Discussion on the Constitution

[Frozzy]

It can't have escaped our notice that we're struggling to fill up the positions. The purpose of this discussion, is so we can allow judges to hold ministerial positions, as well as other minor changes.

Put together by myself and TKG.

Article II: Government Positions

I. The President
(a) The President shall physically play the game on a regular and scheduled basis whenever possible and post the save and a complete report of the game events to the forum.
(b)The President should use turn chats, turn threads, or any other similar method while playing the game.
(c) The President must follow the instructions of the Court, the Ministers and their delegates while playing the game and doesn't hold any veto powers unless specifically named in the constitution. If an instruction is clearly erroneous, or by changed circumstances made impossible or harmful the President may decide in the best interest of the game.
(d) In case of missing orders for a whole turn from a minister and all his delegates the President may only play on if at least two cabinet members and 3 other citizens are present in a turn chat.
(e) The President is required to post an official poll (article IV, section 3-II) which will decide the name of any new bases. Name for the poll shall be take from the Master List Name Thread
(f) The President has the power over the money reserve. Therefore every money spending decision must have the approval of the President in order to be act.
(g) The President controls what government type is used in the game, but may only change this after this has been evaluated by the citizens through an Official Poll (article IV, section 3-II).

II. The Minister of Domestic Affairs
(a) The Minister of Domestic Affairs is responsible for managing all cities. Including their distribution of specialist citizens and production queues, rushed production requests and disbanding of cities.
(b) The Minister of Domestic Affairs can only disband a city after this action be evaluated by the citizens through an Official Poll (article IV, section 3-II).
(c) The action of Rush buy build queue items can only be perfomed with the President's approval.
(d) The Minister of Domestic Affairs is ultimately responsible for settlers, choosing site for new cities and moving these units to this site through an official poll.
(e) The Minister of Domestic Affairs is in charge of all the Empire settings and sliders, including Rations, Workday, Wages, Public Works rate and Science rate through an official poll.
(f) The Minister of Domestic Affairs controls research through an official poll.

III. The Minister of Infrastruture and Foreign Affairs
(a) The Minister of Infrastruture and Foreign Affairs is ultimately responsible for the placement of tile improvements, choosing the best tile and the best improvement, with the current reserve of public workers.
(b) The Minister of Infrastructure and Foreign Affairs is responsible for gifts, requests, exchanges and agreements with other nations. Any paying of gold has to be approved by the President.
(c) The Minister of Infrastructure and Foreign Affairs can only propose a gift to another civilization or give in to a demand of tribute with the approval of the president. Disarmament treaties need the approval of the Minister of Defence.
(d) The Minister of Infrastructure and Foreign Affairs controls all internal and foreign trade.
(e) the Minister of Infrastrucure and Foreign Affairs cannot alter the nation's stance to another without consulting the citizens through an official poll

Article IV: Polling rules

II. Official polls:
(a) These polls must be started by members of the executive branch of the government, as defined in Article II of this Constitution, and relate to the game.
(b) The subject line must contain the word 'OFFICIAL', written in capital letters.
(c) They can be either Yes/No or multiple-choice polls and can be used for either information gathering or decision-making.
(d) The government official who started the poll must order the president based on its results. Failure to do so will be regarded withholding of information, as defined in Article I section 5, and can serve as grounds for Impeachment (see Article V).
(e) Official polls must be open a minimum of 2 days and a maximum of 7 days. this must be stated in the first post. The same officer who started it must include this information in the first post.

III. Resolutions:
(a) These polls can be started by any Citizen, including members of the government, and must be used to propose resolutions. Resolutions, if passed, modify the rules that clearly affect the course of the game or the policy of the executive branch of the government (as defined in Article II of this Constitution). Except in case of impeachments which shall be decide according to Chapter 2 of Article V.
(b) The subject line must contain the word 'RESOLUTION', written in capital letters.
(c) They have to be Yes/No polls. Multiple-choice polls are not allowed as resolutions.
(d) Resolutions may not violate or change the Constitution. Resolutions may change, amend or remove any existing resolutions or judicial decisions regarding resolutions.
(e) If more than 1/2 of the voters votes in favour of the resolution, at least 1/3 of all Citizens vote in the poll and the Court does not declare the poll invalid, the resolution is considered passed. All Citizens must from that time on obey it.
(f) Resolutions of the Constitution must be recorded by the Court. The person who proposed the Resolution that has been passed must inform the Court of this as soon as possible.
(g) The Court will resolve all conflicts of resolutions. The Court’s ruling on an interpretation of a resolution is of the same power and authority as that resolution.
(h) Resolution polls shall expire in three days and the citizen who started the poll must include the expiring day in its first post.

