The Flat Earth Society
The Flat Earth Society => Suggestions & Concerns => Topic started by: Tau on August 05, 2014, 09:54:42 PM
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There's a new draft of the constitution in the Council forum. Here (http://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=1774.msg37860#new) is a link.
I'll keep making new drafts and putting them up for review until there's a general consensus that the constitution is finished and good. Then I'll put it up for a vote among the Council to ratify it.
Changes in the new draft:
Language giving the Council power to remove administrators has been removed. Administrators can now only be removed from power by their own request.
Official members can now vote to impeach the entire council at once.
Official members can now vote to amend the constitution
These are the changes suggested in the previous thread. I know a lot of people expressed concerns about the Council's power with regard to elections and the potential for abuse there, which I didn't really address in this new draft. I'm hoping that the changes I made to impeachment are enough to satisfy those concerns, but I'm willing to discuss them further if this is not the case.
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What if an administrator goes rogue?
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What if an administrator goes rogue?
I dunno. I'm not sure who to give the power to dethrone them to. The obvious answer is to give it to the official members, but I wanted to see what you guys thought.
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What if an administrator goes rogue?
I dunno. I'm not sure who to give the power to dethrone them to. The obvious answer is to give it to the official members, but I wanted to see what you guys thought.
The owner of the server the forum is on.
If the owner goes rogue, then we move forums. Simple.
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What if an administrator goes rogue?
I dunno. I'm not sure who to give the power to dethrone them to. The obvious answer is to give it to the official members, but I wanted to see what you guys thought.
The owner of the server the forum is on.
If the owner goes rogue, then we move forums. Simple.
I feel like the owner is automatically gonna be an administrator, though. Should we just give the power to other admins then?
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I formally request the power to ban mods and admins at my leisure.
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I formally request the power to ban mods and admins at my leisure.
Sounds good to me. All powers shall be vested in Vauxhall to administrate and moderate administrators and moderators of all Flat Earth Society affiliated sites.
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I feel like the owner is automatically gonna be an administrator, though.
If the owner goes rogue, they can circumvent any and all attempts at enforcing any and all rules so long as they control the server. I think it's too extreme of a situation to account for in the constitution, but essentially the only solution would be to set up a new forum.
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I feel like the owner is automatically gonna be an administrator, though. Should we just give the power to other admins then?
It has never been the mandate of the Zetetic Council to oversee or manage the operations of the forum at all. The original purpose for its existence was to run the Society independently of the forum. I don't see that it has the authority to give that power to anyone.
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Just out of curiosity, how will this constitution affect reunification efforts? Should there be a discussion on the other site as well?
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Just out of curiosity, how will this constitution affect reunification efforts? Should there be a discussion on the other site as well?
I'm considering holding off on any ratification until after reunification for this reason. I'm willing to open up a conversation thread on the other site if people want me to.
I feel like the owner is automatically gonna be an administrator, though. Should we just give the power to other admins then?
It has never been the mandate of the Zetetic Council to oversee or manage the operations of the forum at all. The original purpose for its existence was to run the Society independently of the forum. I don't see that it has the authority to give that power to anyone.
The Zetetic Council has no ability to oversee or manage the operations of the forum. I unthinkingly gave it a few inappropriate powers in the first draft, but they have been removed in this one.
When I say 'we', I mean the society. Not the council. I'm the one writing the constitution and I currently have ratification being done by the council, but I can change that if people want me to. Ratification can be a popular vote type thing. I've made every attempt to make the constitution a document of the people and not of the council and I want to make it clear that this is my goal. The Zetetic Council will never have anything to do with running the forum. However, when it was first created it was tasked with creating a constitution and I have every intention of completing that task.
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The Zetetic Council has no ability to oversee or manage the operations of the forum. I unthinkingly gave it a few inappropriate powers in the first draft, but they have been removed in this one.
When I say 'we', I mean the society. Not the council. I'm the one writing the constitution and I currently have ratification being done by the council, but I can change that if people want me to. Ratification can be a popular vote type thing. I've made every attempt to make the constitution a document of the people and not of the council and I want to make it clear that this is my goal. The Zetetic Council will never have anything to do with running the forum. However, when it was first created it was tasked with creating a constitution and I have every intention of completing that task.
