RationalWiki talk:Proposed bylaws/Lumenos

The following sections are Lumenous proving how "special" he is. ħuman 04:12, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

For more current info see this thread. At the end Armondikov seems to verify that what I've been saying about the great power the Trustees will have. ~ Lumenos 05:36, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Did you mean user:Lumenos or Lumenous the Lumeniki sysop? ~ Lumenos 07:06, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Voting qualification

It occurs to me that once these bylaws become fact and legally binding, it would be possible for e.g. anonymous or anyone else ^{(there were a couple of f'rinstrances here but I took 'em out)} etc to create loads of editors, whether actual or socks, and take over the wiki. Should there be a level of "established Editor" with voting rights? Thoughts? 16:13, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

The bylaws don't actually set up the rules for the election, but rather leave it up to the board to decide. The initial rules for electing members will be established by the first two appointed members and me. They will likely follow WP standards making eligibility a function of both time on site and number of edits (1 year, 500 edits something like that). Future boards can change that around as they like. Also bylaws themselves can be amended by the board so nothing is set in stone. tmtoulouse 16:28, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Don't we need to establish voting criteria for the board in the first instance? Also I would like to see some detailed accounts. I am not comfortable with Trent subsidising RW out of his own pocket, he mentioned that he can only rely on $5 a month as income with the occcasional whip-round for significant outlays. This is not a sound financial foundation. If something happens to him then we should be able to carry on regardless. Currently the hardware is hosted by TMT but what happpens to it if he is no longer in a position to support RW?  Lily ^{Inspirate me.} 12:56, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

The initial board will be Trent and two appointees. One of their first actions will be to establish the rules for replacing them. As far as the money/hardware/host issue, this is partly why we are doing this - to free it from Trent a bit. He has also provided several people with access to all the information required to start RW back up on a server anywhere. ħuman 20:19, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I have machinations for trying to create some financial solvency for the site. Currently, the two biggest hurdles for someone else taking over the site are technical and financial. I have a long term plan for where I would like to see us, one year, three years, and ten years down the road. The formation of the foundation is the next step towards the vision I have for the site, and that vision does include finding ways of being financially and technically self-supported. But it takes time to implement. Establishing the foundation will however start to open up the financial situation of the site as the incoming and out going donations and costs will have to be tracked, and reports generated, etc. tmtoulouse 20:28, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

What is "voting" and "election" anyway?

I moved this section to RationalWiki_talk:Proposed_bylaws/Lumenos/even_stupider. The following section contains the only interesting statement that was in this section, and it is off-topic:

Voting on who gets to vote

"How about everyone gets put on a list, and people vote for who's qualified to vote. Those that aren't in the top 50% have their votes discounted and we recount and repeat from there... ^gnostic 20:58, 16 July 2010 (UTC)" ~ Lumenos 08:22, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Voting systems

Quoting Trent's second post in this section, "[The voting qualifications] will likely follow WP standards making eligibility a function of both time on site and number of edits (1 year, 500 edits something like that)... tmtoulouse 16:28, 26 June 2010 (UTC)"

All major parties represented

A WP editor claims, "Most Western democracies use some form of multiple-winner voting system, with the United States and the United Kingdom being notable exceptions." A half-pie table shows the results of the German election; the various political parties get a proportion of the seats according to how many votes they received. Multiple-winner systems seem to allow more liberty (consent of the governed). With the United Statian "two-party" system, with every election, one party ends up dominating the government unless the executive branch is dominated by a different party than the legislature. What do you think? ~ Lumenaid - ("backup" chattery) 03:58, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

This about the website in general, server, DNS, possible associated activities, etc. You are unlikely to notice these in the day to day operations. Most of this is being done to create a legal entity called RationalWiki, so that no person is liable for the website's activities. No one is being governed. - π 10:46, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I imagine, in fact, that it'd be quite likely a substantial number of people won't even want to be involved or be interested in the trustee business because it bears almost no relation to what the site does or how it acts. It may come into its own a few years down the line if RW evolves a little more, but currently it's just to take pressure of Trent. ^gnostic 11:07, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Unless we start RationalPorn. - π 11:15, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

If the Foundation owns the domain name, trademarks, and hardware, isn't the board legally and technically able to choose bureaucrats? ~ Lumenaid - ("backup" chattery) 13:15, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