Article III: Judicial Branch

2. Construct of the Court:

(a) The Court is composed of 3 Judges who will serve a three-month term of office. There is no limit to the number of terms a Judge may serve.
(b) Each Judge has to be elected by the people in a separate election poll. Every month one of the Judge positions shall be open for election. This position shall be the one of the Judge who has reached the end of his term.
(c) The moment the election of a Judge position starts, shall be the moment on which the Judge who enters the last month of his term becomes the Senior Justice.
(d) Section 2(c) only applies to regular elections at the end of a Judge's term. It does not apply to elections that take place to replace impeached Judges. The replacement for an impeached Judge shall serve for the remainder of the term that their predecessor was serving. If the Senior Justice was impeached, the new Judge shall become the Senior Justice. If another Judge was impeached, the Senior Justice shall keep his position.
(e) A Judge may not serve in other governmental posts.


IV. Amendments

(a) These polls can be started by any Citizen, including members of the government, and must be used to propose Amendments to this Constitution.
(b) The subject line must contain the word 'AMENDMENT', written in capital letters.
(c) They have to be Yes/No polls. Multiple-choice polls are not allowed as Amendments.
(d) Amendments may change/append/override any existing Laws, judicial decisions regarding Laws or any number of existing sections of the Constitution.
(e) If more than 1/2 of the voters votes in favour of the Law, at least 1/3 of all Citizens vote in the poll and the Court does not declare the poll invalid, the Amendment is considered passed. All Citizens must from that time on obey it.
(f) Amendments of the Constitution must be recorded by the Court. The person who proposed an Amendment that has been passed must inform the Court of this as soon as possible.
(f) Amendment polls shall expire in five days and the citizen who started the poll must include the expiring day in its first post.

Article V: Government Changes
1. Elections

(a) The Court is empowered to oversee all elections and is empowered to resolve any election disputes according to the rules in this Constitution.
(b) An officer can leave his office in three ways:
* The term of the office ends.
* The officer is impeached.
* The officer resigns.
(c) Ten days before the end of any government position term, the court has to initiate an election process. The previous officer will remain in office until the end of the term or until a new candidate is elected, whichever is the later.
(d) If an officer resigns or is impeached, the timing of the election process and allocation of duties is as described in Section 2.
(e) At the start of the election process, the Court must start a nomination thread. All citizens who wish to be candidates for an office must publicly express their nomination in this thread. For this they have five days.
(f) No citizen may be a candidate for an elected ministerial/presidential position if such candidacy might cause this citizen to be in more than one elected ministerial/presidential position simultaneously.
(g) If no candidate is nominated the Court shall extend the nominations for a further three days. This extension can be repeated indefinitely.
(h) Once the time in which citizens may express their candidacy for a given elected office has expired, the Court will create an Election poll (see Article II, Subsection 3-I) for the office, with the names of the candidates as options. The poll shall expire in five days.
(i) If only one candidate is available for an office, a Yes/No poll shall be held to decide if this person may serve in this office. This poll shall expire in five days.
(j) If the single candidate is rejected by a majority of voters then the Court shall reopen nominations for that office.
(k) The candidate who received the majority of the votes and the election thread expires, this person will be declared the new holder of the office for which he was a candidate.
(l) In case of a tie in the election poll, the other newly elected members of the same branch of government position in question whose election polls were not tied will vote again to decide which one of the tied candidates will take over this position. If all polls for executive branch positions are simultaneously tied then the Court (including the newly elected member, if there is one) shall select the President, and the President shall select the other ministers from the tied candidates in their respective election polls.