I think it's the whole "administrator" bit. What need does the council have for an admin vs a moderator?
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I feel like the owner is automatically gonna be an administrator, though.
If the owner goes rogue, they can circumvent any and all attempts at enforcing any and all rules so long as they control the server. I think it's too extreme of a situation to account for in the constitution, but essentially the only solution would be to set up a new forum.
Adding a clause about that in the constitution could give legitimacy to breakaway sites, though. It could avoid situations like the one we were in with Daniel and the Wikipedia page where the previous site owner declares the new site irrelevant and not the real society. The new site could point to the constitution, ratified by the Flat Earth Society, to demonstrate their legitimacy.
The clause I'm thinking about would be something about a situation where the site owner fails to uphold certain responsibilities (keeping the site running smoothly, not being bat-shit insane), and the society taking away ownership of its site because of this.
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The Zetetic Council has no ability to oversee or manage the operations of the forum. I unthinkingly gave it a few inappropriate powers in the first draft, but they have been removed in this one.
When I say 'we', I mean the society. Not the council. I'm the one writing the constitution and I currently have ratification being done by the council, but I can change that if people want me to. Ratification can be a popular vote type thing. I've made every attempt to make the constitution a document of the people and not of the council and I want to make it clear that this is my goal. The Zetetic Council will never have anything to do with running the forum. However, when it was first created it was tasked with creating a constitution and I have every intention of completing that task.
I think it's the whole "administrator" bit. What need does the council have for an admin vs a moderator?
But what does the council have to do with it?
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But what does the council have to do with it?
You're writing a Constitution for the Council, aren't you?
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The Zetetic Council has no ability to oversee or manage the operations of the forum. I unthinkingly gave it a few inappropriate powers in the first draft, but they have been removed in this one.
When I say 'we', I mean the society. Not the council. I'm the one writing the constitution and I currently have ratification being done by the council, but I can change that if people want me to. Ratification can be a popular vote type thing. I've made every attempt to make the constitution a document of the people and not of the council and I want to make it clear that this is my goal. The Zetetic Council will never have anything to do with running the forum. However, when it was first created it was tasked with creating a constitution and I have every intention of completing that task.
I think it's the whole "administrator" bit. What need does the council have for an admin vs a moderator?
But what does the council have to do with it?
Sorry, I meant to say "What does the council need their own admin for? What do they need that a moderator can't do?"
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But what does the council have to do with it?
You're writing a Constitution for the Council, aren't you?
We are writing a constitution for the society. The council is a part of it, but not the only part of it. There are some advantages to this over having a super special constitution that only applies to the council.
First of all, legitimacy. As I said to PP, having a concrete constitution detailing the basics of running the society allows us to make a more accurate delineation as to what the society is, as well as what counts as part of the society. Daniel suggested in the Wiki page that we are not the official Flat Earth Society. A constitution that goes beyond the site but does not ignore it allows the society to make situations such as our breakaway more official. Daniel wouldn't have been able to deny our existence if there had been a widely accepted constitution which allowed such a thing to happen. The main purpose behind having a constitution is to avoid situations such as what happened to the old site. If a site fails to abide by its constitution, the members will have a much easier time demanding change. If there's a process in place to free the site of tyrants or useless leaders we won't have to worry about a John Davis type situation.
In addition to all of that, it's frankly way simpler. Having a constitution that doesn't acknowledge the existence of admins or moderators makes it weird in some situations. Here's an example off the top of my head: if an official member gets banned, obviously they aren't going to be able to vote in an election. However, if we don't give a membergroup the specific ability to ban people, then this is actively unconstitutional. In order to fix this we'd need to put a system in place to allow official members to temporarily lose the right to participate in council matters, but that's just banning under a different name. We'd have to give the power to someone, and giving it to the council is a) needlessly overcomplicated and b) just begging for abuse. What if the council disagrees with the moderator's decision to ban the member? Thus, we need to create a moderator group. But who creates the moderator group? Again it shouldn't be the council, so now we have to create an administrator group. Ignoring problems like that invalidates the entire constitution.
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But what does the council have to do with it?
You're writing a Constitution for the Council, aren't you?
We are writing a constitution for the society. The council is a part of it, but not the only part of it. There are some advantages to this over having a super special constitution that only applies to the council.
