Council of Elrond

i have done an update to the draft of the new charter. i hope i got everything correct as discussed in the old thread.
for better reading i have started this new thread here.
now: if you find anything wrong or missing, please tell us.
if you do not and agree with the draft, tell so as well.

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Council of Elrond Charter

We, the members of the Council of Elrond (CoE), re-charter the Council of Elrond, in order to better meet the needs of an evolving community in facilitating organized play and ameliorating the playing environment.

The composition, scope and powers of this CoE are delineated in the following manner:

Composition:
• The CoE shall be comprised of nine voting members.
• The number of seats up for election each election shall be eight.
• The Chair is not up for election.
• The term of office shall be twenty-four months. In the event that a member is not able to bring his term to completion, a new member shall be appointed based on the results of the election; if such is unfeasible, a special election among the non-voting COE members shall be held.
• Normal elections shall be held beginning on June 15th; a candidate shall announce his candidacy no later than this date. Elections shall end on June 30th.

Method of election:
• All candidates will be listed on the CoE community discussion platform, and the CoE will appoint a registrar (who is not a member of the current CoE, and who is not going to be a candidate), who shall be responsible for maintaining this list and monitoring the votes.
• Each candidate must receive no less than one percent of the votes collected on the CoE community discussion platform in order to be elected.
• If ten or more people run for election to the CoE, the size of the CoE will remain nine. If nine or eight people run for election, the size of the CoE will be decreased from nine members to seven members. If seven people or fewer run for election, the election will be postponed for two months. In that time the members of the previous session will discuss how to continue (which might include modifying the Charter or even dissolving the CoE). For that matter each representative of the active national councils will receive one vote, as will each member of the previous session.

Tasks:
• Upon seating the newly elected CoE, the first order of business of each session of the CoE shall be the election of a Vice Chair from amongst their midst. The last order of business of a given session of the CoE shall be the selection of next session's Chair.
• Each active council recognized by the CoE may appoint a non-voting spokesperson who shall take part in Council debates.
• The CoE may further appoint non-voting experts to participate in their debates.
• The CoE shall maintain a web site and community discussion platform (currently an internet forum), including on such web site information on how to organize a council, how to gain recognition from this Council, a compendium of the rules, help for beginners, et cetera.
• The CoE will provide as needed hosting and a sub-forum for any recognized National Council that requests and has need of such.
• The CoE shall provide a bimonthly newsletter detailing important information regarding the CoE as well as events of interest to the community in general. This newsletter will be a compilation of input from all members of the community.
• The CoE shall maintain a player’s directory and a list of contacts for various nations in the absence of a National Council for the Nation.
• The CoE shall authorize a World’s Tournament for the game once a year, and shall decide upon a suitable venue.
• The CoE shall further authorize and encourage online tournaments.
• The CoE shall encourage tournament participation by offering special prizes at CoE -sanctioned events.
• The CoE shall from time to time as it sees fit compose rules of order and make modifications to the same.

Powers:

• The CoE shall appoint and maintain at least one spokesperson during each session whose duties shall consist of clarifying rules, interpreting card texts, adjudicating rules disputes, clarifying game play questions, adjudicating conflicts between cards, updating the Rules Documents and forwarding any appropriate issues to the CoE. The title of said office shall be NetRep. The NetRep is enabled to gather a team of advisors around him in order to support him with rulings, errata and rules changes. The NetRep shall publish a rulings digest bimonthly as well as update the Rules Documents accordingly. If no new rulings are to be made, the NetRep shall inform the CoE of such.
• The CoE shall issue errata or rules changes as needed. The NetRep Team discusses and proposes the erratum or rules change. Proposed erratum or rules change shall be placed for an open vote before the community and shall be ratified by a two-thirds majority after a voting period of three weeks. The CoE shall be responsible for announcing, maintaining and monitoring the vote. Rules so ratified shall be considered in force when announced in the next Newsletter from the CoE.


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Ratification of this Charter shall become effective upon the affirmative vote of two thirds as collected on the CoE discussion platform after an announcement by the CoE and a voting period of three weeks.

Looks wonderful. Superb hard work, Wolfgang!

--Frodo

well thakns, but most of it is still ben´s

Looks pretty complete to me as well

good job to ben and thanks for compiling/adding the discussed issues by Wolfgang

mfg Nicolai

Looks nice. Good job!

Let's go with it.

aye

Aye!

Ben did a very good job rewriting it in less formal and clearer language.
Still couple of issues, most brought up before, but they never received any discussion, so I'll just mention them again (in case I later have to say "I told you so"):

1. since the term is now 2 years, I would say it is important to have a 9 member CoE in any case, and thus it's the CoE duty to find 10 or more candidates. We can then skip the mambojambo about alternative scenario's. Other option would be to state that there are a number of seats up for election equal to the number of candidates minus 2 (to a maximum of . And if there are not sufficient candidates, CoE chooses from non-voting members as it would do when replacements are needed.
Also I think we needn't fix a date, rather state that the election process must start 2 years after the "inauguration" of the current CoE. My opinion: dates/rules we can't stick to are useless (in absense of a penalty or forcing mechanism); charters are not for encouragement.

