Turn Chat Reform

[Veera Anlai]

Well, it seems there are a few issues with Turn Chat scheduling that need to be addressed. Most of the following changes are to prevent scheduling abuse by the President, to clarify a poorly worded and weak clause, to help remove an identified loophole, and to restore the original intent of the law.

I propose rewriting almost the entirety of Article I in our Code of Standards to read like the following:

B. The President must post a revised Turn Chat schedule on the first day of his term, or in the event of an absence, on the first day of his return.
C. This turn chat schedule should be revised every seven days.
D. If not updated, the existing schedule carries over week to week.
E. A president shall not schedule a turn chat that occurs in the following term.
F. The President should not reschedule a chat simply because of his absence. The President should reschedule if a designated player in the Chain of Command cannot attend.
G. The President must provide at least twelve hours notice in the event of a change in the Turn Chat schedule.
H. Delaying the chat by up to one hour without prior warning is permissible.

These changes would replace clauses B and C in Article I.1 of our CoS.

I would also like to propose adding these new laws to Article E of our Code of Standards:

11. A Turn Chat may not be held if there are fewer than three citizens plus the DP present.
12. Spot votes shall not be considered official unless at least four citizens vote. This applies to Spot Council Votes as well.

The purpose of these laws is to close up a loophole discovered a couple weeks ago during Term 3, which allowed the president to make decisions with little/no input from the citizen base.

 

[disorganizer]

B) in case a schedule can not be posted on the first day by the president, the follow up DP according to the COC has to post the schedule for the first week. this must be done because otherwise we may end with some lost days in a term (imagine the elected president "disappears" somehow... a week of no tc's would be the result!)

C) should be revised lates each sunday for the following week. otherwise the revision day would change from term to term. limiting it on sunday as the last day of the week will make things more simple and reliable.

E) how about: a DP is only allowed to schedule chats for times within his term ?

F) would never happen. our COC has 20 or so members... very low propability... and as such anyways it sould read "if no DP according to the COC can attend"....
and on the otherside: why not cancel it then? so we would not need this gummy F)-paragraph... instead, we could state that the president can cancel a turnchat at any time and for any reason.

G) 24h i would propose. not all citizens check twice a day... and most only check every 24h. i would even say 48h, but this would be too much.

H) where will that be stated/announced? i think this is not practical. the people at the chat will have to wait for 1h for the DP if he doesnt show up, because maybe he delayed the chat. so delete this. it is not needed. if the president is late, the COC works

to 11/12:
ok for me. just leave out the DP thing:
11) ... if fewer than 4 citizens are present.
the DP is the higherst ranked of those 4... no need to seperately mention him.

GENERAL COMMENT:
just for clarification: the DP is no pre-defined person! the DP is always the highes ranked person according to the COC. you proposal read as if the DP was predefined, which is not the case. it is not needed that the president or vicepresident plays all TC's.

i will prepare a counter proposal now

 

[Cyc]

Hmmmm. It will take me a while to sift through this one.

 

[Veera Anlai]

Ah... A few good points there Dis. Keep in mind though that the DP doesn't schedule the Turn Chats; he just plays the game and is operator during them.

I agree with you on points B, C, D, and H.
Strike off H entirely. It conflicts with Article D of our Code of Standards, and as such, wouldn't ever pass a Judicial Review. Don't know what I was thinking ^_^.
F actually has a very good chance of happening if the President schedules Turn Chats at 3 AM in the morning and only two or three players attend
I say 12 hours because if it's an emergency or unexpected schedule change, it won't be practical to change it 48 hours ahead of time.

Here's the quickly revised proposal...

B. The President must post a revised Turn Chat schedule on the first day of his term. In the event of his absence, the following player in the Chain of Command will post the schedule.
C. After the first schedule, it should be revised each Sunday.
D. If not updated, the existing schedule carries over week to week.
E. The President may only schedule or reschedule turn chats during his term.
F. The President should not reschedule a chat simply because of his absence.
G. The President must provide at least twelve hours notice in the event of a change in the Turn Chat schedule.
H. The President or the designated player of a turn chat may cancel the turn chat at any time.