CHANGES:

Article II 1b: "is encouraged to" changed to "should"
Article II 1e: "(e) The President is in charge of naming all new cities of the empire regardless of how the cities were created or assimilated. A name has to be evaluated by the citizens through an Official Poll (article IV, section 3-II) before a city is named." changed to "(e) The President is required to post an official poll (article IV, section 3-II) which will decide the name of any new bases. Name for the poll shall be take from the Master List Name Thread"
Article II 2d, e, f: added "through an offical poll"
Article II 3e added
Article III 2e: REMOVED
Article IV 2d: "(d) The government official who started the poll may or may not follow the opinion of the majority of the voters. In case (s)he does not follow what was decided, (s)he must make this decision public." changed to "(d) The government official who started the poll must order the president based on its results.
Article IV 2e: "(e) Official polls shall only expire in a day chosen by the officer who opened the poll. And if the poll has an expiring day the same officer who started it must include this information in the first post.
" changed to "(e) Official polls must be open a minimum of 2 days and a maximum of 7 days. this must be stated in the first post. The same officer who started it must include this information in the first post."
Article IV 3e: part removed
Article IV 4e: part removed
Article IV 4d "Multiple-choice polls are not allowed as Amendments" removed.
Article V 1c: "Eight" changed to "Ten"
Article V 1f: "elected office" change to ministerial/presidential

[checkMate]

I'm pretty happy with those changes, but you may have predicted that I think we should start with the text proposed in this thread

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=77437

There are a few corrections to make the document gramtically correct and internally constistent. And......
best of all. It retains the non-Americanized spellings
of defense and favor O

[miggio]

i like everything except

section IV (d) The government official who started the poll must order the president based on its results...

didnt the connie say that they officer could use the offical thread for information gathering purposes. and besides the pres should be reading all the therads anyways!

my two cents

[Frozzy]

Well, the president/minister could go for option two, when a clear majority have voted for option one. What's the point of the poll?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Frozzy
Article II 1b: "is encouraged to" changed to "should"

I think we should here a little bit flexible and it must be possible for the president to play a turn outside of a turnchat, therefore this shouldn't be changed. Another problem is what do you call a turn chat, has a minimum number of people be present, even if all orders from the Ministers are there. So this could contradict the task to continue the game whenever possible.

Originally posted by Frozzy
Article II 1e: "(e) The President is in charge of naming all new cities of the empire regardless of how the cities were created or assimilated. A name has to be evaluated by the citizens through an Official Poll (article IV, section 3-II) before a city is named." changed to "(e) The President is required to post an official poll (article IV, section 3-II) which will decide the name of any new bases. Name for the poll shall be take from the Master List Name Thread"

I would replace "bases" with "cities", we are playing CTP. The content is alright, currently the president needs to post an official poll, but can chose every name he wants for the poll and does not need to respect the result, he just has to post the poll.

But I would rather use this text:

Article II 1e: "(e) The President is in charge of naming all new cities of the empire regardless of how the cities were created or assimilated. A name has to be confirmed by the citizens through an Official Poll (article IV, section 3-II). The name for the new city shall be taken from the Master List Name Thread."

Originally posted by Frozzy
Article II 2d, e, f: added "through an offical poll"

The possible downside of these official polls is that it could be too much for some citiziens. Of course I whish to see more official polls, too.

Originally posted by Frozzy
Article II 3e added

Don't know what I should say about it, except that you should capilize the first letter of the first "the" and add a full stop at the end of the sentence.

Originally posted by Frozzy
Article III 2e: REMOVED

Not a good idea, even if we are short of people we need a court that only consists of independent and unbiased members. Seeing a Senior Jugde who is at the same time a minister or the President and has now to decide on accepting a case or not that deals with his office, is questionable. Well any citizien can make a RESOLUTION poll, if thinks rhe court is wrong but I wouldn't call it a fair treatment. There is a reason why there is the seperation of powers in modern democracies.

Originally posted by Frozzy
Article IV 2d: "(d) The government official who started the poll may or may not follow the opinion of the majority of the voters. In case (s)he does not follow what was decided, (s)he must make this decision public." changed to "(d) The government official who started the poll must order the president based on its results.

First:

(c) They can be either Yes/No or multiple-choice polls and can be used for either information gathering or decision-making.

If the poll just exists for information gathering then it is not possible to give the president orders according the poll.

Second:

Under certain circumstances it became obvious that the result of the poll is no longer an option in the game orders can't given anymore according the result of the poll. It might also possible that some new information appears that makes it more resonable to ignore the outcome of the poll.

So NO to this change.

Originally posted by Frozzy
Article IV 2e: "(e) Official polls shall only expire in a day chosen by the officer who opened the poll. And if the poll has an expiring day the same officer who started it must include this information in the first post.
" changed to "(e) Official polls must be open a minimum of 2 days and a maximum of 7 days. this must be stated in the first post. The same officer who started it must include this information in the first post."

And again an official poll may just exists for information gathering in that case no expiring date is needed. Under certain circumstances it might be reasonable that an offficial poll is only open for one day. But giving the official the suggestion that the poll should be open for a period of 2 to 7 days in not wrong. But the information that the poll does not have an expireing day should be included.

