Handling Proposals

[Engineer Pikachu]

This thread will be moderated to keep discussion focused.​

So we're going to discuss a proposal that will enable us to put given proposals into action before discussing the proposals.

PROPOSAL

Regarding the ASB Council, we need to make it more efficient. There, I said it.

Proposal for how proposals are done:

Feedback thread is redone. A proposal is posted, and rather than debate the proposal in the thread people quote the post and say either "I support this proposal and wish to move this to a discussion", or "I disagree with this proposal and wish to move it to discussion". Alternatively, a person can respond with "I agree with this proposal but do not believe this proposal should go to discussion" or "I disagree with this proposal and believe it should not be slated for discussion". A max of the first five votes will be counted.

If in the five votes on a proposal, at least two say to not move to debate, the council members can amongst themselves through private chats/IRC take any option:
- Instantly vote to implement the proposal
- Move proposal to discussion
- Ignore the proposal entirely

Assumming a proposal garners the required support to discuss a discussion is opened. Discussion will last for up to one week, or until 24 hours of no activity. Council members will hold a public vote, using IRV with the current system, the original proposal and any amended proposals with decent support.

Examples:

[box]The everyone-loves-it proposal

• Bob posts a Proposal, possibly about how it's kind of unfair to reward 10 UC for a 1v1 reffing and how to fix it.
• Amy, Alex and Bill, Catherine and Charlie post in agreement, stating that it should not move to discussion.
• The council reviews the proposal.
• The council moves to directly vote on the proposal.
• The council unanimously votes to implement the proposal.
• The proposal is implemented

[/box]

[box]The controversial proposal.

• Jack posts a Proposal, possibly about how UC is too high in some cases, and how a formula could be changed to fix this.
• John and Jill post agreeing with the proposal and wanting to discuss it, Kim posts disagreeing with the proposal and wanting to discuss it. Liam and Lisa post disagreeing with the proposal and stating it should not be discussed.
• The Council notes the votes against discussion and chooses the best course of action.
• The council decides to move to a discussion, and post one.
• Discussion lasts as long as needed
• Council votes
• Proposal implemented/discarded as per vote

[/box]

[box]The terrible proposal

• Fred posts a proposal, possibly about how half of all earnt income should be given to him.
• Fiona, Henry, Harry, Gertrude and Greg all post against the proposal, stating no discussion should be needed.
• The Council notes the votes against discussion and chooses the best course of action.
• The Council objects to discussion and discards the proposal

[/box]

This allows silly things to be quickly removed, controversial things can move to discussion, and easy implementations can be performed within 24 hours most of the time - far more efficient than a 2 week wait.

There's really not much to add to this; it covers all the cases.

Discussion, if any occurs, could possibly answer some guiding questions:

1. Is the current method of handling proposals efficient? Why or why not?
2. Is the proposed method of handling proposals more efficient than the current method?
3. Can the proposed method lead to proposals that should be discussed not being discussed? If so, is this possibility likely?

 

[Woodchuck]

I am not sure on whether I am allowed to post in this thread; if necessary let me know and I will step out / delete my posts.

I have a question of clarification:

If in the five votes on a proposal, at least two say to not move to debate, the council members can amongst themselves through private chats/IRC take any option:
- Instantly vote to implement the proposal
- Move proposal to discussion
- Ignore the proposal entirely

How would you count how many move not to debate? That is, what if council member A moves to "Instantly vote to implement the proposal" while member B moves to "Ignore the proposal entirely", and C, D, and E all vote to slate the proposal for discussion. Would this be enough to move the decision to private chats and IRC, or do the votes to skip discussion have to be in agreement with one another?

 

[Its_A_Random]

Anyone is allowed to post woodchuck, lol.

Anyhow, my main gripe is this. Why should there be a week minimum/maximum (idk) mandated for discussion threads? It seems like a pointless limit when debates can usually take over a week as a minimum. Well, Levitate was an exception, but let us be honest, there was not that much to discuss, other than about the ability & the command, which was resolved quickly.

In my opinion, "Discussion will last for up to one week, or until 24 hours of no activity." should be changed to: "Discussion Threads will last until either most of the issues have been resolved, and more than 24 hours have passed since the last post, or until the discussion thread gets significantly out of hand."

I understand that it is a bit vague, & it is very subjective (Furthermore, it can be better worded), but the whole point is, not every issue takes a week to be fully ironed out, especially in the case of something like a UC debate. So ideally, no hard constraints in terms of time limits for discussions would allow the short, easily resolvable debates, to end & move to voting quickly. This also means that long debates that may take more than a week to be ironed out, can take longer to be moved to voting if necessary.

inb4 I did not understand the full context of the proposal...

