Charter rewrite

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Bandobras Took
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Disagree with the playtesting period. Instead, have proposed errata also require a majority vote from the CoE; the time length for the vote can be whatever, but I'd say two months. A Council Member can get all their playtesting out of the way before voting (and probably actually should, all things considered.) I object to a designated playtesting period apart from any votes because the process is already sluggish enough and always will be. If we make playtesting synonymous with casting a vote, it's less likely that a given proposal will end up just sitting there, as Thorondor mentioned.
The game is flawed, but this does not mean it cannot be loved.
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Bandobras Took
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Actually, the NetRep section needs some looking at. Right now, it says, "The Council shall maintain" the NetRep, however, so far as I know:

The Council didn't appoint the current NetRep;
The Council didn't ratify the appointment of the current NetRep by the previous one; and
The Council does not review a NetRep's performance in any meaningful way.

If the NetRep is to be official, the Council needs to take a more active part in these things. Otherwise, we might as well recharter the NetRep as a separate entity.
The game is flawed, but this does not mean it cannot be loved.
thorondor
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there are a few things still up for a decision. is started some new threads; and i made a few proposal for some minor things that need a change imo.
if anyboday finds anything else, please be quick cause i would like to have this finished in a few days!
Composition:
• The term of office shall be twenty-four months.
there is a thread with a poll:
http://www.councilofelrond.org/forum/vi ... f=2&t=1706
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 shall be held among the non-voting CoE members.
italic/underlined was added by me. i think we should clarify how this special election is goin gto happen. i and think its best to have a substitute coming from a group that is already attached to the COE.
non-voting COE members are the representatives of the national councils and the non-voting experts (like netrep team).
• Normal elections shall be held beginning on June 1st; a candidate shall announce his candidacy no later than this date. Elections shall end on June 30th.
changed from april to june. thats when this COE session started. this also gives a little bit more time to organize Worlds, which is going to happen in spring usually. (and of course we also need more time to have a few things put to an end!)
Method of election:
• All candidates will be listed on the Council of Elrond 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.
up to now it has always been a non-CoE member acting as registrar. would be better instead of the CoE chairman i think.
Tasks:
• The Council shall (...) a compendium of the rules (Universal Rules Document), ...
as long as the URD is not official, i guess its better to do without the mentioning of it here.
• The CoE shall provide a bimonthly newsletter detailing important information regarding the Council 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.
"Chair of the Council" was changed to "CoE". lets share the responsibility a little bit ;-)
• Should qualifiers be required for the World's Tournament, ...
lets drop this completely.
qualifiers are not at all realistic with numbers like in the last Worlds tourneys.
Powers:
see special thread about how to create errata:
http://www.councilofelrond.org/forum/vi ... f=2&t=1707
and a poll about the playtesting period:
http://www.councilofelrond.org/forum/vi ... f=2&t=1708
Ratification of this Charter shall become effective upon the affirmative vote of two thirds as collected on the Council discussion platform after an announcement by the Chair and a voting period of three weeks.
what exactly does Council discussion platform mean??
Frodo
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Good work everyone!

1) Re the inability of council members to finish their terms: Let's keep the powers of the COE broad in this situation, and say that "COE members will vote on who to replace the inactive member with." I don't think we need to be more specific.
2) Re the bi-monthly newsletter: Do we really see this as feasible? I used to run the newsletter myself, and can no longer do this. But I also ran into the problem whereby I kept meeting people who had not bothered to read the newsletter, no matter how long, gorgeous, and well-written it was :D . Perhaps the Council is imagining a very short newsletter that is sometimes just an "update" to what is happening in the world of MECCG. But twice a month still seems like too much--even once a month is pushing it.

Frodo
marcos
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Regarding the newsletter thing, i believe that wolfgang's massive email with the last info about the game is ok for now because of what joe points out. I really liked frodo's newsletter but it is true that making it takes a lot of time and not much people takes the time to care for it and read it. Something short is indeed better for now.
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Bandobras Took
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Agree, Thorondor's news emails get the job done. Regular is better than pretty. :)
The game is flawed, but this does not mean it cannot be loved.
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miguel
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Frodo wrote:2) Re the bi-monthly newsletter: Do we really see this as feasible? I used to run the newsletter myself, and can no longer do this. But I also ran into the problem whereby I kept meeting people who had not bothered to read the newsletter, no matter how long, gorgeous, and well-written it was :D . Perhaps the Council is imagining a very short newsletter that is sometimes just an "update" to what is happening in the world of MECCG. But twice a month still seems like too much--even once a month is pushing it.
I think in this case bimonthly meant to say "every two months"... It can mean both, so perhaps should change the wording to make it clear?
Vastor Peredhil
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Hi,

