Council of Elrond

Hi everyone,

As you've seen, the Council of Elrond has been working for the past 6 months to, among other things, update the CoE Charter to more accurately reflect the current operational methods for our oversight body.

Several years ago when the Charter was last updated, Jabberwock opted for a community vote to ratify his updates, and while we can hazard a guess as to his reasoning for doing so, we ultimately can't say for sure. In any case, as we were working through updates over these past months, we concluded that a community vote on the Charter itself was less useful than an internal CoE vote to ratify, for several reasons:

1) Our focus in updating the Charter was primarily to re-establish and clarify the CoE's internal operations, committee structures, and so forth. Generally speaking, this is not something that the community at large needed to be "signing off on" so long as a majority of the Council itself had voted in favor of how we are operating.

2) As we've seen with our attempts to get community input on our rules digest drafts, even giving a full month for input has led to complaints from certain members of the community not having enough time to review and consider these sorts of updates. One of our Council's primary objectives from the beginning has been to "not let perfection be the enemy of progress" as we make strides toward better systems across the board, so delaying the Charter update further, while the outdated Charter remained on our website, was not ideal. Since the Charter can always be re-updated if problems are identified, we felt better to at least update it now and then revise with community input as needed.

3) The term "charter" is traditionally written/updated by its legislative overseers, not the general public. While previous Councils may have found it prudent to get community input in advance of a posted update, that is not something that is normally done for a "charter" in the broader sense of the word.

4) Finally, the current Councilmembers were all elected by the community at large in order to oversee the health and forward progress of MECCG, the community that surrounds it, and of course the CoE itself. Our goal is to meet (and exceed) those expectations, but ultimately we have been elected with the ostensible responsibility to do so. If members of the community want to have a larger voice in dictating how the Council operates toward that purpose, they are highly encouraged to run for the CoE themselves!

With all of that said, our Council is always very open to community input on how we can be making anything better. Please feel free to always get in touch with any of the current Councilmembers if you would like us to consider further fixes to the Charter or anything else. Thank you as always for your support and collaboration as we continue moving forward!

TWC3333 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 13, 2023 3:43 pm I think it is better to respect the players more. The player vote is attractive. Do not accept it?

There is a tension here between respecting players' autonomy to determine how we want our game to be and respecting players' time spent dealing with the minutiae of managing the game and community. A balance must be struck.

I think I can safely say that most everyone would rather spend our (limited) time playing/collecting/exploring MECCG than arguing over rules and charters. Hence why we delegate motivated and hopefully competent and trustworthy members of the community to take on the heavy lifting for these tasks.

I am very new around here, which potentially comes with a unique perspective. I am unburdened by bias towards individuals, as every interaction I've had with each of you has been delightful. I also don't fully understand, although I have an inkling of the time and effort that goes into maintaining and tending the community to keep it such a great place, but I do respect it.

Having said the above, please allow me to contribute the following on my perspective, from times leading and participating in both physical private clubs with assets and virtual ones.

In my experience, I do find it unusual for the elected committee to both propose and ratify it's own charter changes. There is generally checks and balances within the club constitution/ bylaws to prevent that. Depending on the impact of the proposed changes, it would be voted on at the annual general meeting (to which the members in good standing are encouraged to attend). Failing that, the leadership committee, would call either an out of cycle (specific) public meeting to address this proposed change, which members would be invited to, ensuring they provide clear notification to members in good standing via email, or widely accepted means of club communication (in this case, I'd assume the forum would suffice). You would have a 'reasonable time frame established' In which people can vote, via forum poll or via whatever suitable means. If that time elapses without a member noticing or being able to respond, at least then the committee can stand with hand on heart and say every effort was made to involve members without unduly slowing down progress.

All of the above is predicated on having an existing Constitution, Charter, By-laws ALREADY in place, to address the above scenarios, so that all members in good standing understand the powers of the committee and which actions may/ may not be taken without member input. This established clear ground rules on how to avoid an organisation materially changing, without member input, during a committee cycle.

So, my humble suggestion would be to establish the by-laws to address such situations ASAP in any upcoming charter updates so you can avoid any further potential confusion on committee powers. This provides peace of mind to both committee members and members in good standing, and can potentially avoid future disagreements.

One other thing that might be my own ignorance, I can't see anywhere in this section of the forum that specifically highlights, what the recent changes to the charter were. e.g. a marked up document.

As I said, I am new around here, please take the above in the positive spirit it's intended. I think you all, both members and committee, should be very proud of the community you have here, it's a refreshing oasis in the modern internet, and makes me harken back to days long gone by.

Thank you all for your input. Our goal as a Council is to rebuild trust with the community, and our intention with these changes was certainly not to break that trust but rather to internally organize our committee structures and get the Charter up to date with how we are operating in 2023. The Administrative Committee will be discussing alternate approaches here; more soon!