The Great Council 2012

[Hileville]

I am suggesting that we convene a Great Council beginning in February that will be tasked with fixing our current Charter and laws. This Council will include all members of The South Pacific and will allow us to bring changes to the Charter forward at a more rapid pace. We can have voting periods of 48 hours and finally fix the flaws in our laws.

[Antariel]

Do we think people will actually turn up? Aside from Cabinet, me, Tsrill, Polk, and Bali, we seem to be pretty much dead....

[Hileville]

I think people will show up and we may even get some new people who come in and want to be involved. I don't want it to become like Osiris and Balder where we get flocked with people from other regions who want to put their regions views into it but I think it will generate activity. It will also allow us to look at all of the laws and see what is working and what needs to be changed and we can make the changes at a more rapid pace than what is currently allowed with the 7 day voting period.

[Antariel]

Good with the voting time thing. Lets hope it does generate some activity...

[Tsrill]

I suggest to keep the 7 day voting period. Not everyone can be online every day of the week, and people might need to take a minute to read andd reflect on what's being voted on. The concept of Great Council was designed because originally charter amendments had a voting time of one month. With a GC this was reduced to a week. A GC can still have merit as a strongly focused review session, in which amendments can be voted in bulk and everyone knows this is going on. I'm against reducing voting time to less than a week: this is still a hobby, and even though you might have time now, not everyone has.I have seen various great councils, and with various degrees of success. A very important success factors is proper preparation, and with that I don't only mean advertising but also a very clear agenda. We had a GC last year lead by Todd in which we thoroughly reviewed the charter and all other laws. As such, I think most of them should be fairly up to date. I suggest to take the time and collect ideas on what need to be changed. With that I mean specific ideas, with actually suggestions on how things should be done, rather than "this law is too complicated" or "things are more than a month old thus they must change". In a second stage, these ideas can then be organized, bundled, discussed and decided upon. From those who call for a great council, I expect a vision on how the region should be organized.

[Hileville]

I understand the desire to keep the 7 day voting period however during my time as Chair a majority of the votes were cast during the first 24 hours of the bill being opened for a vote. Now that I look through the Assembly archvies it looks like there was a council held in 2010. Those laws have changed a lot since then and right now as it stands we have 2 election laws (One for Delegate and one for Cabinet) that contradict each other. This was attempted to be fixed but was thrown out by the Minister of Justice. We have a judiciary law that is complicated and very long. The fact is laws have been made and put into place and a huge mess has been created. I believe that we need a council to go over every piece of legislatoin and review it and make the changes that are needed to simplify and fix flaws that currently exist in our laws.As for wanting an exact vision from me I can't give you one. I know that we have problems in our current set of laws and we need to seriously review all of them. We have a dwindling amount of people who participate in the region and I don't see it imporving until we fix things with our legal system. When we are able to move and reorganize some things on the fourm that will help but it isn't enough.

[Milograd]

Do we think people will actually turn up? Aside from Cabinet, me, Tsrill, Polk, and Bali, we seem to be pretty much dead....

*cough*

[Antariel]

I meant regular, as in multiple times a week. Though when you do turn up Carta, you sure post a lot Tsrill, I think the 7 day is too long. Maybe 3 or 4? If we leave it too long it just kills discussion/debateHil, I'd agree, our legal system at the moment is cra-zy.

[Hileville]

I have been looking through some of the archved ideas that were discussed back in 2010 about the Charter and there were some good ones that we may be able to build off of. I don't know if we want to change the governemtn entirely though and that is why I think we need to have a serious discussion about our current system and review every single law that we have.

[Hileville]

After looking things over from previous Great Council"s we do not have to have an act of the Assembly to have one. I am hereby as Delegate and member of this legislative body am calling a Great Council to order. I will begin working on a plan of action and I hope that everyone will participate. Right now I am hoping that we can get things started in February. I will post my proposed schedule of how things will work and policy of voting as soon as I finish writing it. Please keep talking about a suitable time frame for voting. I am thinking it should be no more than 3-5 days. I am going to base this off of the original schedule used in one of the Great Council's.The goal of Great Council 2012 will be to review our current Charter and all other laws. Items that can be discussed can be from changing our entire government structure to changing the name of a sub-forum. Please start thinking about anything that you would like to have the Great Council look at. We will have extensive advertising leading up to the start of the event and I hope it will be a huge success.

[Antariel]

Hurrah!

[Hileville]

<strong class='bbc'>January 20, 2012 ? Friday </strong>

[*:1nmvgsgo]The Great Council is called into session and planning begins.









[*:1nmvgsgo]Suggestions of topics to be covered begin to be taken.









[*:1nmvgsgo]Advertising of the event begins.









[*:1nmvgsgo]Event Member Sign Up begins.





<del><strong class='bbc'>January 31, 2012 - Tuesday</strong>

</del>[*:1nmvgsgo]Suggestions are gathered together in order for a detailed agenda to be made.