indeed I was reading it like "once every 2 months"

also I do believe we need no play testing for most errata, as most issues have been around 10+ years, so honestly most fixes are minor and should be pretty clear,

only stuff like a Carambor fix, if we fix it at all needs play testing maybe

mfg Nicolai
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Thorsten the Traveller
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One more important point I think we need to give attention to, is what we can expect of organizing a vote in the community to ratify any changes. What is the democratic basis (mailing list? make a section where all active players can register to vote on changes?), who are our people?
Once we establish this, we can fix the needed numbers/percentages etc.
Personally I would favour a separate registration list for voting. This will give clarity also to our active player base.

About newsletter, I would not mention a term at all, this is a directive more than a binding rule. "The council shall actively inform the community on any decission by CoE involving the community, and shall promote publication of activities within the community." Or words to these effects.
Cause laws without means of inforcement have little use. Ok that holds true for the whole charter, but the bi-monthly update might be something we're destined to fail at.

About choosing a non-CoE member for the election, I think we should keep this, it was no doubt included to avoid any suspicion of CoE fixing its own re-election.

About choosing a replacement for dropouts: choosing from non-voting members sounds good to me.

About including URD in the charter. Well, the goal is to have it in the charter, right? So then rather make a new charter when we get the URD official? Would we need a community vote on making the URD official? If so, then we wait with adding it to the charter. Otherwise we might as well add it now.

About playtesting: see my reply in the poll thread
Stone-age did not end because man ran out of rocks.
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Bandobras Took
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If we don't establish regular schedules for activity, then we lapse into a torpor that's damaging for the game. At some point, we've got to hold ourselves actually accountable instead of putatively accountable or we lose credibility.
The game is flawed, but this does not mean it cannot be loved.
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Thorsten the Traveller
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Creating a newletter without any news is also gonna annoy the players. Rather say something when you have something to say. Besides I doubt we would feel the urge/incentive because charter says bi-monthly, if you need a charter to keep yourself awake...
but, if we must, make it "meccg quarterly" then
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thorondor
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agree with ben! i really think we need some regulation as a crutch, otherwise the danger of torpor is there.

i also thought bi-monthly means a period of 2 months. and i am not talking about a newsletter like joes. this one was huge, but we do not have the means to keep up something like this.

the netrep is going to publish a rules digest bi-monthly anyway, so there is already something to tell.
i am pretty sure there is enough stuff for a bimonthly newletter. there are tournaments like Worlds and Lure, also nationals. there is GCCG. we could start with columns like player portraits, quizzes, polls, ...
i thnk a newsletter can help a lot to keep the commnity active.
thorondor
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Thorsten the Traveller wrote:One more important point I think we need to give attention to, is what we can expect of organizing a vote in the community to ratify any changes. What is the democratic basis (mailing list? make a section where all active players can register to vote on changes?), who are our people?
Once we establish this, we can fix the needed numbers/percentages etc.
Personally I would favour a separate registration list for voting. This will give clarity also to our active player base.
a seperate registration list would be perfect. in fact we already have the players directory. however, as long as there is no chance for the players in that list to get into contact with each other, this directory doesnt make much sense (thus not a lot did make use of it at all).
anyway, we have this forum here. everybody registered in the forum might be considered an part of the MECCG community, which includes rights like voting.

only problem i see is the possibility of having 2 or more accounts, thus being able to vote 2 or more times.
so a moderated list is still needed, however the members of the COE forum is the basic of it.
thorondor
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Thorsten the Traveller wrote: About including URD in the charter. Well, the goal is to have it in the charter, right? So then rather make a new charter when we get the URD official? Would we need a community vote on making the URD official? If so, then we wait with adding it to the charter. Otherwise we might as well add it now.
i am very in favour of changing the Charter first, then think about rules changes, URD, ...
i dont feel backed up by the old Charter, so we first need to create a legal basic. (thats why i didnt yet participate in any of the current rules/cards errata discussion ;-)
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Thorsten the Traveller
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Well we could use the Forum list, but of course it has many dormant users so we still wouldn't have any information about how big the voting community is (more or less). And the players directory seems rather outdated to me.

Indeed anybody can make several accounts. I don't see how you would moderate that, there's no way to check for it, other than asking for multiple references, but even so I could make several fake (email) accounts together with a buddy of mine and tell you we'd know all these ficticious persons.

Making a separate voting registration doesn't change that, but having all sorts of new accounts appear just after opening such registration does arrouse suspicion.
Stone-age did not end because man ran out of rocks.
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