RationalWiki talk:Elections to the Loya Jirga/May 2011

Note: This election is postponed, or more likely cancelled, pending the restructuring of user rights.

Hi :) ħuman 05:01, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

'sup? --Eira ^{OMTG! _{The Goat be Praised.}} 05:03, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Let noms run longer. Smarter. A week, say. ħuman 05:03, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Agreed; last time preparations were being made for a long time before nominations started. ListenerX^TalkerX 05:04, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I think the weekly cycle honors all relatively regular users. ħuman 05:07, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Also agree one week will do. Get it rolling. Mountain Blue (talk) 05:14, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I think you may want to add to the rules that voters only cast one vote for a candidate, the point of seven votes being to vote once for seven candidates, otherwise people might stick all seven of their votes on one person to stop someone else being elected. -- Iscariot ^{Andy Schlafly for Congress 2012!} 05:10, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

That is already in the rules, "one vote for each of seven different nominees." ListenerX^TalkerX 05:11, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Why can't they vote seven times for one person if they have seven votes? Also, should we do this the way we did the board election - that is, using a secret ballot with IP protection? ħuman 05:15, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Inorite, why aren't we using AV voting. --Eira ^{OMTG! _{The Goat be Praised.}} 05:18, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I was just repeating what the precedent was. The rules can certainly be changed, if people can agree on the changes, preferably before the election this time around. ListenerX^TalkerX 05:29, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

And why does precedence matter? Did we ever decide on that? --Eira ^{OMTG! _{The Goat be Praised.}} 05:34, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I assume you mean "precedent." The process was worked out in a bit of a knock-down-drag-out session while nominations and voting was ongoing; using existing precedent has the potential to prevent such an occurrence. Another option might be to use the precedent from the Board of Trustees election, which would let us use the secret-ballot system (assuming Nx has worked out the bugs from last time). ListenerX^TalkerX 05:40, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Another option would be to work out everything in advance rather than grabbing at ad hoc "procedures" made up in the middle of a "voting" session and enshrining them. PS, I think Trent wrote the secret ballot machine, but I may be wrong. ħuman 05:45, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Hey, there's no need to be a dick about terminology... and the point here is that using the precedent established by the previous vote may not actually be a good design. That's why I'd like to consider additional voting methods, like AV, and there are a lot of better designs than the ad hoc system designed last time, which was just cobbled together like you said, during the process that was actually happening. Can we actually sit down and do this right and design things properly before the whole election rather than just pull out some crap system that we pieced together last time with bubblegum and duct tape? I mean, it doesn't have any good valid reason to be used except that we used it last time... and what kind of good reason is that? Let's just all be creationists then, because there is no reason to develop a better system, we already have precedent. --Eira ^{OMTG! _{The Goat be Praised.}} 05:54, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about the terminology. As I said, if the mob can agree on another voting procedure, I would support it. The use of the secret ballot would definitely be an improvement. ListenerX^TalkerX 06:28, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

So, why don't we set down, and develop a properly designed election process, and follow that prior to the matter being even set out for nominations, rather than ad hoc this matter all over again? I mean, you want rules and policy, right? So, why aren't you actually trying to develop them prior to applying them? --Eira ^{OMTG! _{The Goat be Praised.}} 06:50, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Huh? I have not in the least proposed to start the election now. I knew the rules would have to be hashed out; that is what we are doing here. ListenerX^TalkerX 06:54, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Nothing in what you have set forward prevents us from collecting nominations now. Nothing in your rules/policies establish a date for when it starts... the whole thing is... "immature" (not meaning childish, but meaning not developed). And really, it seems like you're self-annointed rules lawyer on all this... who elected you to that position? --Eira ^{OMTG! _{The Goat be Praised.}} 06:58, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

(EC)It's getting really hard to follow all of these debates that are spread out over half a dozen pages, voting reform is already being discussed here and here...anyway, I agree that both the eligibility issue and the technical implementation are things that should be tackled early on, before we conduct multiple votes on CS changes and so on. Röstigraben (talk) 07:00, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ And really, it seems like you're self-annointed rules lawyer on all this... who elected you to that position? If we have to get personal about this, nobody else seemed to be overly interested in the task...

I support that people should vote for my then one person. Leninist123 (talk) 21:08, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

It's getting really hard to follow... Category:Constitutional reform, perhaps? ListenerX^TalkerX 07:10, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

(EC)A better solution would be to set up separate debate pages for each of the major issues - user rights, voting reform, role of the LJ etc. The way it is now, people who want to keep up with a discussion about a specific issue have to check all of these pages, because new comments might crop up on any of them. Röstigraben (talk) 07:17, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

So... the only thing necessary for someone to have the rights to reform things is to be the only person willing to do it? Kind of doesn't make sense, since that suggests that they're in a minority, as everyone else is fine with the status quo. --Eira ^{OMTG! _{The Goat be Praised.}} 07:15, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

She might be right, you know. If nobody else cared, there is no task to be done. ħuman 07:30, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

(EC) If you will examine some of the debate pages that cropped up after the whole Chicken Coop mess, you will find that many people believe reform is needed, even if they do not suggest ways for it to go forward. They can accept my suggestions, or change them, or reject them, as they see fit.

