Here is a starting point for Article J -- discussion?


Article J. Elected officials must plan and act according to the will
of the people.

We need a blurb here defining the Will of the People, such as:



Article J. Elected officials must plan and act according to the will
of the people. The will of the people will be determined
through discussion and polls. If discussion is done in a
chat room or outside the normal of the DG forums, then it
must be documented prior to the Turn Chat.

Anyway, we need to address the WOTP somehow.

Nothing to see here, move along.

As long as prior to the turn chat doesnt mean an hour before, cycs blurb is a good addition to an already nice rule.

I third Cyc's addition.

I prefer the one that Rik posted. We don't need to define how the will of the people is determined.

We do need to define how the will of the people is determined. We had some debates about this in DG4, and if we don't define that now, it'll certainly come back to the judiciary later in our game. Then the whole Judicial Review overload of DG4 looms again.

Proposal Article J:


Article J. Elected officials must plan and act according to the will
of the people. The will of the people will be determined
through discussion and polls, formal or informal. If discussion is
done outside the the DG forums, then it must be documented before
the turn chat in a timely manner.

If we are going with a bare bones ruleset then, uh, more is more. ;)

I agree with Cyc's proposal as written.

Cycs was good, but the timely manner I thought was very important to specify, there must be some time between the start of the chat and these backdoor discussions, should they become significant.

My bad, I just assumed they were the same. :eek: You may get some resistance due to the formal/informal clause, but perhaps not. I always treated informal polls as gospel, but do we want that in our Constitution?

And to prevent trouble, I believe that "timely manner" needs to be strictly defined. One man's 24 hours notice is another's 3 minutes before (or after) the turnchat starts. We need to rein these both in.

Perhaps 2 hours before the turnchat begins? How do we tweak this further?

Article J. Elected officials must plan and act according to the will
of the people. The will of the people will be determined
through discussion and polls, formal or informal. If discussion is
done outside scope of the DG forums, then it must be documented
2 hours prior to the commencement of the turnchat.

I agree with that proposal and have copied it to my now v0.35 constitution word document.

I agree with Immortal's version

Perhaps 2 hours before the turnchat begins? How do we tweak this further?

Whoah, whoah! Hold on there! Why do we need 2 hours? I can see that being okay if we do an offline preturn, but we only need that in late game. As long as the instructions are posted before the announcement that the turnchat has actually begun, they should be legal.

Well, I can see Immortals point, I wouldn't want people getting into a chat room 5 minutes prior to a T/C and determining the WOTP. That wouldn't be right or good for the citizens. But "in a timely manner", although understood by myself and many others can be seen as too vague by many more. I'll leave it up to you guys.

Nol: my reasoning behind putting such a clause in is that there may be objections to this on basis of chain of command, or intergovernmental relations.

If for instance an agreed upon build queue in wartime called for a switch to spearmen, however it is decided to maintain the 2 turns still left on the temple. The military advisor CAN overrule this matter.

This creates a sticky situation and a potential PI.

WOTP as determined via PM or private chat is problematic because it assumes that enough people will see it that dissenting opinions will be given a chance. I would expect sufficient advance notice of the non-forum based event (24 hours notice?) in order to ensure that everyone who wants to weigh in on an item are given a chance to say their piece. Alternatively allow some form of proxy votes, where citizens who cannot attend the semi-private function can instruct others who will be there how to vote, and a framework to make that vote count.

Note this is quite different than deciding how to proceed during the chat when there are no instructions on a matter, or if WOTP cannot be determined on a matter.

I'd have to say 2 hours isn't enough. The point "if I'm not mistaken" is to give the citizenry to view the documentation and discussion which was done outside the t/c and give their view and any objections before the t/c. So a person can't claim a discussion in a chat room of 5 people counts as the "will of the entire citizenry" since several citizens were involved and no objections were made.

EDIT: DS, 24 hours may be too much, how about 12 hours?

oh no, not the turnchat war again!

Lets ignore the turn chat and make the rule completely broad, to apply to all circumstances.

How long before the turnchat do we think things should be finalized? personally, I believe 4 hours before the chat discussion should be completely finished.

The only way a chat room session could be seen as the WOTP is if there was no input from the citizens in the forum. If there was input from the citizens in the forum, then the chat room documentation would be weighed against that. This "chatroom documentation" would not be given priority over forum discussion. It would be blended in with it.

So is there a deadline for "legal Instructions"? The chatroom documentation would definitely have to be documented in those Instructions. Hopefully, the Leader who posts those Instructions would take the documentation from the Discussion thread about the issue (as whoever logged the chat would have posted it there).

Four hours is fine by me.

I do not see the t/c war being revived here. I was refering to a condition where say me, eyrei, cyc, and donsig were talking in #civfanatics, decided X was the right course of action posted it 2 hours before the t/c saw no objections in the forums, since few may have seen it, and thus determined that no one objected because everyone agreed.

My example had NOTHING to do with the "will of the people" in the t/c.

