How should we invalidate forum polls?

[Hyronymus]

Invalidating a poll
There are two possible ways by which a poll can be invalidated:

• A citizen or citizen group(s) can ask the Judiciary to investigate the valadity of a poll.
• The Judiciary initiates an investigation into the valadity of a poll.

Investigation request from a citizen or citizen group(s)
A citizen or citizen group(s) publicly request the Judiciary to investigate the validity of a poll. The request should be posted in the Office of the Judiciary of the active term and must be followed by a confirmation from the Judiciary that they will investigate the validity of a poll.
The Judiciary is bound to investigate every request made by a citizen or citizen group(s)¹.

Investigation initiated by the Judiciary
The Judiciary publicly announces to investigate the validity of a poll. The announcement should be posted in the Office of the Judiciary of the active term.

Issueing the invalid verdict
It is then up to the Judiciary, and only the Judiciary², to declare the investigated poll invalid. The Judiciary's ruling has to be made public and the Judiciary must do its outmost best to rule swiftly.

¹ Blatant abuses will be dealt with swiftly in any case as they are blatant abuses. If however this turns out to be unworkable we can always amend it.
² Until the Judiciary ruled no moderator has the mandate to declare a poll invalid.

 

[ori]

(...) The request should be posted in the Term 1 Judiciary - The Court of the Big Rock (...)The announcement should be posted in the Term 1 Judiciary - The Court of the Big Rock.

You might want to change those threads in a way that this can also be used after Term 1 has expired...

Otherwise:

 

[Hyronymus]

You might want to change those threads in a way that this can also be used after Term 1 has expired...

Otherwise:

I fixed it .

 

[donsig]

@donsig,

I think you're missing an assumption. How many people need to object to the options in a poll before the poll is considered unfair?

Enough to block any of the options from getting a majority.

 

[Hyronymus]

I'm not sure how you guys manage but can anyone else except ori react on my proposal too? I think I made a fair proposal that also covers how many people need to object. Of course, this is subject to discussion (hence the proposal state).

 

[730195]

I'm not sure how you guys manage but can anyone else except ori react on my proposal too?

Well, OK. I'm a newbie and my eyes start to glaze over with all these procedures whose utility is still theoretical to me. That's why I voted for the simpler concept of something automatic in the poll itself. HTH

 

[DaveShack]

I love DaveShack's suggestion that one judicial member can put a hold (so to speak) on the poll results until the judiciary makes a decision. This could work as long as we all agree that such a hold means only that the results of the poll are not binding during the hold. We wouldn't want to delay the game.

A non-decision, effectively sticking with the status quo, can be just as damaging as a decision which changes our course unfairly. I think this hold does indeed need to hold up play, which is why the actual determination of validity needs to be made as fast as it accurately can be.

What's that, you ask? Delay the game? Me, the champion of fast play wants to delay the game?

Unnecessary and unwarranted delays are bad. Delays which are longer than they need to be are bad. But necessary, short delays are good.

 

[DaveShack]

I'm not sure how you guys manage but can anyone else except ori react on my proposal too? I think I made a fair proposal that also covers how many people need to object. Of course, this is subject to discussion (hence the proposal state).

Your proposal is a good example of one way we might proceed with defining the method for invalidating by an individual or committee, since the Judiciary would qualify as a committee.

Substantively,

On the "two ways", since the Judiciary are also citizens, deciding on their own to investigate a poll is equivalent to one of them asking themselves to investigate. So it isn't really necessary to have the 2nd bullet. It won't hurt, but it does make the initiative longer.

Then on the descriptions of the two ways, I think the process should be the same no matter how it's initiated.

On regulating abuses of the proposed system, perhaps you could set a limit of 1 challenge per poll, and some small number (2? 1?) of challenges per player per term. Another way to regulate abuses would be to permit the Judiciary to rule that the challenge was abusive, and/or use the citizen complaint mechanism to decide on guilt and punishment.

 

[donsig]

A non-decision, effectively sticking with the status quo...

A non-decision is NOT the same as sticking with the status quo. There are many, many non-decisions in the course of a democracy game. We do not poll and discuss (or even post instructions for) all worker actions. Yet, when a worker is done with a task he does not stand idly by just because there is a non-decision about what he should do next. No, the DP gives him something to do. And hey, you know what? There was NO delay or halt to the game!

A forum poll is not (or should not be) the only means we have for making a decision. Yes, a decision made by a fair forum poll should be regarded as our highest and most sacred decision, to be overturned only by another good and fair forum poll. But we should (and always have) allowed for other forms of decision making. The include consensus by discussion, instruction by elected officials (in the absense of consensus or polled decisions) and DP perogative (in the absence of consensus, poll or instruction). Putting a judicial hold on a poll or invalidating a poll does not put these forms of decison making off limits. Invalidating a poll (either permanently or temporarily) merely means we all pretend the poll never existed.

...can be just as damaging as a decision which changes our course unfairly. I think this hold does indeed need to hold up play, which is why the actual determination of validity needs to be made as fast as it accurately can be.

Why does pretending a poll doesn't exist have to delay the game? As long as there is a chain of command (so to speak) for making decisions in the absence of a poll decision, there need be no delay. If the poll results in no decision then the proper official can assess the situation and decide what needs to be done. The official is not bound by the staus quo. The official is not bound by the results of the invalid poll but he is not bound to not follow the result either.

 

[DaveShack]

If we're voting on it already, doesn't that mean that someone thought the decision was important enough to require a vote? If we're thinking about invalidating it, doesn't that mean someone made it a bad poll to begin with, and has refused to fix it? Wouldn't that person have made the poll bad in order to take advantage of its biased result to get his way? Wouldn't holding the poll's binding status in limbo let such a person do their own thing with impunity because they can point to the "no decision" poll?

