Restructure proposal discussion

[Paradox]

I dislike the idea of three councillors. While you point out that it cuts down on unnecessary positions and makes things run more easily, I worry about the ease of abuse and the jobs that might be affected.

With 5 councillors there is an odd number (which is necessary to prevent ties in voting). As well, if one councillor is away or temporarily unable to preform his/her job, then one of the other councillors could pick up the slack. With only three councillors each of them will likely be tied up doing their own jobs. As well, three is a small number, and the saying goes "security in larger numbers" meaning that it is more difficult for corruption to happen in a very large group as opposed to a small group. (of course, the line has to be drawn somewhere, security in numbers does not mean that we need a council of 50 people).

I saw no issues with a 5 person council. Although I'm going to agree with Chacal "this proposition is better than the previous one, if you believe we need a leadership."

[BAD]

We had five. One disappeared, and another just resigned. One barely did a thing, and the other had very little to do. Sure, we could have a council with 15 people on it, but from what I see going on on this website 3 people is just enough to handle the day to day work.

Corruption? Like is one of the councilors going to try to take control of Rome? This is a small hobby site. This isn't congress. I think 3 people can handle the jobs that are needed to be done.

If a Councilor is doing a poor job or is getting over aggressive, Reps, or the other councilors can replace them easily.

If you can find me two more jobs that need a persons full attention to be done, I'll gladly consider adding them to the council.

[Trylon]

Maybe having 2 "spare" councilors wouldn't be a bad idea either Bad.
3 people could e.g. easily be on vacation at the same time in any time of the year. The two spare councilors could replace them if they are away or something.
Plus, two extra councilors would give new people a good opportunity to join the council (which is a valid point raised), since there'd be only 3 specific tasks.

Plus, since we defined a number of issues that the council has the authority to act on without prior approval (don't worry, there is a failsafe mechanism: the rep's can cancel any such decision afterwards), I think there'd be enough room for 5 councilors to do a satisfactory job.

[Lontahv]

The councilors can just go and do something else if they get bored.

Each councilor not having much of anything happening may be a good thing. This means that they might have time to spend with the community or writing tutorials or something.

Hmm... if we changed the names and only have 3 spots for councilors won't there be an error like this:

Code: Select all

TypeError: council() takes exactly 3 arguments (5 given)

...

...let me put it a different way:

What will we call the extra councilors? Will they just be non-area-specific councilors?

[Dot]

What will we call the extra councilors? Will they just be non-area-specific councilors?

Taking a cue from the British Government: Councilors [Ministers] without portfolios?

[andylegate]

Thanks for answer a couple of my questions.

The amount of Councilors seems important to several people, for various reasons. As you know, over at the GoMa, we started out with 5 and worked our way up to 7 leaders,

But we have several differences from your structure that you have here too. Each GM is over a department, and we have several departments.

of course not all of our GM's are around all the time. Jishin and Montgomery are good examples of that as they have RL things that take them away from the guild quite a bit.

But again, it's hard to compare, because we use different titles than y'all use here, and we've put a ladder in place for people to climb. I ddon't see the harm in having only 3 councilors here, but neither do I see the harm in more. I guess it just depends on what jobs you'd have for them, or how worried you all feel about it.

[Nadnerb]

I don't really think "spare" councilors are necessary, they just take up weird administrative space, and don't serve much purpose. Given how much more streamlined the new proposal process is, it shouldn't be any problem to immediately replace a councilor who steps down or goes away for a while. As for three being too few councilors, I don't see the problem there either. As clearly shown by the the past system, there isn't enough work for 5 councilors in this place, so there's no reason to set up a bunch of name-only positions.

I'm with BAD on this now. With the clarification about the nature of the Tech councilor's position, I have no further complaints with this proposal.

[BAD]

I think one of the best parts of this system is that the councilors technically have more influence creatively on the GoW but they are not completely integral to the day to day running.

If a Councilor is wise, they will appoint directors to act in their stead if they need to take an extended vacation. Directors will end up being a system that allows much more flexibility with how the GoW functions.

The role of the councilors also have less influence on important decisions concerning the GOW. Reps can create, discuss and vote in any proposal without the involvement of the councilors. So if a councilor is MIA, within 9 days reps can replace them potentially.

The councilors are no longer going to be leaned on as heavily when it comes to decision making, so having two extra councilors hanging about makes no sense to me. The role of a councilor is now a job, not just a useless decision making entity.

[Lontahv]

Well... IMO it was a job before it's just that they didn't really focus on what they should've been doing... they were all really doing the same thing in their seats with the exception of 'Dox who wrote those newsletter things.

This is why I want all of the seats to be equal in the struture (because they have been in practice for so long)... even if something in particular is their forte doesn't mean that they'll do it well councilor. Such as, Paradox is a brilliant plugin-writer but I doubt he'd want to fill the job of "Councilor of Plugin Development" if Hoikas resigned (/me gets knocked over the head by AdamJ for suggesting this ). I wish there was a place where you could be a head of a branch of the GoW without having to deal with all the junk of councilor-ship.

It's kinda like: "Hey, you're good at this job! You are now the councilor of that category!" you: "Err... what are all these papers?" them: "Oh, those... well that's what you'll REALLY be doing but we just wanted to make the job unique looking from the outside so we could get more man-power. MUHAHAH!".

[BAD]

There is Lon. It's called being a Director. That is a part of the reason we incorperated that system into this.

The jobs are well detailed. Your either doing those jobs, or are not being a councilor.