Member count - Preamendment discussion

mapfi · April 13, 2003, 07:18

We've got 55 members in our civgroup, but less than 20 active posters. Since we have quorums for amendments and resolutions the member count is rather important.
I've been proposing changes here but it seems that Markos doesn't have time for the implementation.
So what if we delegate the necessary search work to the Senior Justice? Or maybe Locutus knows some way to easily (because the seacrh is rather a lot of klick-work) find out which member of the civgroup did post during the last two months. Would 2 months be ok, or do we take 3, or just 1?
And if we adjust the member count like that I'd say we have to raise the bar for the quorum from 1/6 to 1/3 of the community voting yes.

Thoughts?

Martin Gühmann · April 13, 2003, 10:47

The other possibility is that we say that a fixed number of members needs to vote Yes. E.g eight members have to vote Yes so that a Resolution can be considered as passed.

-Martin

Zaphod Beeblebrox · April 13, 2003, 15:20

if someone is willing to do the work, so shall it be.
and i guess 2 months is right, if that someone wants even more work, he can send a warning mail after 1 month of silence.

Dale · April 13, 2003, 18:27

Further to Martin's comments, why not make it so that at least 15 people need to vote to make it valid? Whether they vote one way or the other. It won't be every time that you'll get 8 yes votes. Further, using Martin's comments literally, if 8 people vote yes and 10 people vote no, does that mean it passes because 8 voted yes?

H Tower · April 13, 2003, 23:37

well, i'm about to enter the senior justice position, and I wouldn't mind doing the work for finding out who has posted here in the last two months or so, it shouldn't take more than half an hour of real work

Gilgamensch · April 14, 2003, 03:48

2 month sounds OK for me.

But the question: Who should be the responsible? We could leave it to the senior judge, although I would prefer to say more general the court, as we have seen even the court may be not available

And the counting should be finished prior to the nomination period!

Zaphod Beeblebrox · April 14, 2003, 04:03

lets say the court is responsible. of course the court is free do give the actual work to somebody else, if they find somebody.
if we reduce the citizenship to active posters, a quorum of 1/3 should be fine.
so the rule would be:
a resolution is passed if all of the 3 following conditions are met:
a) at least 1/3 of the citizens have cast a vote (yes, no, abstain)
b) there are more "yes" votes than "no" votes.
c) there are more "yes" and "no" votes than "abstain" votes.

Gilgamensch · April 14, 2003, 04:27

I think you could reduce it to two:

a) at least 1/3 of the citizens have cast a vote (yes, no, abstain)
b) There are more Yes votes than No or Abstain.

mapfi · April 14, 2003, 05:10

requiring a quorum in overall votes is what we had before JBytheway's amendment and is just completely stupid in our situation because lets say the quorum was 15 votes and the poll shows 10yes,4no - another no vote makes it pass. People opposing the changes will hold their vote and the whole process gets screwed up.
Furthermore I find 1/3 of votes of the active citizens way too low, it'd be lower than now. That's why I proposed 1/3 of the active ctizens have to vote yes. Fixing the quorum at a certain number without counting people risk it becoming more or less easy to reach with more or less people present. That's why I'm not too fond of that idea.

Pedrunn · April 14, 2003, 05:11

The connie doesnt use 1/3 of the citizens voting in the poll anymore but 1/6 of the citizens voting yes

But i agree tthis should be only for active members in the last 2 months. Do you think we could convince MarkG to do this feature to DGs?

mapfi · April 14, 2003, 05:13

Like I said in my first post: (read people, read!)

Quote:

Originally posted by mapfi
And if we adjust the member count like that I'd say we have to raise the bar for the quorum from 1/6 to 1/3 of the community voting yes.

Zaphod Beeblebrox · April 14, 2003, 05:15

well, we have to change the con anyway, to get inactive citizens out. of course we need the old count to change the connie. don't blame me. i said this before the dg was started

Gilgamensch · April 14, 2003, 05:25

And as it looks like, we might never been able to change anything anymore anywhere anyhow.................

Zaphod Beeblebrox · April 14, 2003, 05:34

at least not legal

viva la revolucion!

Tamerlin · April 14, 2003, 07:09

IMO, as far as polls are concerned the quorum should apply to the overall number of voters wether they voted "yes" or "no"... the quorum should be restrictively applied to the number of citizens voting "yes" for the amendments only...

Martin Gühmann · April 14, 2003, 16:57

Quote:

Originally posted by Dale
Further to Martin's comments, why not make it so that at least 15 people need to vote to make it valid? Whether they vote one way or the other. It won't be every time that you'll get 8 yes votes. Further, using Martin's comments literally, if 8 people vote yes and 10 people vote no, does that mean it passes because 8 voted yes?

