Remake for Voice Rights Poll

[Falcon02]

Sorry, our attempts to change combine the "One voice per Dept." options of the poll kinda messed things up. and I have been advised to repost it.

So, should we allow all Officials to have a voice or should we stay with the current One voice per dept. setup?

During tonight's chat discussion arose as to if ALL officials should be allowed voice at the chat at one time. So the if Zur comes into the chat after Chieftess, then they'd both get a voice at the same time.

Right now, only one represenative is allowed from each dept. to have a voice at once. What do you think.

 

[Justus II]

While I am generally all for giving others the right to have input, from experience the Demogame chat gets crowded and confusing as it is. The idea of the chat reps is to fill in if the department head is not there. The only clarification/suggestion I would make is that the Vice President would get voice (if he is not already a department head).

 

[Cyc]

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I see the President constantly looking for advice or answers that are either very slow in coming or do not come at all. With this in mind, limiting voices may not be a good idea. Justus II is right, tho. The room when utilized properly, can be very chaotic. I have voted option #2 as a separate chat room set up for each department would allow for side discussion without cluttering up the main chat room. Once side discussion is complete, the top official has voice to express the dept's wishes. If the top official has to leave, the President (or whoever) can voice the next person and so on. This leaves room for lots of discussion with very little clutter, and the President knows precisely who to ask.

 

[Zur]

1. Despite (I hate starting posts with the word "despite") encouraging as many citizens as possible to attend turn chats and being a deputy, I feel that if the number of voices in the room is >5, it would be harder (just read previous chat logs) for the president to keep track of what is happening. Hence there should be only 1 voice per department in the main #demogame room.

2. As a default, the department representative present at the beginning of the chat should represent the department for the whole chat, but departments should decide internally who is to be the representative for each chat and the current representative can defer his/her voice to another during the chat.

3. I feel the setting up of departmental chat rooms should be left to the individual departments as a separate issue and not be included in this poll. I wholly support it!

4. Hence I have another suggestion to add to the poll. It is essentially the 1st (or 2nd if you include departmental chats) choice in the poll, overridden by the 3rd choice if <6 voices (unlikely?) are present since the president could benefit from more input.

 

[Shaitan]

Does not having a voice prevent a user from entering a side chat? Not sure if I'm explaining this well - I haven't used chat clients in forever and a day. Say I'm in a chat room and I want to have a private discussion with one of the other attendees. I double click on him/her in the attendee list and voila - I'm in a private chat. Does this work when you have no voice?

If it does then there's no need for private rooms. If not, then go for private rooms. For the rest I'd say just let it go the way it is now, with one clarifying rule. Use the same rule for running a department as we have for running the game. That is, if the Deputy is there at the start of the game but the Leader isn't then the Deputy is in charge of the Department for that chat turn. If the Leader pops up later he is an observer and can consult with the Deputy but doesn't get voiced.

 

[Cyc]

I'm not sure about the private department rooms myself, Shaitan, but it seems to me that one sanctioned room for discussion would be better than a lot of scattered windows poping up constantly. Also the doble-clicking off the attendee list causes problems for me, sometimes I have to restart the chat room after exiting. I'm not a big-time chatter, I'm learning as I go.

 

[chiefpaco]

Thinking outside of the structure of this poll, I think there are 2 separate questions regarding voice rights. I think the questions really are:

#1) The number of officials/dept allowable at a time.

#2) Implications and restrictions based on #1.

As it stands now, choices 1, 2, and 4 all are in favour of only one voice per chat. Choice 3 is the only one for multiple voices for chat.

I propose, if all agrees, to make this go quickly, the votes of 1, 2, and 4 be added to show the support for the 1 voice per department choice. This would be compared to #3 as an entity. If "1+2+4" wins, then 1 voice/dept will be implemented with the most popular one of these to determine how it is to be implemented.

The reason I think this way, is because I agree partly, with Zur. I think it may be best to vote for "single" or "multiple" only, & leave it up to each dept to how they want to implement it, but I will consider that this poll has already started.

Now, Zur, I'm not sure I agree with your min # of representatives proposal (<5). I think, other than traffic issues, we can get "flooding persuasion" issues too. For example, 3 military & 1 cultural representatives show. I don't think this is very fair representation. If a department doesn't show for a chat, that is their own problem. However, many quick votes for tiny decisions over the course of a turn can get skewed.

I guess I obviously voted for 1 per department....