Since this whole thing seems to have degraded into more a volley of personal attacks against me than a debate about the merits of the election, I think I will bow out for a while. ListenerX^TalkerX 07:30, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Right, so, if you're suffering from personal attacks, and so is human, and that disqualifies human from having "sufficient moral authority" to enact change, where does your "sufficient moral authority" comes from to be drafting all of these changes and policies? Why aren't we developing a convention of people, rather than just you writing whatever you think is a good idea (even when it contradicts Trent's previous abdication of power)? --Eira ^{OMTG! _{The Goat be Praised.}} 07:35, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Again, these drafts of mine are not final. I am not saying that people have only a "Hobson's choice" about them, or that I do not want them to make suggestions of their own. Also, there is a big difference between suggesting changes for the mob's consideration (as I am doing) and taking complete dictatorial control over the Wiki (as Trent would do according to my proposal). I probably have as many enemies here as Human and definitely do not have the moral authority for the role of dictator! ListenerX^TalkerX 07:47, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll be the dictator. I am kind and just. Ace ^{of Spades} 07:50, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not objecting to you supplanting yourself as dictator... I'm asking where you get your "moral authority" to particularly unilaterally push forward a constitutional proposal... The US Constitutional Convention didn't convene to review one person's unilateral design... they collected together, started arguing points before they ever produced a draft constitution. You seem to declare a desire for policy and process, but you don't actually act like that is what you want... you want to just dive into "here are rules, follow them."

As a final note for this post, you suggest that you probably have as many enemies here as Human... now, imagine that Human drafted a constitutional proposal... would you be all "alright, let's start from there"? No... you wouldn't. And you might not even be as "nice" as I am being... I'm just being a pedantic bitch (as is my style) about this, and I would likely object to human doing the same thing... why? Because if you say you want process and policy, then let's do it properly and not have one random person pull it out of their ass... let's establish a convention to draft rules and a constitution, and then present that to the mob. Until then, there's no reason to "fuck with" the status quo... the constitutional convention can have authority to draft all this stuff completely independent of instituting an ad hoc emergency dictatorship to anyone. --Eira ^{OMTG! _{The Goat be Praised.}} 07:59, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The mob is insane. Good luck getting anything done. --62.142.167.134 (talk) 21:10, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

How might we go about establishing a constitutional convention, then? We have RationalWiki:Constitutional Convention, May 2011, but LX made that one as well. Blue (pester) 21:19, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

"but LX made that one as well." And? is it somehow contaminated because of who created the page? It's not *his* page, even if it was his idea. Let's go there and do that, personal opinions of individual editors notwithstanding. Totnesmartin (talk) 21:23, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I am only responding to Eira's post above. I personally do not care who started that page, but Eira seems to. Blue (pester) 21:27, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

It's now about who starts it, it is about how it is started. I'm going to address two things here, as to why Javascap's method is a bad choice: starting things off with a "here's a proposed constitution, let's work from there!" Isn't how things get done. Rather, people sit down, talk, hash out ideas, and then a draft proposal is made only once input from everyone is addressed.

LX realized that that isn't a good way to do things (probably because he was chastised for that already) but his error is in destabilizing the current system before any ideas for a replacement already are in place. Namely, the current system does not need to be immediately and hastily replaced by a system that Trent has already himself walked away from. When the US Constitution was being written, they didn't suspend the Articles of Confederation under an Emergency Warpowers Act or anything like that. They sat down (illegally in fact) drafted a new Constitution, brought it out, a few states ratified it, and thus it became the legitimate ruling code of the land usurping the Articles of Confederation.

Why am I being a bitch and basically using my pedantic powers for evil to criticize all these proposals into being abandoned? Because that's how the mob enforces the status quo. --Eira ^{OMTG! _{The Goat be Praised.}} 21:47, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Now I have to be a bitch and point out that you're entirely wrong about the Philadelphia Convention. Because James Madison had his own fully drafted constitution at the start of the Convention, he was able to frame almost the entire debate around his own proposals. Blue (pester) 21:56, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

