Vox Populi Congress: Call for New MAGI

[Recursive]

Hey all,

A major thank you to @Stalker0, @axatin and @Hinin for being the inaugural MAGI who assisted in the administration of the Vox Populi Congress.

Hinin has had to leave due to personal reasons, so I stepped in for Session #7, and axatin would prefer to focus his efforts on coding (he is currently tackling our huge backlog of bug reports, and doing an excellent job of it at that). Stalker0 would like to stay on, and as he has done an excellent job and the VP Congress concept was originally his idea, I have no issues with this.

As such, there are two vacancies for MAGI positions. Would any members of the community be interested in fulfilling this role? If so, post in this thread or send me a message by conversation or on the Discord server.

I will select the two best applicants towards the end of June. It would be ideal for at least one of the three MAGI to be a developer with some experience coding.

Selection criteria:

Magi Composition
The Host shall select three people from the community who are highly active/dedicated based on two factors: merit and conflicting perspectives. The Magi System is intended to encourage debate by selecting members who have different views and opinions on game balance. This internal diversity (and the ability for the member in the minority to appeal the decision if they strongly disagree) is intended to result in better decision-making by considering more perspectives. However, there is still executive oversight should the deliberations get out of hand.

If possible, at least one Magus will be a developer with experience in coding, so as to be able to determine what proposals are feasible to implement. If this is not possible, the Host may need to intervene for such judgement calls.


Magi Selection Criteria (Merit)
Requirements
- Able to be reasonably active in the community
- Able to check in at least once every 3 days during the upcoming months: July, October, January, April
- Able to respond to Magi vote summons within 24 hours during those months
- CivFanatics account in good standing (not known for violating site rules, picking fights, etc. - this will be checked!)
- Discord account & joined the VP Discord server
- Strong knowledge of Vox Populi's game balance
- Strong written communication skills in English
- Willing to make unpopular decisions
- Relatively impartial (the three Magi perspectives should balance out)
- Even-tempered; respectful of others, even if there's a disagreement
- Able to work with the other 2 Magi and the Host
- Able to explain perspectives and opinions in detail and support them with evidence

Assets
- Experience with coding or developing modmods, or knowledge of what is required to implement proposals
- Longer experience within the community
- Strong attention to detail
- Strong memory
- Strong interpersonal skills

Responsibilities:

The Magi System
This section describes the Magi, the main decision-makers of the VP Congress, in more detail.

The Magi are three members of the Vox Populi community chosen to serve for one year of Congress sessions (four sessions). Each Magus is chosen by the Host via an application process during the June Playtesting Phase of each year.

Three members, rather than a single assistant, are chosen for a few reasons: to ensure a variety of perspectives, to distribute the workload to avoid burnout, and to ensure there are several people able to fulfill the tasks.

Responsibilities by Phase
All Phases During Proposal Months
- Vote on Magi Votes within 24 hours.
- In the event that the Host is temporarily unable to perform his duties, the Magi collectively function as the Host for VP Congress purposes. This may be done by the Host's request, or if the Host is absent and fails to respond to prompting for 7 days.
- Respond to questions and appeals from community members. If any Magus thinks that a decision is worth revisiting as a result of new information or a change in perspective, they should call a Magi Vote.
- Using their expertise of game balance, respond to questions from community members seeking to design or critique proposals.
- Process Sponsorship Registrations (edit the main post in the thread to add new valid sponsors).
- Manage own workload and deliberations. The Magi may pass rules to manage these by majority vote, which will be enforced by the Host upon request.

Proposal & Counterproposal Phase
- Scrutinize new proposals, counterproposals, and amendments and ensure they're compliant with the Congress rules.
- Work with proposers to make sure the text of the proposal is clear and sufficient background information is provided for the community to understand the current state of things and how they're being modified.
- Edit proposals which fail to meet a Formatting Requirement (including renumbering proposals when one is withdrawn or vetoed).
- Unilaterally veto or require changes to proposals which fail to meet a Formal Requirement.
- A Magi Vote is required to do this for proposals which fail to meet a Judgement Call Requirement.
- Designate proposals as approved for fast-track acceptance with the [Fast Tracked] thread prefix.
- List the required skill sets to implement proposals into Vox Populi
- Designate proposals as requiring a supermajority to pass.
- Make judgement calls on whether proposals need to be merged or separated.
- Supervise the mod's balance, and submit counterproposals when it is desired for an alternative should exist to be voted on.

Sponsorship Phase
- Ensure sponsors are registered and capable of sponsoring their proposals.
- Mark proposal threads as [Sponsored] or [Backup Needed] as valid sponsorships occur.
- Make judgement calls on whether proposals affect the same area of balance and should be included as a voting option.
- Decide the list of voting options for such proposals, as well as proposals that have counterproposals.

Voting Phase
- Via a Magi Vote, cast the tiebreaking vote when two or more non-Nay options in a vote have equal vote totals.
- If a developer pushes a change to the mod on GitHub which affects the same game mechanics as a current proposal, and a Project Overseer approves it, vote on how to handle the situation.

Implementation Phase
- No additional responsibilities.

Playtesting Phase
- No additional responsibilities.

For more information, see the Vox Populi Congress Guide.

The term of office is one year (four Sessions) and is renewable.

 

[hokath]

I am happy to serve a term.

 

[Chippy Smith]

Seeing as I am less active historically than many, and have never contributed to the project before, I would be willing to serve if and only if you don't have two other eligible applicants. The Vox Populi experience has stood the test of time... it's probably a large reason Firaxis took so long to start development Civ 7... jk. The experience shepherded by first Gazebo and now you and the Magi is both complex and seamless, allowing for emergent gameplay against improved AI. If multiplayer was as stable of an experience as games newly released I would have no qualms calling Vox Populi the greatest strategy game, and most of what makes it good was introduced and maintained by fans.

It would be fun to have a more active role in this game's development. Though I have never made my own mods, I am capable of developing for the mod. I have experience with Lua, C++, and more, though to my understanding this project only uses those two. My time played may not be as much as others, and I place great value not only in the quality of this mod, but also the quick update schedule and clarity of past Congress proposals, so again, I would only feel comfortable serving if there is not two other attractive candidates. The 3 Magi, @Stalker0 , @axatin , and @Hinin have done an excellent job establishing the Congress as an effective development tool even through the early growing pains of the format. I want to thank them, as well as @Recursive , for continuing to improve, and not worsen, the fun game that is Civ V Vox Populi. Whoever replaces the two leaving Magi will surely have big shoes to fill!