[/s]

<strong class='bbc'>February 1, 2012 ? Wednesday</strong>

[*:1nmvgsgo]Heavy Advertising of the event begins.









[*:1nmvgsgo]Members are encouraged at this time to prepare their proposals.





<strong class='bbc'>February 7, 2012 ? Tuesday</strong>

[*:1nmvgsgo]Forum thread for the event is created and is placed below the Welcome Center forums.









[*:1nmvgsgo]The Delegate and Chair of Assembly begin to organize topics to be discussed into threads on the forum.





<strong class='bbc'>February 13, 2012 ? Monday</strong>

[*:1nmvgsgo]The Great Council convenes and discussion begins.





<strong class='bbc'>February 27, 2012 ? Monday</strong>

[*:1nmvgsgo]Discussion closes and final drafts of reformed bills are gathered by the Delegate and Chair of the Assembly.





<strong class='bbc'>February 29, 2012 ? Wednesday</strong>

[*:1nmvgsgo]All necessary voting threads are created and then locked for a 24 hour review period.





<strong class='bbc'>March 1, 2012 ? Thursday</strong>

[*:1nmvgsgo]24 hours after voting threads are created voting opens.





<strong class='bbc'>March 6, 2012 ? Tuesday</strong>

[*:1nmvgsgo]Voting Closes and reforms are placed into law.

How about the above for a schedule of events?

[Antariel]

Looks good to me.

[Sheepa]

Yep, looks fine. This would be my first time participating in a Great Council, so the process will be a bit new to me; it seems straight forward enough though. Is there anything else I need to know about the process?

[Hileville]

I don't think so. I thing that spells things out pretty good for now. If anyone has an questions though please ask. This will be my first time participating/organizing one as well.Do we want to push back our normal elections which I believe are set to start the first Saturday of March. If we change our government structure we will have to have new elections anyway.

[Antariel]

Hold them a week after the council finishes?

[Eluvatar]

I will definitely be participating! :roo:

[Hileville]

Please post in this thread: <a class='bbc_url' href='http://z1.invisionfree.com/forums/theSPacific/index.php?showtopic=10391&st=0'>http://z1.invisionfree.com/forums/theSPaci...opic=10391&st=0</a> if you plan on participating in the Great Council.

[Brutland and Norden]

[quote name="Carta"] [quote name='"Antariel"] Do we think people will actually turn up? Aside from Cabinet' date=' me, Tsrill, Polk, and Bali, we seem to be pretty much dead.... [/quote']

*cough* [/quote]

Yeah, that cough might be the the harbinger of death...

[Southern Bellz]

At this point, I feel like our laws have not been holding this region back. When I came in I was hell bent on changing the laws, when I was couped the region was hell bent on changing the laws, and now this is another attempt.I think instead of focusing on laws, this region needs to focus on collective goals and policies that we can go out and complete. This will allow the region to buy into what we are doing and we will get things done.I think my biggest mistakes in my time here is the time I wasted trying to fight laws that were mostly sound, and spending a lot of time debating ideals when the time can be better spent on ideas of a lower level.If we do have a great council, I respectfully request an explanation of what you cant do as this region's executive that you would like to do? Or why our actual laws are the issue here.Thanks.

[Hileville]

The problem is we have flaws in many of our current laws as they stand. The election law that we currently have does not work. Our judicial law is meaningless when we have nothing to stand by it and enforce it. Mostly everyone has seen these problems and it has not been fixed. The purpose of this Great Council is to review all of the laws and see if this is how we want this region to continue.

[Tsrill]

I understand the desire to keep the 7 day voting period however during my time as Chair a majority of the votes were cast during the first 24 hours of the bill being opened for a vote.

I don't think that's a very good argument. "the majority of votes being cast" is not good enough for me. People should have the chance to vote, also if they have a busy life.



Was tyhe last council 2010 already? Feels like yesterday...anyway, at that time we did exactly that, rework all existing laws... Well, maybe it does make sense on focusing to align everything with the delegate election thingy.



But I agree with the concerns that SB vented in the sign-up thread (I think this is a more logical place to discuss the merit of a GC). I sense a general dissatisfaction with the current laws. However, if we don't know what we want <em class='bbc'>instead</em> the dissatisfaction will remain. And we will go over this again. and again. and again. A "Everything needs to be like, you know, different, man." will not give a satisfactory outcome, and the GC will be generally a waste of our time.



Something that worries me, and this is pretty much also what SB said now that I think of it, is that there is currently a tendency to put much effort into breaking down the existing systems, but very little effort is actually put into <em class='bbc'>creating</em> stuff. Well, that's not entirely true, there's the RMB contest, which is good, and there was the IRC quiz, which is also good. When the laws are in the way of carrying out good ideas, then they need to be changed. If not, then don't bother.