And if you read your own link, you would have found that while James Madison had drafted it waiting for a quorum, it was not the document that they started from, and that Edmund Randolph introduced it through 15 separate proposals. And that while concepts of the draft were incorporated, the finished product described a quite different form of government. Do you get the difference? I might draft my own proposal over here on my side, and use it to frame and focus the efforts of a convention, but that's entirely different from putting it out there and saying "Ok, this is what we're starting from... now, go!" You better believe that if James Madison did such a thing he would have been badgered out of the convention for being a presumptive prick. ("deny this and lose all credibility") --Eira ^{OMTG! _{The Goat be Praised.}} 22:22, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not trying to belittle your argument, but this historical debate is not very relevant or helpful, so I'm not going to write a detailed response. Blue (pester) 22:30, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Right, so you're in favor of either: unilaterally drafting a proposal before comment and debate has even started, and having that be the initial draft version of a convention? Who gets this illustrious honor of being the arrogant bastard who thinks they know better than everyone else? Or, are you in favor of dumping the current system out like so much bathwater, and stalling what functionality is already in place while we indefinitely argue over how the place is supposed to be run? The later proposal seems especially retarded, because it replaces the de facto system with essentially a brand new de facto system that has no guarantees of being any better at all. --Eira ^{OMTG! _{The Goat be Praised.}} 22:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I was merely disputing a historical point you made about the Philadelphia Convention. I would rather see a proper convention in which a select group each make individual proposals, each of which is debated for merit, and then this convention can put forth a draft constitution. Exactly what you said above. Blue (pester) 22:46, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd give the honor to someone who's ready to be useful. --62.142.167.134 (talk) 22:50, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Point the first: I hate to jump on you nice ladies for discussing that here, but people are getting confused and I've gotta take a stand on my own brand of pedantry. Elections to the Loya Jirga are elections to the Loya Jirga. They're not of a kind or any necessary part of any of these newfangled propositions floating around for a "constitutional convention" or whatever kind of drafting of an entire or partial set of rules it is anyone else is talking about anywhere else on this wiki. Please be very careful about the language you use pedantry here. Javascap has a good idea set out below that seems familiar, as he says. Back on task.

Point the second: This one is more geared toward people talking loosely about things that sound like major rules overhauls. I have not yet seen one single adequate explanation for why we need a "constitutional convention" or anything more than a specific response to the failures of our rules that led to this recent crisis. With respect to Javascap, his "constitution" is unworkable. Only LX has so far proposed rules modifications that are based on what we've already got and in that sense I hate to call myself a conservative. I object and will continue to object to any plans for major overhauls without an adequate explanation, let alone any explanation at all for not only how we're going to get there but why we're taking the trip. Anyone who's been here for long enough can easily see that the community has is quarks, leadership being one of them, but has generally conducted itself pretty successfully with a good faith reference to its own guidelines, customs, and ethos. As a general principle there is nothing wrong with the way we do things, though very profound problems can arise (as we just saw with days of people throwing piss and shit at each other) when the rules don't say what people think they say, and in any event when nobody bothered to read them in the first place. Let us tackle simple issues instead of casting our attention to drafting entirely new governing documents when nobody here seems particularly good at it and I hope I am not the only one who would be sorely fucking disappointed to see the valorous goatery of the original document, forged by our countrymen and founders, cast asunder because RW has been overrun with people who just don't get the point and want to fight about it. Nutty Roux (talk) 23:55, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

We might also want to consider actually calling our rules "rules." Not ironclad rules, but more than what they are now. Blue (is useful) 01:43, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Human originally drafted them as "rules", and tmtoulouse went in and changed it. --Eira ^{OMTG! _{The Goat be Praised.}} 01:57, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

That doesn't mean his opinion is immobile. He referred to this provision specifically as a "rule." He also wrote this, wherein he stated that "our founding principles do inherently include the idea that if we need rules, or want them, we can have them. There is nothing anti-rationalwiki about doing so." Blue (pester) 02:21, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Pedantic Note we do not know that "nobody here [is] particularly good at it", we simply know that no one who has yet tried has appeared to be good at it. --Eira ^{OMTG! _{The Goat be Praised.}} 00:12, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Pedantic Response: "drafting entirely new governing documents when nobody here seems particularly good at it. ..." (emphasis added) Nutty Roux (talk) 01:38, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, you had evidence to evaluate anyone except for the people who spoke up? --Eira ^{OMTG! _{The Goat be Praised.}} 01:57, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Lets make this easy...

1. Anyone who has been on this site for a year may nominate anyone, themselves included, to the Jirga.
2. We would then vote yes or no or goat on each individual. (Sysop, 6 months plus?)
3. Each aye adds one point, each nay subtracts one point.
4. The 7 users with the most points become members of the Jirga, and up to 5 runners up can be called on to fill open seats should a vacancy occur.
5. The Jirga serves a 6 month term, and qualified users may seek re election as they please.
6. This proposition sounds strangly familiar.

Javasca₧ and his Sword of Wiki-Editing! 23:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I have a suggestion. Let's use the procedure that was in place before and talk only about the time for making nominations and the time for leaving the polling place open. Nutty Roux (talk) 23:52, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Agree with nutty. use the same rules as last time, they weren't broken so why fix them? also, this election isn't about choosing who makes new sysop rules or whatever is going on elsewhere. It's the Loya Jirga. Let's get on with this, waiting for discussion to end means endless waffle. I hereby move that nominations begin at midnight tonight. Totnesmartin (talk) 09:44, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

In responce to the whole debate. TL;DR - But yes we need LJ elections because we clearly need the LJ, and I suggest we use the existing rules with as little modification as possible, otherwise we will only get into yet another HCM over changes to said rules. -- 16:19, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

You really should have read at least a little of it. The game has changed. This is where it's at. Blue (is useful) 16:38, 16 May 2011 (UTC)