Originally posted by Frozzy
Article IV 3e: part removed

Not a good idea to remove it entirely, but I agree the current quorum is too high. I open a RESOLUTION poll just one persion votes in favour of it, because I just left it open for one day and there wasn't much traffic on the page. That is rediculous, but the RESOLUTION has to be respected. So we could lower it to 1/6 of the DG members or replace it by an absolute and independent of the number of citiziens number, e.g. 10.

Originally posted by Frozzy
Article IV 4e: part removed

Same as Article IV 3e above. For such things I thing a minimum quorum is needed.

Originally posted by Frozzy
Article IV 4d "Multiple-choice polls are not allowed as Amendments" removed.

First this Article IV 4c it makes it hard to commend each one if this is not right. Second I don't see any sence in removing it, the sentence before is: "They have to be Yes/No polls." A Yes/No poll is not a multibit choice poll, so the second sentence is actual not needed but it makes the first sentence clear and precise. So it doesn't matter if you remove the second sentence, but then you lose some explaination.

Originally posted by Frozzy
Article V 1c: "Eight" changed to "Ten"

Good idea! Of course to use the extra days to extend the nomination time.

Originally posted by Frozzy
Article V 1f: "elected office" change to ministerial/presidential

After the change this is more clear. So go for it.


And of course we should the version to that checkMate pointed.

-Martin

[Locutus]

I tend to agree with Martin on most issues. Some changes I agree with, some I don't. One thing I'd like to add to Martin's post:

(e) the Minister of Infrastrucure and Foreign Affairs cannot alter the nation's stance to another without consulting the citizens through an official poll

Strongly disagree, since it'll be impossible to enforce. Example: an AI may make a proposal to us in the middle of a turn chat, a proposal that may make it necessary to change our stance towards this civ. With the proposed amendment, we'd need to end the turn chat right then and there and the Prez would have to keep his PC running for 3 days while we organize a poll on how to respond, since a game can't be saved in the middle of diplomatic negotiations. Basically I agree with the sentiment, but circumstances may sometimes force us into changing our stance without polling. The Constitution should leave some room for that.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Locutus
Strongly disagree, since it'll be impossible to enforce. Example: an AI may make a proposal to us in the middle of a turn chat, a proposal that may make it necessary to change our stance towards this civ. With the proposed amendment, we'd need to end the turn chat right then and there and the Prez would have to keep his PC running for 3 days while we organize a poll on how to respond, since a game can't be saved in the middle of diplomatic negotiations. Basically I agree with the sentiment, but circumstances may sometimes force us into changing our stance without polling. The Constitution should leave some room for that.

Good point and it is now clear for me what this should mean. So I must strongly second Locutus here.

-Martin

[checkMate]

Originally posted by Locutus
I tend to agree with Martin on most issues. Some changes I agree with, some I don't. One thing I'd like to add to Martin's post:


Strongly disagree, since it'll be impossible to enforce. Example: an AI may make a proposal to us in the middle of a turn chat, a proposal that may make it necessary to change our stance towards this civ. With the proposed amendment, we'd need to end the turn chat right then and there and the Prez would have to keep his PC running for 3 days while we organize a poll on how to respond, since a game can't be saved in the middle of diplomatic negotiations. Basically I agree with the sentiment, but circumstances may sometimes force us into changing our stance without polling. The Constitution should leave some room for that.

Actually this could be remedied by dropping back to a previous save. But I agree it is a bit impractical.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by checkMate
Actually this could be remedied by dropping back to a previous save. But I agree it is a bit impractical.

Yeah especily if the save is three turns old, and from my experience it is not possible to replay the game with exact the same random events. Everytime something is different, maybe the AI won't do the diplomatic offer. But IIRC the AI-Human diplomacy is done over message boxes that can be opend on the humans turn, so in CTP1 it is possible that this is not a problem, but confirmation is needed on that subject.

-Martin

[Method]

*BUMP*

Now that i'm out of markapulco, i have a chance to debate some of these. A few of them are changed from the one frozzy posted above. With each change made you'll find the reason given for them.

I. The President
(b)The President should use turn chats, turn threads, or any other similar method while playing the game.

The purpose of this is so that the president doesn't just play turns whenever he pleases, and so that people can be present in a turnchat should an emergency arise.

