Research: Continue with Democracy?

Should we confirm the Constitution -> Democracy path as currently instructed, or take the time to choose some other path?

Continue with the Democracy path
Stop and consider other paths
Abstain

Poll open until the next play session is scheduled to begin.

Discussion thread

Once again, I must place myself in a position of "guardian of democracy". The Head Scientist and Chieftain have ignored citizen input saying we should research something other than the Democracy path, so it's up to us citizens to create a poll.

If "stop" gets the most votes, the current play session will be delayed.

There's been a lot of talk on finding a new tech, however in the last poll there was a tie, what the interpretation of that is, I don't know, I had assumed it gave responsibility for the decision to the chief scientist.

But you're right here, if there is more support for these other techs than was shown in the previous poll we need to stop and look at our options again. That said I'm still in favor of democracy so I hope it can pull out a majority here to make this decision definitive.

For me the poll gave the vote engineering first, so you are right.

Well, I see the level of drama for "citizen input" varies by the official, as the tolerance to ignoring same "citizen input" seem to count more for some than others. I would say tech choices are a far bigger decision in this game than the killing of a unit. Then again, this is all political.

The push for democracy path and ignoring other strategies have been quite extreme lately, and I am already losing interest in this game.

I say we pick up engineering first, since it fits our war-plans (they want to delay that wonder anyways for some turns).

This is an interesting question about how to interpret the original poll, I don't believe that it's as simple as 5+2 vs. 5+1. To research RP engineering is not required anyone wanting to research RP would have been forced to vote for engineering by that poll, as no option existed for RP without engineering. The same is true for the music path, democracy is not a prerequisite tech but it must be voted for if a citizen believes that music should be our priority.

If the intention of the poll was to add choice 1 to choice 2 and choice 3 to choice 4 in the event of a tie, I believe the poll was fundamentally flawed. Either tech polls should be done differently in the future, or a poll such as the one in question should be followed with a run-off. It may be worth revising our laws to require majorities for technology decisions, we already require them for something as trivial as city names.

That said I believe Dave's poll will solve this matter one way or the other, if more people support Democracy the turnchat will continue, if more want to stop and discuss other options, then that's what will happen. A judicial review will take much longer than this poll, and will delay the turnchat whatever the majority of citizen's believe. It doesn't seem to add to the resolution of this matter, but does add to it's impact on the game.

Even worse what do we do if these two methods of resolving the issue contradict one another, if this poll supports democracy but the judiciary rules that engineering is the proper path what is our interpretation of the matter?

I'd like to request that Provolution remove his citizen complaint in favor of accepting the outcome of Dave's poll on the matter as the method for resolving this issue.

First of all, I respect what DS is doing here, as the argumentation for one side has been very one-sided on the discussion level.

I also like the notion that DS wants to give us the room for a deep discussion on long term strategy, but I have sent in my CC on a completely different, yet related issue, and that is the mishandling of the technology poll.


I retain the Citizens Complaint, until the science chief decides otherwise with the interpretation of this poll. I can also play this "politically correctness game", as I stand nothing to lose.

Equality before the law is something that has become real important, now knowing the inherent flawed consistency of morals in this game. I am sick and tired seeing rules count different by the person, so this will go on till the Judiciary makes a judgment. I have seen many crazy judiciary motions, but I know this is a sound and valid one.

DS poll is covering something else than not consulting citizen input, it is more about the direction the discussions has gone, and is a completely different topic. Sorry Grant, the request is rejected, and I am only a citizen here, you owe me nothing, I owe you nothing. Law is what matters here. I also see that you want to ignore the tech-poll outcome, "nice" move to ask me to remove the citizens complaint (but that is not going to happen, thanks to the situation at hand), and I do not fall into any of your traps anymore. I do not take orders (especially not given disrespectfully in 3rd person) from you anymore, ever!

Of course you will make this poll count, and not what is the real case. You actually voted continue, but that is not a valid argument, as the majority seems to go for Democracy, but with Engineering first. This is what I filed the CC for.


Please listen to citizen input! Do we want a Kangaroo Court, or some equality to the law?

It is as simply as 5+2 vs 5+1, and I would let the court decide that.

...all of these arguments could have been avoided if only the tech poll was done in the classical way.

To get on subject, while the correct thing to do would have been to repoll the tie, the tech officer was slightly justified in choosing the democracy path side, as there were strategic reasons that people chose the losing paths, and they may have chosen to have voted for the democracy path if the tie was polled.

