?

I think my answer to that is no ( I'm soooo confused by all this wording). A member should be allowed to admit to the offense but still go through a hearing with a jury. But since he's admitted to be at fault the whole procedure probably won't take that long. I'm definitely NOT for the idea of letting someone 'off the hook' easier, just because they admit to having made a mistake.

Need more tea.......
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Resident witchâ„¢

I support the idea of no "bench trials"—no special procedures for the sake of not embarrassing people. If they choose to admit that they did what they're accused of, that spares some steps in the hearing and might make the jury inclined to go easy, and both are fine with me.

I don't mean to sound reactionary, but people should not be embarrassed by an accusation they aren't guilty of. If they are embarrassed and guilty, perhaps they should have thought sooner. Transparency is more important. Remember another message board where refusal to give information about administrative decisions was excused as respect for privacy of the posters—even if it was the posters involved who wanted the information.

Definitely, definitely, let's focus on keeping things simple. We are planning for complications that may never occur. If they turn out to be common, we can amend the charter with new procedure. For now, let's plan for what we're pretty sure we're going to need, and nothing more.

Admins have discretion in emergencies, so if something dreadful and unforeseen occurs, we will still be protected.

I hope I'm not stepping on any toes here but I've been feeling for some time now that we're trying to legislate for everything. I joined this group to create a set of guidelines and a basic structure for the board. It seems that we are heading towards a document that could be used to run a country not a messageboard. Can we try to distill all of the above down to the basics and vote on that?

Alternative procedures can be added at a later date if they are required but I strongly feel that we should wait till there is a definite and obvious need for these "by-laws" before we start getting bogged down in them. I'm as guilty as any of getting sidetracked into discussions on alternatives but we have to just take stock and look at what we are producing. This charter is becoming far too unwieldy.

I'm not suggesting that we revisit the sections already dealt with, but for the future can we try to put a basic structure in place and worry about the details later?

Can we please Keep It Simple!

Alatar

P.S. This is not intended to denigrate the excellent work done here but simply to highlight that we may have got carried away.

I would like to thank Alatar if he stepped on anybody's toes.

I still feel completely lost in this discussion, as well in the terms as well in the nature of the discussion. So if this igetting too complexe for someone involved from the start can you imagine the effect on the poor members?

I guess I've been saying this way too often now, but (sorry IS) I think all the confusion stems from using terms which are laden with meaning for some.
If we just had talked about a

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situation where a hearing is warranted, and the member would prefer to avoid a hearing by acknowledging the offense, accepting responsibility, and agreeing to the determined penalty.

, as Cerin excellently defined it, we could have saved ourselves a lot of the confusion we had with juggling legal terms, I think.

For example, I would not want a "plea bargain" or "bench trial" or whatever other names there are, when that means letting someone off more lightly for pleading guilty.

I would, however, agree to having the possibility for someone to admit guilt and then dispense with the hearing and just accept a penalty - whatever that process would be called in any real life situation or whatever we end up calling it.

I had the impression that a lot of people wanted this, but Jny said they didn't, so I'm a bit confused about that now.

Basically, while I think it's not a bad thing to have, I'm just as happy to leave things as they were - I agree with Prim, that it's not really necessary to spare people the embarrassment - I just think we should have a quick count as to who is opposed to, using Voronwe's words this time,

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the idea of allowing a member to admit to the offense and accept the determined penalty, rather than go through the hearing with a jury

.
Because I think that's all the definition this needs - and the process would be like Jny described:

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The admin convenes the hearing, opens the thread, and state the reason for the hearing in the first post. Beyond that, there is no prosecutor. There is no defense attorney. There is no judge.

So, Jny, when you say:

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Look, I took it out, because there are people who don't want a private hearing, and all the decisions we would have to make around that option are worse than not having the option.

If a person says, "yes, I did it. Sorry." the jury can tone down the penalty accordingly. The member has the right to ask that the thread be deleted, per above. That's enough.

Does that mean if the person says that, the hearing of witnesses etc can be dispensed with?
Because if it can, that's just the thing we've been arguing for, I think, invisible underneath all those legal terms, the idea would still be in there.

(Although, as an aside, while I agree with the possibility to shorten the process, I'm not sure I'm happy with the way this is phrased: toning down the penalty if the person appears to be sorry, sure - but let's not encourage admission of guilt with the promise of lesser penalties!)

I'm afraid this is not as clear as I had wished it to be - coming back to answer so many posts at once, it's bound to get confusing.

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IS wrote:

My point was that we have to do more than throw a few characters in each other's direction

Ah, ok - thanks for explaining - I'd thought you'd just gone off your rockers with all this debate!

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IS wrote:

I'm not against the idea, but I like some evidence that anything proposed is known to have worked in some venue

You mentioned programming, and how simple problems can be complicated by people doing things their own way instead of relying on proven ways of solution - I quite agree, but in this case, I think, the question is where to look for those time-approved solutions.
This is not a country or something similarly big. Therefore, precedents from real life law won't help much. If you want to use working examples, you'd have to look around at how other messageboards are governed!
However, I think our way to organise a board is pretty new - of the few "democratic" MBs I've heard of, many seem to have ended in chaos.
(You can see discussions on this on an MB called "The Admin Zone" - it's self-help for MB-admins, which, btw, I find quite scary to read.)
So, the way I see it, we are trying something quite unique here, which means there isn't much precedent to rely on - just the members' high ideals!

And those are nicely summed up in Jny's post:

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They wanted to guarantee a couple basic things:

- that members could not be banned in secret
- that one person would not have absolute power
- that there would be recourse and transparency

If an issue has gotten to a hearing, does that not imply that the person who has allegedly done something had a chance to stop/desist/apologize and did not take it (except in the case of those offenses an admin can jump on, re: porn, spam etc.)? Pleading guilty at this point seems more designed to save face and perhaps time than anything else...but again, we can't forsee all ends. And I do believe we need to leave the people in the hearing as much flexibility as possible. If it turns out to be expedient AND just to skip to the chase, and everyone is agreeable, let them.

TH: I had the impression that a lot of people wanted this, but Jny said they didn't

Hobby, perhaps I have also misunderstood the point of all this, but TORN introduced this as an alterative to a public hearing. I thought immediately in terms of having the option to privacy, not in terms of speed.

If there were anyone here who agreed to an Admin imposing a penalty as long as the member didn't object, we would have built that into the Special Power of Admins. People do NOT agree to that.

If we change our mind about that, we have to wait until the whole charter is finished and then launch an amendment process because Special Powers is just about ratified.

If we introduced a shortened hearing version, it would have to be held in private and it would have to involve jury members in my opinion otherwise it would be (a) pointless (b) in violation of Article 3.

There has been considerable opposition voiced to (a) secrecy (b) reduced sentencing (c) using a jury instead of admins. I see absolutely no point to creating a second hearing exactly like the hearing we've already got except it is decided by several admins instead of several jurors. And in my opinion, we CANNOT do that. This committee is not empowered to overturn the article of the last committee after it has gone for ratification.

Ax: If an issue has gotten to a hearing, does that not imply that the person who has allegedly done something had a chance to stop/desist/apologize and did not take it

As a matter of practicality, this is exactly what would happen.

Why is everyone picturing admins running around convening hearings all the time and needing ten different options based on what the member did?

If you post something offensive, the first thing that's going to happen is an admin or another member is going to ask you to delete it or retract it. In 99% of the cases you will, and that will be the end of it.

Jn