Maybe, instead of a GC reviewing all the laws again, we need a GC of ideas of things we can <em class='bbc'>do</em>. Put all creativity together, see what we come up with in a region-wide brainstorm session, discuss those ideas, and assign people to pull off the most promising ones.

[Tsrill]

I think the discussion on the merit of a GC is better of in hte GC announcement thread in the unpinned section of the assembly. I mostly agree with SB, but if there's going to be a great council, I'll participate, at least to some extent.

[Antariel]

Tsrill I think that's a very unfair depiction of recent policy. Time and again in 2011 attempts were made to sort out laws, and it never got anywhere, or got dismissed, or got opposed; at the moment some of our laws are in clear contradiction to one another. We've got creativity to get round it, we need to actually DO it, and the council should hopefully generate activity. And activity with RESULTS, not just procrastination that then dies off.It sounds pretty Frakish, but at times I do feel some of our members are becoming opposed to change in any form, and that it throttles activity. Heck, we can't even streamline the forum page without a discussion going to the admins, for something as trivial as archiving some long dead boards, which have bizarrely persisted long after their use ended. Branding measures to streamline change for the sake of change, seems to ignore the fact that, seriously, under the current system,THIS REGIONIS DYING.We are losing numbers, activity, etc etc. I cannot speak for IRC as I don't have access, but in terms of forum activity ever since I've played I've seen continual decline, from the vibrant community that we were in the aftermath of Dev. People making a couple of comments a day works when there are lots of people, but not when we are losing numbers. With respect, under the current Cabinet I can rarely recall any kind of *forum* post by Elu or Uni (or Sheepy, to be honest), and we've already lost an MoFA. I know this is an NS-wide issue, but surely we need to look for solutions, not trust in old, ineffective systems to solve the problem?In fairness, I know Cabinet have some activity BCD, but I always tried to act in the main visible forum too.I'm not entirely sure what you are arguing; you say the last council was not long ago, tehn say maybe there is a point in having one. You say you are worried about things breaking down then say that this is not true. On voting lengths; does 4 days not give somebody the time to log in, check the law/discussion and vote? Particularly if two of the days are weekend?I ambassador for TSP across the feeders. TWP? It's forum community is on its last legs. TP (from my brief sojourn there during my trial) - practically dead. TEP shows more life than most, but the real activity is in Balder and Osiris, among the GCRs at least. We are so hidebound we are offputting for new players who desert for the UCR's, and it keeps us declining, and we need to do something about it. The Council, properly agendad and publicised, seems a step in the right direction; I'd even suggest we invite a few of the mods along to see if they have anything worth contributing (maybe not Sedge though, old wounds ). Sedge warned back at the coup that either the region would reorganise itself and gain vibrancy in response, or slowly sink back into inactivity; I fear we are doing the latter.

[Tsrill]

Well, I posted that late last night, so it may not have been entirely coherent.



If you want to be cynical, you can say that this region has been dying since about 2006 or so. (Btw, to add to your list: Lazarus is pretty dead, too, and has been pretty much ever since I've been there).



I suppose some people here might see me as conservative, opposed to change. This might be true to some degree ( I am trained as engineer after all ), but I will always oppose change for the sake of change alone. Also I hear a lot of suggestions that entail "cull this", "remove that", etc., which I am rarely happy with especially as I've been part of the process in which these things were created. It's easy to tear down someone else's creations, hard to tear down one's own.



I am not against a GC as such, but I don't want to go into it with a "the laws in general don't work". This will result in nitpicking and debating over stuff that generally works, while maybe not address the bigger issues that lie behind the laws.



I want to go into it with a clear idea on what is not working. I want to go into it with a topic. Because <em class='bbc'>then</em> we can review the laws properly. Not article by article, but flaw by flaw, as some of those will span over several sections of the charter and may include other laws as well. Taking the example of the election laws, this is what I mean with preparation: an overview of which sections of the delegate election law conflicts with which section of the other election law and the charter, preferably combined with a least one idea on how the election process could be done. In such a way we are focused on the biggest issues and the GC will be a success. If we scrutinize law by law, article by article, just for the sake of scrutinizing them, we will end up with something that's only marginally better and the GC will be a failure.



And finally, to drag this topic around one more corner, but I want to post this somewhere and might just as well do here:



I have the feeling that many of us want to steer toward the following structure for the region, without saying it aloud or maybe even without knowing for certain themselves: a structure where the delegate, once elected every 2 months or so, has all executive power, appointing assistants and ruling by decree. These decrees are to be stamped through the assembly, preferably with as little debate and voting time as possible as these things only stand in the way of executing them.



Such a structure is quite simple, and the hope is that this will lead to simple laws that are still comprehensive. I think that's an illusion. Having laws that cover all eventualities will always have a certain complexity, no matter how simple the underlying government structure. And laws that are simple will have weak spots that are open for interpretation, which will not be found acceptable.