Quorums

[Strider]

1. A poll is not valid unless a quorum of participation has been reached.
2. All polls should have the following information:

I know this issue has been brought up alot of times, but I would like to raise it again.

I do not believe we should have quorums. They have caused more pain to Fanatika then the have good. Many polls that will benefit us have had to be turned down, because they did not reach the quorum. We should do away with this rule.

 

[Plexus]

I agree, many honor polls have been made void because of this rule...

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

Honors are not an official part of the game, that probably effects their participation level. It will require campaigning on the part of the advocates of a proposal to push through their ideas.

Quorums are absolutely vital based upon our experience in game one for anything that effect game play policy or the laws themselves.

 

[Strider]

Originally posted by Bill_in_PDX
Honors are not an official part of the game, that probably effects their participation level. It will require campaigning on the part of the advocates of a proposal to push through their ideas.

Quorums are absolutely vital based upon our experience in game one for anything that effect game play policy or the laws themselves.

Ok..... Now you just managed to confuse me.


And I still don't see any bonus's to having a quorum.

 

[Eklektikos]

The "bonus" of having a quorum is that it prevents measures and laws being passed by polls in which a very small percentage of the population voted, and thus helps to ensure the legitimacy of the results. Without a quorum it could be easier for citizens who did not like the way a vote turned out to stir up controversy over whether the outcome really reflected the will of the majority.

 

[Strider]

Originally posted by Eklektikos
The "bonus" of having a quorum is that it prevents measures and laws being passed by polls in which a very small percentage of the population voted, and thus helps to ensure the legitimacy of the results. Without a quorum it could be easier for citizens who did not like the way a vote turned out to stir up controversy over whether the outcome really reflected the will of the majority.

Then why did we make a quorum? Their are much easier ways to dealing with only half of the citizens voting in a poll(not to mention less annoying)

 

[Eklektikos]

Care to be more specific, Strider?

 

[Cyc]

Strider if you really believe there are "much easier ways", why don't you lay them out for us (who can't see them) in a proposal so that we can examine and discuss them. Bill and the Prez had both stated, in fairly easy to understand terms, the normal, customary reasons for having a quorum. You can do the same for eliminating quorums?

OK, here's a low-grade example of how your idea could work. We've just ended the use of quorums because of this discussion thread. There are no more quorums. I will now start running polls asking if all the RPG citizens should donate all their gold to me. I will keep on running these polls (my right) until everyone starts to ignore me. Then one day I find I'm the only citizen who voted in one of these polls (and of course I voted yes), so viola', all the gold in the RPG must go to me. That's the Law. Strider said so. Then what are you going to do? I already won the poll and you can't argue your way out of it, because my majority vote won.
Think about it Strider.

 

[eyrei]

The main reason that quorums were necessary was to avoid leaders (not because they are conniving, but because good ideas sometimes come with short notice) posting polls 10 minutes before the turn chat and using them to represent the will of the citizens. If the only problem they are causing is that honor polls do not reach quorum, there is no reason to change the rule.

 

[Cyc]

Yes, I remember those days Eyrei. You're so right. Things are very different this demogame. It's so amazing how things change over time.

 

[disorganizer]

I remember some of the most critical polls being used for ingame action with only 5 participants.
And 2 days after the chat, the outcome when 30 citizens had voted was totally different.
Those were the days when quorum rules were wanted. And i believe they make sense now. But not all polls need quorum. Also, we should try to run a "citizen mobilization" program to bring our citizens to the polls.
If we comply to change the quorum rules, we should not comply on deleting them, but mabye to setting the "poll validation quorum" maybe a bit lower (it is in fact only 50%! this is already pretty low!).
I would never vote for deleting them. Even if they mean pain for our decissiontaking or maybe even the cancelation of a chat.

 

[disorganizer]

btw:
the problem with the honours was not the quorum level, but that they were set up to run only 2 days.

its better to let the polls run "for 2 days or until quorum is reached, whichever comes last".

most honour polls would have been validated on day3 or day4.

 

[Strider]

Originally posted by disorganizer
btw:
the problem with the honours was not the quorum level, but that they were set up to run only 2 days.

its better to let the polls run "for 2 days or until quorum is reached, whichever comes last".

most honour polls would have been validated on day3 or day4.

Dis.... The honor polls ran for 3 days

Cyc: Here's my idea(s):

1) Lower down the qourum down to about 14. That is about how many people vote in those polls.

2) Set up a set of laws like:

1. Leaders may not post polls or discussions 1 day before a Turn Chat. If they fail to post the poll/discussion beforehand then they risk impeachment.

Something along those lines. Also make some of them for the differant types of polls IE:

Goverment polls
Honor Polls
RPG Polls
Citizen Polls

Goverment polls are posted by the President/VP/leader/govonor/deputy and run along the lines of how to run the nation. (Has low quorum of about 14). They can run from anywhere they want to.