 

[Seven Deadly Sins]

Discussions should last until the discussion becomes unproductive. There's no simple way to handle that, it's more a judgment call.

 

[ZhengTann]

I would agree with IAR and SDS about no hard constraints - I believe we can trust in the good judgement of the Council. But in any case:

Discussion shall last until there is a state of inactivity for more than 48 hours since the last post, in which case a Council member may put up a reminder that the thread has a 24-hour period before closing.

This allows most users to chime in if they couldn't previously due to IRL issues, argument composition problems, etc. It also allows for most facets of the discussion to be ironed out (if there are some parts in the discussion topic that merits debate, I'm sure people would put in their 2 quarters), and at the same time set a long enough window for last-minute posts.

Hindsight - from what I get of the proposal though, it implies that

- If more than 5 people agree/disagree on discussing/implementing the proposal, it will garner the attention of the Council, and action will be taken.
- If less than 5 people do so, the proposal effectively flushes itself down the drain.

I'll need some clarification on this, if possible - just to make things clearer to everyone.

 

[Dogfish44]

OK, I need to make a couple of things clear (My fault). Agreeing with the "No Limits needed" thing though, discussions becoming unproductive should be clear and we can work from there.

@Woodchuck - The council can decide amongst itself quite easily what they wish to do, and we would always defer to opening a discussion.

@Zt - Only the first 5 votes on a proposal would be looked at (Already edited that bit in now to make it clearer). If two or more say that we should instantly vote (Not debate), then the council will review the proposal and decide themselves. Any less and the discussion will go up as fast as possible.

Regarding the questions: No, Yes, No.

 

[Objection]

In my opinion, "Discussion will last for up to one week, or until 24 hours of no activity." should be changed to: "Discussion Threads will last until either most of the issues have been resolved, and more than 24 hours have passed since the last post, or until the discussion thread gets significantly out of hand."

Yeah, I'm agreeing with this. Make this change and this proposal gets my support.

 

[ZhengTann]

Some minor nitpicks to be asked: assuming this proposal handling method is meant to reduce chaos, we have yet to address the issue of "unlucky postcount proposal". Take the following scenario, for example:

• A proposal is put forward and started to gain some momentum, in the form of, say, 4 votes.
• All of a sudden 3 or 4 proposals are added below it, effectively pushing the previous proposal to the previous page and out of most people's minds.

In such circumstances, an ideal solution would be to:

1. Link back to the Forgotten Proposal (only allowed per new page of the thread).
2. List out the users that support/oppose the Forgotten Proposal, including the said users' stance.
3. Allow it to finish its momentum (i.e. garner enough attention of the Council)

Basically, I think that this proposal aims to reduce thread hogging, multi-direction discussion, and generally allow fair attention towards all proposals. So perhaps we'll need such a defined step to help keep track of everything. Ideas and proposals may not have a short shelf life, but visitors have short memory span - most just can't be bothered to read the 2nd last page.

Also, should there be a case where a proposal simply cannot garner enough attention (as in, it is always stuck at 4 votes) or that the proposal got it's mandatory 5 votes, a Council member could post the Council's stance on the proposal (Veto, Discuss, or Implement) to make the decision public and stop any more bullshit stalling on that matter.

 

[Objection]

I thought people who felt strongly enough about certain proposals did step 1 in your ideal solution already. But yeah, I support everything ZhengTann says in the above post.

 

[ZhengTann]

Just one final nitpick, if I may:

Council members will hold a public vote, using IRV with the current system, the original proposal and any amended proposals with decent support.

If I remember correctly, IRV is a decent voting method when voters have a limited (as in 3 to 5) slate to choose from. But in the case of a 2-option slate, it's kind of a no-brainer to simply use Single Bold Voting as well. So I'd like to propose a change to:

Upon closing of the discussion thread, Council members will hold a public vote, using a suitable voting system with the slate containing the current system, the original proposal and any amended proposals with decent support. Should there be a tie amongst the votes of the Council members, Deck Knight withholds the rights to step in with the tie-breaking vote.

EDIT: Just thought of adding in a clarification on when, exactly, does the Council hold the voting thread, and what happens if there is a tie. Kind of setting in stone what we all already know implicitly.

 

[Objection]

OK, we've sat on our asses for too long with this, so I am going to draft up an amended version of this proposal with the things that have been pointed out in the thread so far.