NO YOU FUCKING MORON. !!!! ħuman 03:53, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Please don't be angry, Sir. I am only providing an opportunity for someone to explain. If I may inquire about a specific scenario: Let's say a few thousand years go by with no lack of consensus, but then there is a very polarized disagreement over whether or not to ban a user, or oversite their edit history. A group of aggressive crats, decrat the rest of the crats. Three board members outvote the other two, and they decide to directly access the server to de-crat those crats, and restore the cratship of the others. Do those who oppose the three board memebers, have any legal or technical way to assert their will? ~ Lumenaid - ("backup" chattery) 04:44, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Trent hasn't "chosen" the bureaucrats in a long time. The community votes for them now (mostly). I doubt the board will be anyone but some of the current crats anyway. - π 13:17, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

You mean there are poles for most of the "elected" bureaucrats around here somewhere? Could someone direct me to them? ~ Lumenos (your talk page) - ("my" talk page) 06:53, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

No, you idiot, we don't "elect" crats, we make them by fiat. Although of late, we do pretend to pass the fiat by muster at the saloon bar. It's a mobocracy, still. ħuman 08:08, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Man, I got to get it into my head, never ever trust dem rouge lumenati. Human's spin sounds more like a gangocracy, where you have maybe a little bit of a hierarchy going. I thought it was private property unless a large group wants to fork off to new domain name. ~ Lumenos (your talk page) - ("my" talk page) 10:56, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Damn right. It'll be the ultimate nerdcore porn. Instead of a moustached guy coming to fix the fridge, we'll have a guy come round to... well, I tried, struggled and couldn't complete the sentence in the end. But, on topic, for the last time; the running of the site, its content, the crats, the sysops and how it operates as far as every user at every level is concerned will not change. The only noticeable change will be that the PayPal link from the donation button will probably lead to a different account, although I imagine for practical purposes, even that might stay as Trent's personal email. ^gnostic 13:40, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I've heard y'all claim nothing will change, but I wasn't asking if you imagine anything will change, I was asking about legal and technical capabilities. Perhaps "nothing" will change for the next 12,583 years, but then there is a coup in the coop. ~ Lumenaid - ("backup" chattery) 03:17, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

It seems that ArmondikoV has now confirmed what I have been trying to say, "Everything that there is to own, will be owned by the Foundation. This is run by the trustees. The LJ is nothing more than a conflict resolution system; it wouldn't decide who keeps the domain name in the case of a "breakup", it would always stay with the Foundation, which is ran by the Trustees. [...] Those with server access will be appointed by whoever is technical director of the site, this TD is appointed by the Trustees. [...] If those with server access abuse their powers and trust, they can be reprimanded by the technical director. ArmondikoV 14:07, 20 July 2010 (UTC)"[1]. ~ Lumenos 08:40, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Let's call it "proportional representation"

Perhaps now we can get back to the original post? I found that ArmondikoV has an essay advocating for the same thing that I am, except that I am advocating it for this site, and s/he is talking about state politics. ArmondikoV calls this "proportional representation" while I was using Wikipedia's term, "multiple-winner voting system". I think we should allow the supposed "enemies of reason" (religionists, racists, EDiots, WikiSynergians, "conservatives", maybe even the RW "trolls") to be represented at RW, in order to bring more dissenters here, so we can argue here instead of at their wikis. This would make us more relevant to the world and keep them from censoring us on their wikis. ~ Lumenos 08:40, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Revote instead of...

At 2.4.3 D iii, it reads "appoint the candidate receiving the next most votes to fill the resulting vacancy". I propose this be settled by a revote instead. The person with the second most votes may be very unliked by a majority. ~ Lumenaid - (the anarcho-librarian chattery) 03:04, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Using STV or AV to rank preferences would be easier than a voting again, although it's unlikely that someone voted in would turn out to be ineligible as we'd check that beforehand and it's equally unlikely that the second choice wouldn't have majority support. ^gnostic 10:31, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I think ranked preferences is the best solution, if you are saying you have a way to have a computer tally these. ~ Lumenos 09:49, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Who will own the domain name?

The commentary section says, "The goal is simple: create an entity that is RationalWiki that is fully separable from Trent in terms of ownership of the various copyrights and trademarks, of the hardware for running the server, and the responsibility to keep the site going." Trent currently owns the domain name, are there plans to transfer ownership of the domain name to the RationalWiki Foundation? ~ Lumenaid - ("backup" chattery) 11:42, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes. - π 11:47, 17 July 2010 (UTC)