Guild of Writers

It seems that (if we go by the voting system set up in the proposal) the proposal itself has been passed. However, the actual proposed Guild councilors we have proposed have failed to reach a minimum vote turnout of 33.

So, by the accepted proposal, this will leave the decision of guild councilors to, Trylon, Pryftan, and myself.

Rather than just vote the way I think is appropriate, I would like to get the opinions of those who voted AGAINST or ABSTAINED from certain candidates.

So please do not respond here if you accepted all of the candidates. I chose these people as well, and I can assume we share fairly close opinions on why we thought they would be acceptable.

So please tell me why you were AGAINST or ABSTAINED from the Guild Councilors vote (Even if it was only one councilor).

If you didn't vote at all, please post here why as well.

I'd like to add that in case of a council vote on the councilors, the following math will apply:

Poll result (is accepted in all cases) : 2x Accept
Acting Councilors vote: 3x Either Accept or Reject

So there are already 2 votes out of 5 in favour of the Councilors, and in order to change the outcome to reject, all of the three acting councilors will need to reject.

As this scenario is pointless, since we suggested the councilors in the first place, and the votes of the Guild are clearly in favour of the Councilors,
I suggest that in this case the three acting GC's will formally abstain from voting. Thus effectively accepting the results of the polls....

I did not vote. Since the polls were viewable to members only, I completely forgot about them, as I don't log in often.

When the polls were first introduced, I decided to wait. I waited for alternative nominees for some or all of the given positions, and I waited for the given nominees to state that yes, they would be delighted to fill positions if elected.

Neither of those pieces of information appeared, so I waited, and waited, and eventually forgot.

theclam wrote:When the polls were first introduced, I decided to wait. I waited for alternative nominees for some or all of the given positions, and I waited for the given nominees to state that yes, they would be delighted to fill positions if elected.

It appears that you misunderstood how it was going to work then
We had already contacted them to ask if they'd want to do that, so for them posting that they would accept was a bit pointless, and the structure document clearly stated that there would simple be a list for the guild to accept or reject. If rejected, we would go and look for other people...

But, since the polls are still open, feel free to still vote

I abstained, which is consistent with my being against having a council in the first place.

Also, there was only one imposed candidate for each job, no one could suggest others, so these weren't really elections. For all practical purposes, those guys have been elected for life by 3 people. It's OK for me, I don't really care and I wish them luck, but I'm not gonna rubber-stamp that process.

This is why I think the minimum turnout stipulated was arbitrary and inaccurate. You said we'd use it and see how it worked, and I think we can see it didn't work very well.

These first issues I think would generate more interest than any, and I only see turnout declining from here (among current members, that is -- I expect our total members to grow). I think 33 (whatever proportion of active posters that represents, I can't recall) was too high. Probably everyone who voted in these polls was the entire self-selected group of people interested in participating in voting in general (roughly equivalent to the "registered voters" idea I mentioned), so we should use this number, not an arbitrary proportion of the total active posters, to determine quorums in the future. As a rough guess, I would say maybe 3/4 of the number that voted in the most heavily attended poll would be appropriate.

When we get a new record turnout, we use that number to set a new quorum (3/4 of the highest turnout). Of course, that only works as long as we keep growing, but I hope that's the direction we'll take for a while, rather than the number of interested participants declining over time. If that does happen, and the quorum is consistently not being met, we can discuss decreasing the quorum appropriately. I know everybody hated the registered voters, so how does this system sound instead? It tries to accomplish similar goals (tying the quorum percentage to actual expressed interest), with less paperwork.

Chacal and other abstentions: I hope you officially abstained, by voting in the poll, and not just by boycotting the process altogether. We still need official abstentions to determine how many people actually care about participating, even if they give this one a miss.

We may make some severe changes to the way the voting works, and to the whole accepted guild sturcture. Your idea will be considered.

I personally think it sounds good. It may need a little tweaking here or there, but what isn't at this stage?

Remember that we are not setting up this guild as a pure democracy. We are trying to get it working like a business where the best canidates are put forth and accepted by a vote purely to make sure people will accept the councilors.

Trylon, Pry, and myself are acting (for this limited time) as HR people. We researched and found the best canidates for the job. If those canidates were not good enough than we would explore other canidates.

When the councilors are in place they will do the same. Unless the system is changed.

Edit: BTW, the current vote record is 37. So by your proposal of accepted votes we would require 28 votes to pass. That works for me. We did indeed pick the 20% out of the air. We took a shot in the dark to get the ball rolling. 33 vs 28? we wern't that far off......

bluewyvern wrote:Chacal and other abstentions: I hope you officially abstained, by voting in the poll, and not just by boycotting the process altogether.

Yes, of course.

Good to hear. Nothing gets settled by taking your ball, and going home.

bluewyvern wrote:When we get a new record turnout, we use that number to set a new quorum (3/4 of the highest turnout). Of course, that only works as long as we keep growing, but I hope that's the direction we'll take for a while, rather than the number of interested participants declining over time. If that does happen, and the quorum is consistently not being met, we can discuss decreasing the quorum appropriately. I know everybody hated the registered voters, so how does this system sound instead? It tries to accomplish similar goals (tying the quorum percentage to actual expressed interest), with less paperwork.

I think it sounds like a good idea