2. as said before, I think the 66% affirmative score in an open vote could be hard to achieve and result to little, and I think ratification notwithstanding a 33% negative score of a closed vote will be more effective.
- also the charter should define the community of voters and how voting takes place. This could be the CoE forum membership and a poll in the CoE proposal section. To lend more legitimacy to the closed voting, I would use a separate registration for all CoE-voting, as there are many dormant forummembers (and spamaccounts and whatnots).

3. CoE should propose the erratum formally, otherwise we're just a bunch of co-signers. Moreover since Mikko doesn't even trust CoE members apparently to have a looksie at the NetRep Team discussions that would be rather weird, CoE has to issue something they have no clue about? Other way around, what if NetRep doesn't agree with the CoE erratum proposal? CoE appoints him, so should he then leave? All in all it would be simpler to state that CoE proposes and discusses errata in an open board together with the NetRep Team (or consulting the NetRep Team).

4. in general we might want to add a line stating that the former charter will be in effect for CoE decissions on issues not covered by this charter (like all of a sudden we need qualifyers for Worlds , or we don't get candidates for election etc.).

Thorsten the Traveller wrote: Other option would be to state that there are a number of seats up for election equal to the number of candidates minus 2 (to a maximum of . And if there are not sufficient candidates, CoE chooses from non-voting members as it would do when replacements are needed.

i like that option a lot!

Thorsten the Traveller wrote: Also I think we needn't fix a date, rather state that the election process must start 2 years after the "inauguration" of the current CoE. My opinion: dates/rules we can't stick to are useless (in absense of a penalty or forcing mechanism); charters are not for encouragement.

okay for me.

Thorsten the Traveller wrote: 2. as said before, I think the 66% affirmative score in an open vote could be hard to achieve and result to little, and I think ratification notwithstanding a 33% negative score of a closed vote will be more effective.

you migh tbe right (having some experience with that sort of things). would be okay for me.

Thorsten the Traveller wrote: - also the charter should define the community of voters and how voting takes place.
This could be the CoE forum membership and a poll in the CoE proposal section. To lend more legitimacy to the closed voting, I would use a separate registration for all CoE-voting, as there are many dormant forummembers (and spamaccounts and whatnots).

agreed completely. hwoever, right now the only option imo is to use the COE forum. it would take a lot of time to create an alternative list of players. so for now i would go with what we have, and one of the major tasks of the next COE will be to take care of a better solution.

Thorsten the Traveller wrote: 3. CoE should propose the erratum formally, otherwise we're just a bunch of co-signers. Moreover since Mikko doesn't even trust CoE members apparently to have a looksie at the NetRep Team discussions that would be rather weird, CoE has to issue something they have no clue about? Other way around, what if NetRep doesn't agree with the CoE erratum proposal? CoE appoints him, so should he then leave? All in all it would be simpler to state that CoE proposes and discusses errata in an open board together with the NetRep Team (or consulting the NetRep Team).

well, i hope the netrep section will be open again at least for the COE members (at least reading).
but your proposal sound sfine!

Thorsten the Traveller wrote: 4. in general we might want to add a line stating that the former charter will be in effect for CoE decissions on issues not covered by this charter (like all of a sudden we need qualifyers for Worlds , or we don't get candidates for election etc.).

makes definately sense!

that would be rather weird, CoE has to issue something they have no clue about?

this isn't completely true, NetRep should contact CoE before publishing or issuing something, and as far as i recall, mikko is doing so. NetRep board was closed so that members could work properly, for other matters there is rules questions board.

i agree with the rest of the stuff.

well I was referring to issuing errata, not NetRep digests.
The current charter proposal suggests its the NetRep(Team)'s duty to formulate the erratum. Idea being that they have most rules knowledge, sure, but it puts CoE in second place in the erratum process.

Also there is a difference between being open for viewing and for posting of course. I don't see why other people reading along should obstruct any NetRep work. Being secretive just suggests there is something to hide.

because when people can view, people can start speaking, and even when it is not responding to the same thread sometimes that can get annoying.
And what is the deal on CoE being on second place in the erratum process?

Since Mikko can't post in this board, i'll just copy/paste what we been talking:

Mikko wrote:since i'm not able to respond anything there, perhaps he (Eric) should not make too many assumptions, like somehow he assumes that if he can't see netrep board (for rulings) he would not be able to see errata discussions
naturally there would be a NEW section opened for errata discussions..
it would NOT happen at the rules questions netrep section, it's cluttered enough as is
....
just tell him what i wrote above about the possible new errata section (open for netrep team and coe members)
and if he has something to discuss regarding netrep (team) he should contact me

thoughts about making an errata section for CoE/NetRep only?

even the COE rules&errata board could work for this, just need to give permisions to this subforum to the NetRep team (or maybe the team is allowed already?)