I could be wrong, but I think that when he said "for the council" he meant "on behalf of the council".
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The site and the society are separate bodies. That's the entire point of having separate and non-overlapping power structures. That's what the Council was elected to do. If you want to give yourself powers that you were explicitly set out to never have, that will not be recognised by the administration of this site.
Please re-read the original proposal and discussion (http://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=850.0), especially Parsifal's definition of the constitution which was widely accepted (and differs from yours). It has always been crystal clear that you'd have no power over our remit, and we'd have no power over yours. Your remit is currently not strictly defined, and that is the #1 task of the constitution. Anything else can follow later.
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The site and the society are separate bodies. That's the entire point of having separate and non-overlapping power structures. That's what the Council was elected to do. If you want to give yourself powers that you were explicitly set out to never have, that will not be recognised by the administration of this site.
Please re-read the original proposal and discussion (http://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=850.0), especially Parsifal's definition of the constitution which was widely accepted (and differs from yours). It has always been crystal clear that you'd have no power over our remit, and we'd have no power over yours. Your remit is currently not strictly defined, and that is the #1 task of the constitution. Anything else can follow later.
But we've given the council no such powers. The admins have absolutely no power over the council and the council has absolutely no power over the admins. I added in some inappropriate powers in the first draft, but they're gone now.
I understand that you're uncomfortable with the constitution mentioning you at all. But do please at least respond to my reasoning.
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Mentioning us is one thing, discussing things like "what if admins go rogue?" is another. If an admin wants to step down, or needs to be dismissed for some reason, that would fall under our remit, and wouldn't be part of the constitution. The idea here is that we have two separate documents (manifesto and constitution) for two separate structures. Formalising one within the other is problematic.
Now, your hypothetical situation can be easily resolved in a number of ways, either technical (e.g. an off-forum voting system) or organisational (allowing for multiple ways of voting and introducing e.g. e-mail votes). It doesn't warrant a discussion of how moderation should work.
Acknowledging that a separate document specifying how administration and moderation works is about as much as you can do if you really need to put a mention in there. Trying to prevent us from turning into tyrants via policy is simply unworkable. So Parsifal goes rogue and you tell him to step down - who cares? If he's gone rogue, he owns the site anyway and he won't listen to you. If Parsifal doesn't go rogue, but I do, it'll be him that deposes me, not you. Even if I didn't have organisational concerns about this idea, it's practically impossible to execute.
Your concerns are already addressed by the solution we have in place - the site and society are separate as far as management goes. If the society isn't happy with the website run for it, it can move, because there's nothing in the rules that ties it to the site. Trying to formalise this connection and then come up with a system where it can be severed is a waste of time.
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Perhaps some kind of system where the council recognises the forum as representing the society?
So you have a forum about Flat Earth theory that becomes the official Flat Earth Society forum because the council provides recognition. If the council is unhappy at the direction of the forum, they could withdraw their recognition and the forum would cease to officially represent the society. That way the council would be able to exert some influence over the administrators without direct involvement in moderation and administration.
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Something along those lines could work, yeah
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That's fine with me. In the next draft I'll replace TB's section about member types with a section about the existence of the forum and remove the stuff about mods and admins.
Should we include language defining what an official FES affiliated site is? This would have the advantage of a) clearly making a distinction between ourselves and parody sites like alaska.net and b) giving legitimacy to breakaway sites.
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That sounds sensible to me. I think The Terror's suggestion is spot on, really. Let's see if anyone else has input on this, though.
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The first line under the section Zetetic Council reads "The Zetetic Council will be in charge of publicizing the society and FET". I thought the ZC was more than that. It seems pretty specific for the first sentence.
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The first line under the section Zetetic Council reads "The Zetetic Council will be in charge of publicizing the society and FET". I thought the ZC was more than that. It seems pretty specific for the first sentence.
It is more than that. That entire paragraph is a list of the powers of the ZC.
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The President of the United States
The President of the United States chooses the new furniture upon move-in. Every thanksgiving the president is given the option of pardoning the White House turkey. On Easter the president participates holds the White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn, open to kids of all ages. The President is also Commander and Chief of the Armed forces, signs and vetoes laws, issues Executive Orders, and appoints court justices.
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I might be reading in to this, but I think Tom does not like the paragraph.