First of all, I would like to say that I agree with both Cyc, Davshack and Sir Donald III on different counts, and I think that the truth is not held by one individual, but held by different persons. I am just seeking to give this humble input to be constructive.
Chief Justice Cyc have in my opinion a great and positive impact on the DG5, and I highly applaud him taking care of the constitution, newbees like me and in general give soilid and valid counsel on many critical issues, not to mention outrageously funny
He wrote up 8 points directed at DS regarding turnchats, and I can say I agree with him on the following points, for keeping things recorded. consider saves and chatlogs, as well as printscreens and turnchat key figures per turn as the "blackbox" of a turnchat, if it flies bad and crashes, we got all the evidence we need to know why.
I can understand the following points Cyc wanted improved, where I agree.
"1. Getting T/C Summaries from you is like pulling teeth."
"2. Saves and Screen Shots need to be posted in real time, not 12 hours later. If you weren't trying to squeeze in as many turns as you could, you would have time to post these as the T/C progressed."
"5. The person that YOU chose to replace you on turn 15 of the last T/C decided to ignore the custom of posting the "in between turn" stats because she was in a hurry. IBT stats are there for a reason."
"8. The missing pre-turn save. Just slow down, Mr. President. You're supposed to be in control of the T/C, not the attendees."
"These points needs bo be fixed, and put inside the Lower Law as a legal procedure for turnchats, which is in fact the implementation of our policies. These foiur points needs to be in place.
However, I do not like that these very technical procedural criteria of these eight points are mixed with the personal bias on how game events and number of turns in turnchats are handled, regarding meeting a new tribe and regarding making a tech/gold/worker trade during the turnchat. This is EXACTLY why the various departments should have existing policies in dealing with foreign civilization first meetings. As a Foreign Advisor, some people do not want me to comment domestic, military, legal, cultural and scientific issues as a foreign affaris elect, but only stick to the tedious issue of war and peace. Remember from CIV1 where each advisor had a view on all these things? Now, we should agree on the length of the turnchats based on game events dictated by planning and forecasting done in the forums, and not let random events dictate the speed of the game. This means that, for example next turn we will have one settler ready, iron working will be done in 12-15 turns, we may or may not trade with the Romans, may produce a build queue matching the time it takes
to invent iron working, yes maybe even a settler to head for the closest iron.
This is what has upset people, we are spread across multiple timezones, some people get up at night, leave their jobs, forget their kids for a while and in general act as true civfanatics. However, we are not THAT fanatic to continously prematurely halt a turnchat in order to make a flawed poll on which direction to go into, in place of having a lengthy discussion/polling process on which direction to go for one tile to settle our capital, ONE SINGLE TILE.! That is an overkill, we just delayed the game a three whole days wasting time quarreling on where to go that single tile. I would much rather prefer a Presidential decision or a Domestic Advisor decision there. If we look into the amount of energy spent on the elections, in all fairness, they must count for some.
Pertaining to "The Will of the People", they are indeed tired of being polled to death, there is a cap on how many polls and discussion threads we can have at once. This is where I agreee with President Daveshack, he sensed the moods in that thread he referred to, and other places, that these successive and untimely interruptions was unwanted by a sizable amount. Having had the lower hand in all these processes, and accepted it, would say the same now, please accept that people do want to go by milestones and some predictability. If the term lasts one month, and allegedly 100 turns, let it be so, maybe even some longer turnchats allow us needed longer discussion periods. With 3 day turnchats the deadlines for submissions are very rough.
Finally, Sir Donald III, which lives up to my standard preferences at least in most discussion threads, states that we need to be flexible in allowing room for handling
either new civilization contacts or direct demands, but let external initiatives and long term developments be handled by the will of the people through polls.
I still consider this game to be part elections, part coordinations, part discussion, part polling and part turnchat. I really think we should develop a lower law for the turnchats, so that it may pass, and that it is not impossible to change if a lot of people dislike it.
. Less technical nitpickin and personal attacks please. If the president or anyone steps over the legal boundary, we have the three justices and the judicial review to deal with that.
Uh, no Mr. President. First of all, the missing of the pre-turn save was just one of the items I mentioned. Second, you're trying to reduce all this to "complaining about people voicing their negative opinions on instructions", and that's just plain wrong. People are talking about personal attacks in this thread. I can link to them if you're having difficulty following along. 