11. A Turn Chat may not be held if there are fewer than four citizens present.
12. Spot votes shall not be considered official unless at least four citizens vote. This applies to Spot Council Votes as well.

 

[disorganizer]

Proposal:
1) planning and schedule
a) turnchats are planned and held by the president or on order by him by the vice president
b) the turnchats should be scheduled in for at least 1 week in advance if possible. the schedule is posted in a general turn-chat index
c) exact date and time of a turnchat must be announced in the turn-thread at least 24h before it starts.
d) 2 days before and 2 days after the beginning of a new term no turnchats may be held
e) the chat has to be canceled when major forum outages (see cfc news) have occured within 24h before the chats starting time.
2) turn chat canceling/starting/ending
a) the turnchat may be canceled by the president or on order of him by the vice president at any time by posting a cacelation in the turn-chat thread
b) a turnchat may only be held if at least 4 citizens are present at the chat
c) the turnchat may be ended by the DP at any time for any reason
d) if more than 2 citizens request the DP to stop the chat, he MUST use a spot-vote to determine wether to stop or not. a simple majority is needed to stop the chat.
e) on major events (like war, peace etc.) the chat has to be stopped
3) chat spot votes
a) the DP may call for spot votes of citizens or cabinet members at the chat on any decission. the kind of vote to be used is determined according to the rules for forum polls (for example for a queue override cabine spot-vote, for ingame decission citizen vote)
b) a chat spot vote is only valid if at least 4 eligable persons give their vote on it (cabinet spotvotes=4 cabinet members, citizen spot-vote=4 citizens).
c) if a spot vote was called out by the DP, he is not allowed to stop the chat until the poll is finished and its decission was played out
d) if at least 2 citizens request a spot-vote on any issue, the DP has to call for this vote

i think this was all for the moment.... ? or any other ideas/comments/suggestions? of course this would have to be written to fit into the stile of the rules, but surely shaitan can help with that

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

You know folks, this is pretty funny.

There is all kinds of *****ing about how complicated the rules are, but then the first thing we do to fix them is make more complicated rules.

Rules by the way which also have their own as of yet unforeseen loopholes.

At some point we all need to be reasonable.

I'd say add three lines:

1) The official time zone of DG2 is GMT/UTC
2) Presidents may only schedule chats that fall in their own term
3) A new President will post their turn chat schedule on the first day of their new term.

 

[disorganizer]

well, not that leaves SOME loopholes open... and is definitely not intended. why dont we just get the old dg1 term1 rules back then?

or why do we have rules at all?


....

why do people forget so fast?


and btw:
the above rules are not complicated. they are only covering the issues we had so far. being many does not automatically mean complicated. most complicated parts of our rules come from people trying to keep then "as vague as possible". which leads to confusion and misinterpretation. maybe we should word our rules in plain english rather than lawyers english to make them clearer.

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

Gee, I kind of thought that the three rules I suggested were written quite clearly and shortly.

 

[Octavian X]

I like Bill's proposal. Nice and simple.

I don't think the spot votes will be much of a problem. First off, Shaitan's PI will act as a great deterrant. Second, for the most part, we have returned to more attendable chats. No more 0:30 in the morning for a while.

I think I know why I joined the Civ2 demogame. It's a hell of a lot simpler...

 

[disorganizer]

Well, they did not help any of the issues we had now... and octavian: If the next president changes the chat times to 04:00 then dont complain!

 

[Veera Anlai]

I agree with Bill... His proposal makes more sense than my longwinded heap of junk ;-)

If we can get a council member to sponsor these changes, we'd be good to go!

CoS.I
D) The President may only schedule chats that fall in his or her own term.
E) A turn chat schedule will be posted on the first day of the President's new term.

 

[Cyc]

Me too. I agree with keeping it simple. These changes won't take much work or much time. We can use them for a while and if we see a need for more improvement later we can discuss it again.

 

[Shaitan]

3) A new President will post their turn chat schedule on the first day of their new term and may revise this each Sunday.

To keep some semblance of a schedule.

 

[Cyc]

Good wording, Shaitan. That should cover it.