Additional motion. It has been suggested before that the director works a one-year term instead of one-season term, for the sake of continuity. Since that was not yet reflected in the current list of motions, I hereby officially motion this idea.
Do you mean a year of uninterrupted direction, or they take four seasons in succession with our current system? If the former, then I might conditionally vote for it if regular, at least seasonal updates are provided, so the community can still react to events. Otherwise we're allowing one director the chance to do whatever they like for a whole year, without seeing what they are doing. Power must be checked.
"No lifetime appointments = vote on them every season." Really? Is this really what you thought I meant, or are you making a strawman for some reason? It could be five game years if you like, but all positions of power should be elected and have scheduled expirations for those terms and possibly term limits. Definitely consecutive terms should be limited.
Here are my thoughts on this (relating to Sh/CotG):
Yes, all positions of power should be elected. I think we're agreed on that. Schedules expirations are also good, but perhaps we should consider whether people can be re-elected, which fits nicely with term limits. Clearly, these things should be decided on. With our current system, a director or chairdwarf can be elected for every season for the next fifty game years, and there are no restrictions on this. If we change directorship to one year, then I would suggest that the term limit would be one year at a time; that is, no two consecutive years.
Chairdwarfship I feel should have no, or at least a very long term limit. So long as the chairdwarf is re-elected by a good majority, it implies that they are running the meetings and so forth well, allowing smooth operation.
The Sh/CotG then should have a longer term, maybe one or two years (although all of these positions can be replaced by a special motion, right?), and maybe a term limit of ten or something similarly high to prevent "life appointments". It's a position that has significantly less power than others, and is more... ceremonial.
We could also have terms and elections for other administrative roles, such as bookkeeper and so forth.
I can see the rationale for not allowing leaders to commission statues unto their own egos, but forbidding the people from making statues, period?
We cannot forbid some dwarf to make a statue of another dwarf and put it somewhere in his room. But I strongly object to building statues of chairmen and directors as a community project while they are still alive. Because just forbidding leaders to commission statues unto their own egos is not enough - sooner than later we will have leader A requesting statues of leader B and leader B requesting statues of whom? Right, of leader A. Doesn't work.
Right. The only things individual dwarves have jurisdiction over being the tasks they perform (to some extent) and their own living area? Thus community areas, such as a hall of statues or what have you, is under the jurisdiction of the community, and the community should not commission statues of living members unless they have done some great service that warrants such a statue.
We can make statues generally, they're not necessarily of living dwarves. They could be fabled dwarves, dwarven heroes of the past, lizards, men, livestock or, Armok save us, even elves. I see the four statues in the meeting area as four generic robed dwarves, one hand clutching a pick and the other placed in a fist on their breast, all looking to the centre of the room.
Lastly, Goron you're doing a bad job as chairman. You're not showing who is in favor and who is against. Voting starts as soon as a motion is made. Motions have 24 hours, Seconds have 48 hours, Voting has all 72 hours. The overlap is what makes the system work, it's what I was having issues with the first time. Color coding makes for easier reading, too.
As far as I am aware, we never properly ratified that voting system (or did we?), and I would hold that Goron is free to conduct the meeting in whatever way he likes. If we are dissatisfied with his conduct and methods, we can move to replace him, but I wouldn't go that far. A simple request to begin tallying votes and to show who is in favour and against might be more diplomatic. Currently he does seem to be using colour coding, and he's very helpfully linked to the original posts so we can see how the motion was made.
EDIT: Also, the "5" number was for when we had more dwarves, to always have a squad activated but off duty, training in the barracks so that any thieves would have to go past them. Sorry, just so much stuff I have to address in these posts I can't even remember it all.
Understood. In which case, I would suggest that we keep this out of mind for the time being, as we do not yet have enough dwarves to make is practical or necessary.
Finally, a note on mandatory training. This is probably our most contested issue to date, and I feel we need better consensus. We may have loosely dropped the argument, but it will come to voting soon, and I want everyone to be clear on the issues and points raised. Below are some collected responses to the idea:
Pros suggested:Ability of individual dwarves to defend themselves if attacked
Ability to raise a competent militia (
should the dwarves themselves consent)
Functionality as tax or tithe to help community
Gives purpose and bonds community, preventing it becoming a "loose gatherin' of unaffiliated dwarves doin' whatever they please"
The duty of every citizen to share responsibility
Wielding pick or weapon is part of mandatory dwarfiness
Not training is an active detriment to Equalvoice and its safety
Prevention of military coup or opression from military or controlling government
Training is different from service
Lack of military-trained dwarves is dangerous
Suggestion that mining can act as training
Cons suggested:No right to choose, loss of liberty
The workers and individual dwarves are not accountable in a democracy as they are in an autocracy
Citizens should not be taken away from peaceful duties
Dwarves have the right not to enter combat
(I may have missed some, apologies for this.)
Would anyone like to contest any of the above points? Would anyone like some clarification? (I've made this list having looked through the topic for responses and debates.)
For those of you against the idea: Are you against it simply because of the lack of choice, and thus you are thinking in general terms about the rights of dwarves? Or do you protest against you yourself being forced to train for one season a year? Do you feel you may be forced to fight and are therefore at risk (certainly not true, I have not heard one person disagree with "no mandatory service")?
{I apologise for the length of this post, but I'm trying to debate a number of topics at once.}
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Topic: Dwarven Democracy (community game) (Read 30522 times)