Also, change my vote from continue to stop. After listening to some of these arguments, I believe that the issue should be repolled.

I agree with Mike, the repoll has to be done.

I would argue for a third way of technology discussions and polling we have not seen yet in this particular game, and maybe I will bring it up for the next term.
Having all potential options for polling is also bad, but to support mike here, he was at least more democratic and smooth in cooperating with concepts across positions. This term is the most one sided so far this game.

grant2004 said:

There's been a lot of talk on finding a new tech, however in the last poll there was a tie, what the interpretation of that is, I don't know, I had assumed it gave responsibility for the decision to the chief scientist.

Click to expand...

The poll didn't end before the turnchat, therefore I took whatever was in the lead at the time, which was Democracy Beeline + RP, by 1 vote, so I posted instructions to pursue that path.

As far as I'm concerned, combing poll results is a ludicrous invention initiated by someone other than myself, I've never advocated or used such a system, so I'd be glad if you didn't associate myself with those kind of inane theories, all I did was interpret the poll properly as it was at the time, if it were a tie I would've asked to delay the TC.

Provolution said:

DS poll is covering something else than not consulting citizen input, it is more about the direction the discussions has gone, and is a completely different topic. Sorry Grant, the request is rejected, and I am only a citizen here, you owe me nothing, I owe you nothing. Law is what matters here. I also see that you want to ignore the tech-poll outcome, "nice" move to ask me to remove the citizens complaint (but that is not going to happen, thanks to the situation at hand), and I do not fall into any of your traps anymore. I do not take orders (especially not given disrespectfully in 3rd person) from you anymore, ever!

Click to expand...

Well I don't see the two different issues, but the decision to remove the request is yours alone. Your hostility to the request, however, astounds me. I did not order you to do anything, nor am I trying to serve my own purposes in game, I simply want to remove what I see as an unnecessary delay. I believe Dave's poll will solve the issue, and if it goes the way I want it to that's great, but if it doesn't then so is the case and I'll argue the democracy point in the tech discussion.

We can surely handle 3 turns for engineering, that would not kill the game.
Especially if we have discussions and poll arguing heavily for engineering.
I actually supported the democracy beeline after little engineering, until getting this treatment.

Right now, I may just change on principle.

Provolution said:

We can surely handle 3 turns for engineering, that would not kill the game.
Especially if we have discussions and poll arguing heavily for engineering.
I actually supported the democracy beeline after little engineering, until getting this treatment.

Right now, I may just change on principle.

Click to expand...

Is this supposed to be a threat?
Either we fulfill your demands, or you'll change your mind?

My singular vote is not the issue here.

This poll tied at 7-7 (Mike changed his vote, creating the tie), and does not present any answer, solution or mandate at all.

This also means we may need to poll which specific tech we need after engineering.

That depends on whether we want to allow vote changing. A while back, someone was asking for it to not be allowed. I'm neutral on that aspect of the game. If the person(s) who don't want to allow vote changes remind me why not, the vote totals might be left.

Either way, the previous decision remains, since it would take more no votes than yes votes to say "don't continue".

Also, the original purpose of the poll was to ask if we wanted to stop and repoll techs. We did stop and repoll techs, so the purpose of the question no longer applies.

I don't think vote changes should be allowed.

Well then, write a new Poll Law, stating explicitly that no votes can be changed upon posting (and ban all private polls except those that incur punishment/guilt or handle elections).

I don't see why vote changes should not be allowed as long as they occur before the poll is finished, otherwise people changing votes after a poll closes could seriously impair actions taken as a result of that poll.

With a small population like we have here we can certainly handle vote changes without generating confusing results, if the demo-game had a higher membership requests for vote changes might become complicated if a large number of people asked to change, but I'm sure that won't be a problem with 15 or so voters total.

Why do you believe vote changes should not be allowed Donsig?

grant2004 said:

Why do you believe vote changes should not be allowed Donsig?

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I agree with Donsig, so I might as well post my reasoning too. One, in RL you can't go back and change your vote, so why allot it here? Two, the forum poll system is a great way to calculate and document votes. We know how many people voted for something and if we're not sure, or its close, we can request TF to have a looksie. Three, it adds another security issue. Who is to say someone doesn't vote for x, but realizing that its close comes here, claims they voted for y and want their vote switched to x. Now we have a double voter and don't think we haven't had people cheat before to sway a vote. Four and probably the most obvious is that you have several days to make your decision. You don't have to vote on the issue as soon as you see the poll. I typically wait a day or two to see all the discussion first, especially if I'm unsure myself.