I'd probably reschedule the game session if facing this as a DP.

 

[Hyronymus]

Thanks for the comments, DaveShack , the reworded proposal looks like this:

Poll invalidation act

Initiating an investigation
Any citizen or citizen group, including the Judiciary itself, can ask the Judiciary to investigate the valadity of a poll. Such requests should be posted in the Office of the Judiciary of the active term.

Rules on initiating an investigation
To prevent abuse or initiating validity investigations for the sake of initiating validity investigations there are rules to the proces.

• No citizen or citizen group can initiate a validity investigation over a poll that is being investigated or already has been investigated by the Judiciary.
• No citizen or citizen group can initiate more then two validity investigations per term.

The Judiciary must reject any initiative to investigate the validity of a poll that does not meet these rules. Initiatives to investigate the validity of a poll which meet these rules must be replied to by a notification from the Judiciary that they will start the investigation, even if the Judiciary initiated the investigation itself.
Violations of the rules on initiating an investigation are subject to the Judiciary's ruling.

Issueing the invalid verdict
Only the Judiciary has the right to declare a poll invalid. The Judiciary's ruling has to be made public in the corresponding thread in the Office of the Judiciary of the active term. The Judiciary must do its outmost best to rule swiftly.

 

[dutchfire]

No citizen or citizen group can initiate more then two validity investigations per term.

I would prefer something like the Hawk-eye system in tennis. Everyone has 2 "credit" to investigate a poll. When you ask for an investigation, and the result is that the poll is indeed invalid, then you keep your current credit. However if the result is that the poll is valid, you lose one of your credit points.

And I wouldn't give citizen groups the right to ask for an investigation as anyone could start up a citizen group just for the sake of asking for an investigation when they've already asked for 2 investigations that term.

 

[Hyronymus]

I would prefer something like the Hawk-eye system in tennis. Everyone has 2 "credit" to investigate a poll. When you ask for an investigation, and the result is that the poll is indeed invalid, then you keep your current credit. However if the result is that the poll is valid, you lose one of your credit points.

That is a splendid idea!

And I wouldn't give citizen groups the right to ask for an investigation as anyone could start up a citizen group just for the sake of asking for an investigation when they've already asked for 2 investigations that term.

That makes sense too .

 

[donsig]

If we're voting on it already, doesn't that mean that someone thought the decision was important enough to require a vote? If we're thinking about invalidating it, doesn't that mean someone made it a bad poll to begin with, and has refused to fix it? Wouldn't that person have made the poll bad in order to take advantage of its biased result to get his way? Wouldn't holding the poll's binding status in limbo let such a person do their own thing with impunity because they can point to the "no decision" poll?

I'd probably reschedule the game session if facing this as a DP.

All the questions you ask are possibilities but:

• Just because someone thought a decision was important enough to poll doesn't mean it was actually important enough to poll.
• If someone is thnking about invalidating it that does not mean it's a bad poll.
• Bad polls are not necessarily bad on purpose.
• Just because someone posted a poll that does not mean he or she is trying to get his or her way on something.

Halting a scheduled gameplay session because of a potentially bad poll is something I might argue for depending on the situation. Are you saying every bad poll has to stop play? If you are then you give anyone who wants to delay things the opportunity to do so JUST by posting a bogus poll.

Once again DaveShack, you worry about obviously bad things that will be obviously easy to fix. You seem to be trying to sell the idea that validating . invalidating a poll is quite easy. I don't think it's such a black and white thing. There are many grey areas when it comes to fair polling. If you really and truly want an easy system that will not delay the game (nor cause controversy) then you need to focus on making a system that can handle a poll that has some good things about it and some bad things about it. One that is really tough to say whether it is fair or not. One that is about an issue the DG community is basically split on.

 

[Chieftess]

Who shall we declare war against?
* France
* Germany

That was a little too prophetic.

 

[Octavian X]

The results are in!

13 citizens voted only for using a person or committee to invalidate polls
2 citizens voted only for using an internal mechanism
10 citizens voted both for using a person or committee to invalidate polls and an internal mechanism
3 citizens voted only for none of the above
2 citizens voted only for abstain
1 citizen voted both abstain and for using an internal mechanism

Because 31 citizens voted in total, none of options above met a majority of those polls. We will most likely be using an invalidating person/committee, but should probably consider a runoff as to whether or not we will use an internal mechanism for invalidation in addition to the person/committee.

 

[ravensfire]

That's certainly a, umm, creative, way to analyze the results, Octavian.

Personally, I'd just go with:
23 out of 31 people supported the option to invalidate via committe or person
13 out of 31 people supported the option to invalidate via an internal mechanism
3 out of 3 people said none of the above
3 out of 3 people abstained.

The poll did include it's own interpretation method.

-- Ravensfire

 

[Octavian X]

This being a multiple choice poll, ravensfire, it seems appropriate to take into account the voters who want to see both systems implemented.

You are right, though, that I did miscount a bit. 13 people voted only for the first choice, not 12.

 

[DaveShack]

Even if interpreted the way Octavian X has analyzed the votes, there are more who only want the person/committee system (13) than want both (10).

The poll should be interpreted the way the originator specified.

It should be noted by all that although a decision here indicates what people wanted during this poll, it is by no means final, any more than any DG poll is final. The Consitution allows a later initiative to supercede the results of an earlier one. Any citizen is free to try again to convince the people that the internal mechanism should also be used.

 

[donsig]

I think it is clear there is enough support for having some sort of authority vested in someone to invalidate polls. The next step would be to start a discussion about who should have that authority.