Honor polls are the citizen Honor polls. They have no quorum and run for three days.

RPG Polls have no quorum and as the name stats are the Demogame RPG polls. The can run from any time they want to.

Citizen Polls are polls posted that does not fit into any other catagory.

 

[disorganizer]

Honour polls have no quorum. They are informational. Not official, not game-relevant and not binding at all.
So do rpg polls have no quorum.
This is already handled in the rules but not explicitely staded for what which polls are used ;-)

 

[Octavian X]

Don't you think your opinion might be a bit biased, dis? If I recall correctly, you were up for an honor also.

I would have to disagree with disorganizer honor quroums. Honors, technically, are official. Those with honors get to name the next city, and I feel that the current quourm levels must be used in those polls.
In addition, what if only one person votes yes in an honors poll, but the majority of the people are too disgusted by that nomination to even consider it?
Basically, we keep quroums for honor poll.

One more thing: I would like to ask all those complaining about quroums to read section F.4 of the CoS, about quick polls. These polls have a quroum of 1/3 the active census, or 13.

 

[neutral leader]

there is already a requirement for a poll to run 48 hours in order to be binding as i recall. that eliminates the "10-minutes-beforehand" polls automatically. in that time it seems to me that anyone who cared would already have had the opportunity to vote.

 

[eyrei]

Originally posted by neutral leader
there is already a requirement for a poll to run 48 hours in order to be binding as i recall. that eliminates the "10-minutes-beforehand" polls automatically. in that time it seems to me that anyone who cared would already have had the opportunity to vote.

If we follow that rule to the letter, it would be a rare poll that was binding.

 

[Cyc]

Quoting eyrei:
If we follow that rule to the letter, it would be a rare poll that was binding.
_______________________________________

Can you now be more specific, eyrei? I think the more important polls (as far as the Nation goes), are thought out in advance and have the time to go the 48 hour minimum. If you haven't thought of your idea 48 hours before the next chat, it probably shouldn't be done. If you thought of it, but just didn't post your poll 48 hours before the next chat, you probably shouldn't be posting official polls. I realize that the discussion period makes it difficult to attain all of the requirements, but I'm trying to stress pre-discussion here. If we pre-discuss issues, then extrapolating from those discussions is easy. we all should have a pretty good idea of what polls are going to be put up in the near future after a turn chat. Maybe we can lessen the importance of the 24 hour discussion thread prior to a poll. Maybe if its requirement were stricken from the law, it would be easier to reach quorum on game related issues? If that were done, we would really have to improve the quality of poll writing here, cause it sucks. A very in-depth informational post would have to accompany each poll. Are we motivated enough to improve our poll writing?

 

[eyrei]

Originally posted by Cyc
Quoting eyrei:
If we follow that rule to the letter, it would be a rare poll that was binding.
_______________________________________

Can you now be more specific, eyrei? I think the more important polls (as far as the Nation goes), are thought out in advance and have the time to go the 48 hour minimum. If you haven't thought of your idea 48 hours before the next chat, it probably shouldn't be done. If you thought of it, but just didn't post your poll 48 hours before the next chat, you probably shouldn't be posting official polls. I realize that the discussion period makes it difficult to attain all of the requirements, but I'm trying to stress pre-discussion here. If we pre-discuss issues, then extrapolating from those discussions is easy. we all should have a pretty good idea of what polls are going to be put up in the near future after a turn chat. Maybe we can lessen the importance of the 24 hour discussion thread prior to a poll. Maybe if its requirement were stricken from the law, it would be easier to reach quorum on game related issues? If that were done, we would really have to improve the quality of poll writing here, cause it sucks. A very in-depth informational post would have to accompany each poll. Are we motivated enough to improve our poll writing?

I am mainly referring to the discussion times required making it nearly impossible to get a poll posted using the ideas from a discussion 48 hours before the turns are played. Granted, some ideas are more long term, and have plenty of time to be discussed and polled, but things like tech trades generally only have 3 or 4 days to be decided on.

As far as being motivated to write good polls, I think that is a MAJOR problem we have had since last game. Unfortunately, there is little I can do about since I can't actually hold a leader position, so all I can do is complain.

 

[disorganizer]

Oct: it may be so.
i didnt think of the naming aspect :-(
[i would have forgotten about it! really!]
i didnt even think of a name yet

nevertheless, the 1 person vote is excluded by the honours being always run according to poll rules, which say 48h i believe.

but also:
we had 48h polls last game which only had 5 participants (over weekend for example, poll running friday 23:59->sunday 23:59 is also 48 hours).
so the quorum makes sense. the only dispute we shall have is setting the level right. or maybe setting different levels for different things.