A council reformation proposal

Well if anything guys I'd be able to help in Febuary cuz ill have lots of spare time(2 classes in the morning, every 2nd day i have a class last period in addition)
I wouldn't want to now, 1 cuz its the holidays and 2 end of January are my exams.
I'll still be active tho

i agree with kernow. Centralized opinion isn't to fear because it will be the same result as if we have 7 council members why ? Cuz as kernow said, some are inactives, and the others active always follow decisions of kernow xaso, and if you look well, it's always the same people opening new topics and bringing important cases to council. Kernow has 90% of topics in the council section, lucifer had few but left, and the rest is xaso/solid/me. I could even add that if we would just follow this, kernow could lead the clan alone lol. Forget everything about ideals, and look facts : ideals dont' change the deep facts, they are just a surface image of the council, but not what it truly is. So listen to kernow, as you always do, and don't try to defend useless ideals which in fact just slow down the clan, and open such bad topics which need a clan reformation on what used to be its pillar. Now clan has changed, and only few people remain at their positions, which are keep the clan updated and making it run.

So, i totally agree with 3 members for council.

and, don't forget : there is still synergy, which is done to make everyone participate to council discussions and bring new things on the table. but see : even this space dedicated for EVERYONE isn't even used. Last topic was 6th december, and nothing important has been talked here but 2 or 3 topics.

So again, 3 members for council is largely enough, and my opinion is even that it's what the clan needs.

I guess this could work. There's no harm in giving it a shot. Should we keep the elections the same? Stay at every six months or shorten it?

Three months. You never know what will happen between the times.

I would like to see a 5 man council, rather than a 3, 3 condenses the power and decision making into too few people in my opinion.

Can we also add the term timeframes into that poll Kernow? I personally would like to see term time sliced in half, 3 months is still a reasonable period, and there hasnt been a single 6 month term that i can remember, we all the admins/mods & council personell, has been fully active for that whole period.

Thus i suggest terms shortened to 3 months, and looks like Manta feels the same.

Agreed with phoenix, if the poll is up, i d chose option 2 as well. Plus a three month timespan.

i like this topic, it reminds me of old days. not only with all those flashbacks you give, but by the constructive input coming. it feels great.

i want to shortly express what i feel about the discussion bout the numbers: obviously everyone sees that 7-man council is too big, as they can stay active, but some say 3 ppl is not enough because its too "centralized". but i want to throw in: if of 7 man 4 are inactive, you have 3 ppl on the list. It would already be centralized. if of 5 candidates 2 are inactive, you have again 3 ppl on the list. it wouldnt make any difference then.
thus i see another benefit of a 3 man council: if one gets inactive, i think there will be more urge to elect a new one...

and i like to remind what some said: synergy still exists. and it serves its purpose. maybe there will be another benefit of a 3-man council: the discussions may move more into the synergy (even though the decisions are made where they are meant to be made) which may drive more members to take part at the decision

i can see the desire of having a larger amount of ppl in the council. but reality rules some desires. i think it doesnt rule ideals, like aju said. it wont change our ideals. why should it? does anyone change his ideals, choosing a smaller amout of councellors?

but maybe, having a 3 man council, we need a new rule for it: unanimity. (for the decision making of course. the discussions [in synergy] cant always be of harmony, but if one of those 3 representatives cant vote in favor of a proposal with a good faith, then it shouldnt pass on behalf of 2 ppl...)

I completely agree with Phoenix. I'm 100% behind it.

have you read what i wrote? because then i would appreciate a reason why you dismiss my arguments

My worry is that i dont particularly want 3 people, making all the decisions in the clan. We know that one member is the representitive, but in reality, they usually dont work that way. I often used to present my own ideas and opinions at council, rather than that of members concensus, thats why i wasnt a great a members representive, a good council member pahaps, but not a good representitive. To be honest, the member representitve position is slightly misplaced, because its simply not practical to present the members with every council issue and get their opinions, therefore all the member representitives do pretty much the same as i did, as i've shown above. The idea of the member representitve was also to have some people without power, in the council, so that their decisions and opinions could be clear and uncorrupt. Which is fair enough...but basically having only 3 members, isnt giving a bit enough voice to the rest of the clan, its narrowing into a dictatorship, and could even turn out to be "Outcastarian", if the wrong person is chosen.

I think the Jedi Order had it in a good form, with long term and short term members, for pure example sake, you could have 2 yearly members, 2 six monthly members, and 3 three monthy members, but thats purely a thought, and to be honest it will probably take a stack of organising. Plus i cant see this game lasting another year....

Also, im not really a massive fan of everybody going through synergy, synergy can be useful for certain matters, but its not really the place to make the big decisions. And Synergy is just where somebody posts issues, opinions or proposals to the council, but it doesnt actually mean the council has to do anything about it, and the shelf life of topics in the synergy can sometimes outlast the topics in the council themselves, with council members posting proposal topics in the synergy too, which defeats the whole object of having the council section. Synergy is for more personal/trivial matters i feel, the "important topics" should be going straight to the council for decision making, rather than it sitting around for days to weeks before somebody decides to take it to council for a private debate.

Anyways, what im trying to say, its that Xaso using the example of members having access to the Synergy, to justify cutting down the number of council members, doesnt work for me. People can post in the synergy all day long, the can overdose on topic posting, it doesnt change the fact that 3 people would be making all of the decisions.