The Turnchat Instruction thread should be complete 1-2 hours before the t/c itself if possible. If that's what you're refering to as being finalized.

ah thats the difference though, youve followed the law exactly, I would have absolutely no problem with this, it was done 2 hours before, and there were no objections.

In your situation, are your positions relevent to the changes youve requested? you arent governors who decided to change the science research were you>?

ah thats the difference though, youve followed the law exactly, I would have absolutely no problem with this, it was done 2 hours before, and there were no objections.

In your situation, are your positions relevent to the changes youve requested? you arent governors who decided to change the science research were you>?


A.) now objections can mean no one who had objections got a chance to see it based on relatively limited exposure to the forum before the t/c started.

B.) I'm not sure what you mean in your second portion...

All I'm saying is an opinion which hasn't been in the forums very long, which has not been objected (or at least seen numerous posts of support) in that short time can not be concidered a basis for determining the will of the people. Unless sufficient time is given to allow for objections.

I still think that 2 hours is fine, but feel free to tweak it. I defined this article a bit better so that a leader cannot just post their devious plans in a defunct Citizen Group thread and still have that action be legal. ;) Plus it recognizes the TCI thread in our Constitution. What do you think?

Article J. Elected officials must plan and act according to the will
of the people. The will of the people will be determined
through discussion and polls, formal or informal. If pertinent
discussion is done outside the scope of the DG forums, then it must
be documented in the Turnchat Instruction Thread 2 hours
prior to the commencement of the turnchat by the appropriate
leader.

EDIT: added "the" ;)

okay falc, how long is sufficent time? 24 hours I think you said earlier?

I foresee a poll

If you put the word "the" in front of the word "scope" it's fine by me. 4 hours would have worked also.

Okay what are we talking about here?

Defining what can be concidered "The will of the people" or setting a deadline for posting T/C instructions?!

I thought we were doing one, then started to address the other to be added on... Now I'm wondering if it's just one of 'em.....

Edit: Immortal I say 12 hours actually, 24 hours I see as a bit too long, not allowing certain things from being raised the day of the t/c 12 hours I believe gives sufficient time for that, and ensures that plenty of time is given for dissenters to view the thread and voice their opinion. Of course we could also just leave this out, and let the people use their best judgement. I just saw the previous version allowing for such legal claims of "knowing the will of the people" based on items which really haven't been discussed in the forums.

Im talking about deadline.

Sorry, I did not mean to reopen the "turnchat war" -- on the contrary I was merely pointing out that the situation covered by this discussion is not the same thing.

I like a long advance warning "we're going to have a chat to discuss this issue", or even better just open a discussion on the issue.

As someone who often has trouble posting instructions a long time before the scheduled chat time due to collision between time zones and the baby's schedule of waking up in the middle of the night, I'm opposed to setting a long window for when instructions have to be finalized. Given a 4 hour window I'd probably have to post instructions the day before, even if the people haven't finished commenting on a subject.

Okay what are we talking about here?

Defining what can be concidered "The will of the people" or setting a deadline for posting T/C instructions?!

I thought we were doing one, then started to address the other to be added on... Now I'm wondering if it's just one of 'em.....

Consider the WOTP a beam of light and Posted Instructions as a prism. The WOTP is transformed into action by means of the Instructions. We need to substaniate a time limit for posted Instructions to have documents justified as the WOTP. :)

Okay, obviously there is a wide diversity amongst opinions as to how long timely is.

Would a poll suffice or can a compromise be reached? Id hate to have a rule for timely manner that causes community members like DaveShack from participating due to time contraints.

Okay, the wording of previous proposals confused me.

On the issue of a deadline for posting instructures, I'd say 4-2 hours before. Maybe with one or two "warnings" should the leader run late due to RL or such and so long as the instructions are posted by the time of the t/c. I can see someone getting stuck in traffic, posting instructions 30 minutes before the t/c and facing legal action as a result.

EDIT: My 12 hour time was for something unrelated due to my confusion from the wording.

Notice that currently the t-minus-2 hour deadline applies only to discussions held outside THE scope groucho of the forums. So maybe we can sidestep this issue after all.

Does a TCI posting deadline really need to be placed in our Constitution? Discuss.

ok, I am really going to bed now..........

exellent point DZ. I think that may work for everyone.

Forums can have debate up until the very last minute. OUTSIDE conversations however must be done within 2 hours. If we agree on this note I move we extend that minimum amount of time to at least 6 hours.

OUTSIDE conversations however must be done within 2 hours.


See this is the part which confused me. Assuming this is refering to whether it can be determined an indicator of the will of the people, I think I could agree with 6 hours, though I still feel 12 hours might be more appropriate.

This is great. We all understand each other. :thumbsup:

Six or twelve hours is good for me.

Ill wait until morning and see what other posters have to say about the length of time.

Unless noted otherwise I will move forward with a 6 hour time minimum for outside discussions to be finalized.

Ratification Poll Now Open:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=94837