 

[donsig]

I voted to allow all officials to have voice becuase of the way we chose deputies. Since the deputy is the runner up in the election we may very well end up with a leader and deputy with opposing views.

The opposition should be heard.

Of course some may vote to limit voicing just for this reason.

 

[Shaitan]

Excellent observation by chiefpaco. The crux of this issue is 1 or multi voices per department. I'm for 1 voice and let the individual departments work out how they want to communicate between their members.

Donsig also raised a valid point. The opposition should be heard. My opinon is that the Forum is the correct venue for opposition discussions. There is also enough opposition between department views in the chat that it's not really critical to have inter-departmental critique as well. Since the decision of the Leader will overrule the opinion of the Deputy in any case let the leaders lead unimpeded in the chat.

 

[punkbass2000]

I think donsig makes a valid point. I think it depends on the department, as with some departments the deputy was the runner-up, and may have dissenting views that need to be addressed. Admittedly, Shaitan is correct that the forums exist for this purpose, but what about spot votes (as mentioned elsewhere)? The opposition requires a vote. However, in my case, I was chosen by Justus II as he had no opposition for the position, and to my knowledge we agree on virtually all topics. We're both (obviously) culture-minded, seem to lean towards peace/builder, and have no objection to pop-rushing. The only advantage to both of us participating in a chat would be that one of us may think of something on the spot that the other may not. However, should we both be at a chat and this occurs, whichever of us wasn't representing the department could easily relay the information to the other via private chat, or even to write it at the open #civfanatics chat.

 

[Cyc]

quote from Shaitan:

Donsig also raised a valid point. The opposition should be heard. My opinon is that the Forum is the correct venue for opposition discussions. There is also enough opposition between department views in the chat that it's not really critical to have inter-departmental critique as well. Since the decision of the Leader will overrule the opinion of the Deputy in any case let the leaders lead unimpeded in the chat. :end quote


Although i agree with you on the point about the forum being the best place for opposing views, I must disagree with the rest of the paragraph. A second view can help a leader in any decision. And mostly our leaders are not at the chats. When was the last time you were there Shaitan? At the last chat we had Falcon02, Chieftess, and Justus II was there for a bit. That's 2.5 out of 8. EDIT: Immortal was there most of the chat (sorry Immortal), so make that 3.5 of 8. I agree with the opinion of one voice per Department, but the side chat rooms for "inter-departmental critique" is very warranted here.

 

[Zur]

1.

For example, 3 military & 1 cultural representatives show. I don't think this is very fair representation.

I have thought about this before my last post and I am glad you posted this. The question is fair representation of depts. vs. amt. of input to president. It may be arguable that the onus lies with the department for having a chat representative for that chat, or forego chat representation. Hence, I feel input to prez is more important in this case, but this is debatable.

2. To clarify, I support *public* departmental chatrooms for greater engagement with citizens (maybe citizens should even be voiced), but private ones can be set up if necessary. The decision should lie with each department.

 

[Falcon02]

I think Cheifpaco makes a very good point, the center of this issue is to stay with one or go to multiple, so I will ask the Mods to Combine 1, 2, and 4

 

[Shaitan]

Originally posted by Cyc
quote from Shaitan:

Donsig also raised a valid point. The opposition should be heard. My opinon is that the Forum is the correct venue for opposition discussions. There is also enough opposition between department views in the chat that it's not really critical to have inter-departmental critique as well. Since the decision of the Leader will overrule the opinion of the Deputy in any case let the leaders lead unimpeded in the chat. :end quote


Although i agree with you on the point about the forum being the best place for opposing views, I must disagree with the rest of the paragraph. A second view can help a leader in any decision. And mostly our leaders are not at the chats. When was the last time you were there Shaitan? At the last chat we had Falcon02, Chieftess, and Justus II was there for a bit. That's 2.5 out of 8. EDIT: Immortal was there most of the chat (sorry Immortal), so make that 3.5 of 8. I agree with the opinion of one voice per Department, but the side chat rooms for "inter-departmental critique" is very warranted here.

You misunderstood (or I explained badly). I fully support whatever means the individual departments want to set up for inter-departmental discussion. Private rooms, ICQ, whatever works and they are comfortable with is fine by me. My point was that the inter-departmental discourse/conflict/cirtique/suggestion/whathaveyou isn't needed in the official turn chat room.

It's quite likely that I'll never be in a chat as I'm simply not available at the normal chat time. My department was represented by Plexus and later Immortal.

EDIT: Immortal wears two hats - At-Large and Foreign Affairs. So that's 4.5 out of 8