Also xaso's example doesnt really mean anything. If 2 of 5 are inactive....? or 3 of 7? Yeah? Well thats all ifs and buts isnt it, your pretty much assuming that if we chose 5 members then 2 will become inactive, surely thats a bit presumtuous to say that. If we have 3 and 1 is inactive, we are still in the same pickle, and as that now only leaves 2 council members left, thats 33% decision making gone, rather than 20% (5 man council) or 14% (7 man council). As yes, as you say, its easy to changing inactive personell, but it still never seems to happen, the amount of terms where somebody has sat in a position of power for months, without being contacted, had inactivity reasons verified, or actually been removed from their post...............well its happened practically every term in SoL began, but rarely does anybody suggest a re-election for that position, in fact i think its usually me who brings the matter up.

5 council members and 3 month terms is my desire, now lets set that poll up.

but phoe. atm we have barely 3 active council members. so it doesnt count if there should be 7, 5 or 24...
and a 3 man council with unanimity rule makes it quite similar to a 5 man council without that rule... 3 ppl to make the decision
and you completely forget the synergy. its not that the council members are all blind to arguments and to what the ppl of sol wish. im not in the council this term and still i had influence on it per synergy. just like everyone else who wanted to have his influence on it.

and you miss one point: no-one seems to care that councellors leave. no one is stressing a re-elected... lol... but in a 3 man council the loss of 1 member is so urgent that i hope there will be more stressing. and i dont presume ppl will go inactive or leave. i KNOW it. it happened in 100 percent of the terms we had several times.

and youre right, if more ppl would stress the inactivy replacements, like u used to do, then we wouldnt have this problem. we wouldnt need less council members we wouldnt need to think about term changes. if councellors remained active then we dont need shorter terms.

and as long as we take a 5 man council we can also take a 3 man council with unanimity rule. and if we're lowering the number, may it be 3 or 5, we shouldnt shorten the term right away. we should look how it works and then see if we also need to change terms...

but we need a poll... but before making one, i want that ppl get a bit more sensible for this matter. its a valid fear that if less ppl are in the council there will be more personalized power. but they should also see that a 3 man council with an unanimity rule doesnt make any difference for decision making for 5 man council without unanimity rule.

snf ppl should also think about the side effects: less ppl in council would also mean less need to replace, just like it would mean to having to use more synergy forums...

Xasomur wrote:

unanimity rule.

Does this mean that the decision would then be passed on to the members? If the decision is not unanimous (2vs1), or just not council majority?

it means that if a disagreement occurs, that the proposal is denied when not all council members are in favour of it. its only accepted if all 3 council members accept.
in a case where they are not only applying a proposal but are more in a discussion process with a poll in the end, then it will most likely happen like this topic: the council asks the members. but for the normal council work a decision is only made when the 3 council members agree all together... (which would be the same like when 3 of 5 council members build a majority)

meh...

Hi guys. It sounds like we need better flexibility in whom we elect to Council. How about a 5 person Council consisting of this:

1 Server Admin
1 Forum Admin / Moderator
1 Commoner
2 people from anything

Establishes some base diversity in an equal manner, but with 2 completely flexible slots so that if there aren't 2+ active commoners, we aren't forced to elect as many inactive ones. Thoughts?

Any thoughts on the term time Nick?

Phoenix wrote:

We know that one member is the representitive, but in reality, they usually dont work that way. I often used to present my own ideas and opinions at council, rather than that of members concensus, thats why i wasnt a great a members representive, a good council member pahaps, but not a good representitive.

How can you be representative when you don't share the ideas with the people you are supposed to represent ? It's normal that it can't work that way, it would need common members to go personnaly and in groups talk to you and giving their opinions about things, which never happens. To be representative of a group, this group needs to give an opinion too .... And being representative doesn't mean this so much, it's more about the feeling you got about the clan being a commonner, and then how you think about it, which thoughts should be more close to any more commoner than if you were admin for exemple.
And, people still have synergy to give opinions, debate, give NEW ideas, so if council pays attention to it, the clan still has its voice.

Phoenix wrote:

Also, im not really a massive fan of everybody going through synergy [...] rather than it sitting around for days to weeks before somebody decides to take it to council for a private debate.

You're wrong about that phoenix. Synergy isn't make to TAKE big decisions, but it's where clan has possibility to debate with council. The decisions are still taken in council section by councellors themselves.

Thanks for the honorable "active contributor" mention, Kernie, but I'm not half the council man I was before. Or rather, I'm not half the JK2 player anymore.

A five-men council sounds fine, the clan is *coughslowlydyingcough* so there's no need for more. Quarterly elections would successfully lessen the chance of being forced to replace seats.

It's dying with that kind of attitude Iggy. Now please say something funny.

Phoenix wrote:

Any thoughts on the term time Nick?

Well, the elections can be kind of a lot of work, so I'm reluctant to support making them every 3 months, which basically means that we have a month of elections followed by two months without, then another month of elections - it's kind of a lot. If there were a way to compress them down to one week or something I would be fully in support of quarterly elections.

Just tossing this idea out there, what about keeping 6-month elections but the Council can vote for early elections if they feel the situation warrants it? It would throw off our nice January 1st / July 1st voting timing, but it would be more flexible.

Another option would be to seriously make elections in about a week and have quarterly elections. If you had one day polls for elections, and just advertised to all the members via PM a week or so ahead of time that they need to be there to vote on January 1st - January 10th or so, depending on how it works. Like:

January 1st : HC nominations
January 2nd: HC elections
January 3rd: DC nominations, Forum Admin nominations
January 4th: DC elections, Forum Admin elections
January 5th: Server Admin Council nominations, Forum Moderator nominations
January 6th: Server Admin Council elections, Forum Moderator elections
January 7th: Forum Admin / Moderator Council nominations, Commoner Council nominations
January 8th: Forum Admin / Moderator Council elections, Commoner Council elections

Additions if my Council composition of 1 admin, 1 forum, 1 commoner, 2 of anything proposal is accepted:

January 9th: Any Member Council nominations
January 10th: Any Member Council elections