EDIT: Here we go.

[box]Proposal for how proposals are done (amended):

Feedback thread is redone. A proposal is posted, and rather than debate the proposal in the thread people quote the post and say either "I support this proposal and wish to move this to a discussion", or "I disagree with this proposal and wish to move it to discussion". Alternatively, a person can respond with "I agree with this proposal but do not believe this proposal should go to discussion" or "I disagree with this proposal and believe it should not be slated for discussion". The first five votes will be counted.

If in the five votes on a proposal, at least two say to not move to debate, the council members can amongst themselves through private chats/IRC take any option:

• Instantly vote to implement the proposal
• Move proposal to discussion
• Ignore the proposal entirely

If fewer than two of the first five votes say to not move to debate, the council will default to moving the proposal to discussion. Whichever course of action the council decides on will be posted in the feedback thread.

Assumming a proposal garners the required support to discuss, a discussion is then opened. Discussion will last until such time that the discussion has either become inactive or gotten out of hand (at the discretion of the council). Once this point has been reached, council members will hold a public vote, using single vote for polls with 2 options and IRV for polls with more than 2 options. The options shall consist of the current system (ie, no change), the original proposal and any amended proposals with decent support. If, after all council members have voted, the vote is tied or otherwise in deadlock, Deck Knight reserves the right to cast a tiebreaking vote. If this still results in a tie in a poll that uses IRV, there will be another vote between the remaining options in that poll.

In the event that a proposal does not get five votes on it within 25 posts of its inception, the proposal may be bumped by making a post containing a link to the proposal and additional links to all votes cast on the proposal with the stances being mentioned in the post. This process may be repeated as necessary every 25 posts after each bump; however, if a proposal ends up with four votes on it twice in a row, the council may make a decision to veto, discuss or implement the proposal based on the votes so far.

Examples:

[box]The everyone-loves-it proposal

• Bob posts a Proposal, possibly about how it's kind of unfair to reward 10 UC for a 1v1 reffing and how to fix it.
• Amy, Alex and Bill, Catherine and Charlie post in agreement, stating that it should not move to discussion.
• The council reviews the proposal.
• The council moves to directly vote on the proposal.
• The council unanimously votes to implement the proposal.
• The proposal is implemented

[/box]

[box]The controversial proposal

• Jack posts a Proposal, possibly about how UC is too high in some cases, and how a formula could be changed to fix this.
• John and Jill post agreeing with the proposal and wanting to discuss it, Kim posts disagreeing with the proposal and wanting to discuss it. Liam and Lisa post disagreeing with the proposal and stating it should not be discussed.
• The Council notes the votes against discussion and chooses the best course of action.
• The council decides to move to a discussion, and post one.
• Discussion lasts as long as needed
• Council votes
• Proposal implemented/discarded as per vote

[/box]

[box]The terrible proposal

• Fred posts a proposal, possibly about how half of all earnt income should be given to him.
• Fiona, Henry, Harry, Gertrude and Greg all post against the proposal, stating no discussion should be needed.
• The Council notes the votes against discussion and chooses the best course of action.
• The Council objects to discussion and discards the proposal

[/box]

[box]The ignored proposal

• Paul posts a Proposal, possibly with the intent of clarifying/codifying when the energy cost for moves with multiple phases such as Sky Attack and Dig is paid.
• Sarah and Robert post agreeing with the proposal and wanting to discuss it, Steven and Tom post disagreeing with the proposal and wanting to discuss it. Suddenly, a whole load of other proposals come in and take attention away from Paul's one, meaning it doesn't get a fifth vote.
• Paul bumps his proposal by posting a link to it and other links to Sarah, Robert, Steven and Tom's votes, stating what each of their stances is.
• Unfortunately, nobody else votes on Paul's proposal due to the other proposals being fresher in their minds and even more new ones coming in.
• The council notices that Paul's proposal has been stuck on four votes twice in a row and decides to make an official decision on the proposal.
• Because nobody voted against discussing the proposal, the council decides to move to a discussion, and post one.
• Discussion lasts as long as needed
• Council votes
• Proposal implemented/discarded as per vote

[/box]

This allows silly things to be quickly removed, controversial things can move to discussion, and easy implementations can be performed within 24 hours most of the time - far more efficient than a 2 week wait.[/box]

 

[Dogfish44]

I approve of the above and wish to move it to a vote.

 

[Its_A_Random]

gdi Dogfish, you were supposed to lock this as well... -.-'

But yeah, the voting thread is up.