Let's see what is the current situation:

Quote:

Article IV: Polling Rules:

III. Resolutions:

(e) If there are more votes in favour than against, and at least 1/6 of those citizens who do not abstain vote in favour, and the Court does not declare the poll invalid, then the resolution is considered passed. All Citizens must from that time on obey it.

IV. Amendments:

(e) If there are more votes in favour than against, and at least 1/6 of those citizens who do not abstain vote in favour, and the Court does not declare the poll invalid, then the Ammendent is considered passed. All Citizens must from that time on obey it.

My first problem with that formulation is that it was not clear on the first look what is meant. Maybe for a native English speaker that is clear. But afterwards I read the amendment thread again it comes to this:

A RESSOLUTION or an AMENDMENT are considered as passed if:

There are more votes in favour of the question then against. Well that is the first part and it is clear to me on the first look.

Well the second one is not clear too me, even with John's explaination in this thread:

Quote:

Originally posted by J Bytheway
You count all those citizens who do not abstain (in this particular vote), and if at least 1/6 of those vote in favour, then th resolution is passed.

eg. with 40 citizens, if 10 abstain, you need at least 5 votes in favour.

One problem with this is does he mean the citiziens who do vote abstain or who just don't vote and vote abstain?

But from his example it seems to be that he means citiziens who do vote abstain, those citiziens who do vote expressly abstain. So he does not take the number of citiziens, but only the number of citiziens who actual voted.

So with the current number of citiziens of 55 and one abstain vote. We have to take 54 citiziens. One sixth of them is nine. So we needed at least nine citiziens who voted in favour of this admendment to be able to consider it as passed with one abstain vote.

It doesn't matter how many No votes would be there once we went beyond the limit of nine, as long as there are no more No-vozes then Yes-Votes.

So even with nine Yes_votes and no No-votes would have been passed this amendment also with nine Yes-Votes and eight No-Votes. So that is the current situtation. It is not good that I have to search for the according ammendment poll.

My suggestion is to replace current text by this:

Quote:

Article IV: Polling Rules:

III. Resolutions:

(e) If there are more votes in favour than against, and at least 8 citizens vote in favour, and the Court does not declare the poll invalid, then the resolution is considered passed. All Citizens must from that time on obey it.

IV. Amendments:

(e) If there are more votes in favour than against, and at least 8 citizens vote in favour, and the Court does not declare the poll invalid, then the Ammendent is considered passed. All Citizens must from that time on obey it.

So three conditions must be met so that the and AMENDMENT or a RESOLUTION can be considered passed:

1. There must be more Yes-Votes then No-Votes.
2. At least 8 citiziens have to vote with Yes.
3. The court does not declare the poll invalid.

The advantage of this is that the number of citiziens can grow to infinity without any problems. Noone needs neither to clean out our civ group nor to bother Marcos to write an auto clean out. So it gives a fixed minimum number of citiziens. With we can work.

-Martin

mapfi · April 14, 2003, 18:00

Yes, and when we get a lot of newcomers or others come back, then the quorum becomes completely pointless...

Martin Gühmann · April 14, 2003, 19:12

Quote:

Originally posted by mapfi
Yes, and when we get a lot of newcomers or others come back, then the quorum becomes completely pointless...

Very unlikly, so far we have a steady stream of newcomers over the time this DG game exists the same is true for the CTP1 DG game. The numbers of members is increasing steadily, but most of the new members aren't very active. So why should this change?

Alternativly we could put the quorum change admendment directly into the constition. For instance if we want to lower or raise the quorum then and only then the fixed number of 8 citiziens is required. In the current situation the quorum is getting pointless and also every other quorum can get pointless. So if we can't clean out the civ group we have again to start a member list thread. But actual I don't like this idea that someone has to search for the active members. So maybe we should use a thread were everyone has to sign up, if he wants to participate in the DG Game in any way. Every term needs its own sign up thread. So who does not sign up again every month is not in anymore.

-Martin

mapfi · April 16, 2003, 04:55

Ok then - I'll put that in some proposal and we will vote - let's hope we reach the quorum!

J Bytheway · April 21, 2003, 09:32

Quote:

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
My first problem with that formulation is that it was not clear on the first look what is meant. Maybe for a native English speaker that is clear. But afterwards I read the amendment thread again it comes to this:

I'm sorry you don't think it's clear - I worried at the time that this might be a problem but I couldn't think of a better wording and noone else suggested one either...