(e) The President is in charge of naming all new cities of the empire. A name has to be confirmed by the citizens through an Official Poll (article IV, section 3-II). The name for the new city shall be taken from the Master List Name Thread.

This is just to prevent despotic city-naming from the president. Besides, we've seen that the current method does not work with frozzy's "Frozzy City/Frozzia" fiasco

II. The Minister of Domestic Affairs
(d) The Minister of Domestic Affairs is ultimately responsible for settlers, choosing site for new cities and moving these units to this site through an official poll.
(e) The Minister of Domestic Affairs is in charge of all the Empire settings and sliders, including Rations, Workday, Wages, Public Works rate and Science rate through an official poll.
(f) The Minister of Domestic Affairs controls research through an official poll

To make sure that major decisions aren't made by one person. Sure, we expect that this minister would make such polls anyways, but this is just to make sure he does

III. The Minister of Infrastruture and Foreign Affairs
(e) the Minister of Infrastrucure and Foreign Affairs cannot alter the nation's stance to another without consulting the citizens through an official poll. Should a diplomatic situation arise during play without warning, this rule shall be declared void.

Just to make sure that the minister does not order any change without the people's consent. I added a second sentence in there because of concerns about this rule being impossible to enforce

Article IV: Polling rules
II. Official polls:
(d) The government official who started the poll must order the president based on its results. Failure to do so will be regarded withholding of information, as defined in Article I section 5, and can serve as grounds for Impeachment (see Article V).

This is very important: if the official who starts the poll does not make orders based on its results, what's the point of the poll? If he orders otherwise, he has not listened to the people. "Ah, but official polls can be used for information gathering", you say. Information gathering polls do not involve making a decision, so its results will not change anything. besides, if you want to gather information, an unofficial poll is more appropriate

(e) Official polls must be open a minimum of 2 days and a maximum of 7 days. The same officer who started it must include this information in the first post

Time limits are important. They not only give a definative end to polls, but prevent last-minute decisions. Example: if a poll is started 1 day before turns are to be played, then not everyone will have voted, thus the results are not valid.

III. Resolutions:
(e) If more than 1/2 of the voters votes in favour of the resolution, [remove]at least 1/3 of all Citizens vote in the poll[/remove] and the Court does not declare the poll invalid, the resolution is considered passed. All Citizens must from that time on obey it.

The reason for this is simple: out of 44 civgroup members, only 10 voted in the last presidential election. This part just isn't necessary, and more important, realistic.

Article III: Judicial Branch
2. Construct of the Court:
[remove](e) A Judge may not serve in other governmental posts.[/remove]
---
This goes along with:
---
Article V: Government Changes
1. Elections
(f) No citizen may be a candidate for an elected ministerial/presidential position if such candidacy might cause this citizen to be in more than one elected ministerial/presidential position simultaneously.

This is just because as we are lacking members (as we have seen in the last elections) we need to open the door for all citizens to hold governmental posts. This rule has been working find in other DGs i have seen.

IV. Amendments
(c) They have to be Yes/No polls. [remove]Multiple-choice polls are not allowed as Amendments.[/remove]
(e) If more than 1/2 of the voters votes in favour of the Law, [remove]at least 1/3 of all Citizens vote in the poll[/remove] and the Court does not declare the poll invalid, the Amendment is considered passed. All Citizens must from that time on obey it.

Part C: We have to allow Multiple-choice ammendment polls, because of ammendments like this one, which contain several small changes. Do you expect us to poll each small change individually?
Part E: Same as above. there simply aren't enough active citizens for this

Article V: Government Changes
1. Elections
(c) Ten days before the end of any government position term, the court has to initiate an election process. The previous officer will remain in office until the end of the term or until a new candidate is elected, whichever is the later.
(e) At the start of the election process, the Court must start a nomination thread. All citizens who wish to be candidates for an office must publicly express their nomination in this thread. For this they have five days.

This is just to allow for more time for nominations. I personally think it should be even longer than that, but whatever


CHANGES:
Article II 1b: "is encouraged to" changed to "should"
Article II 1e: "(e) The President is in charge of naming all new cities of the empire regardless of how the cities were created or assimilated. A name has to be evaluated by the citizens through an Official Poll (article IV, section 3-II) before a city is named." changed to "(e) The President is in charge of naming all new cities of the empire. A name has to be confirmed by the citizens through an Official Poll (article IV, section 3-II). The names for all new cities shall be taken from the Master List Name Thread."
Article II 2d, e, f: added "through an offical poll"
Article II 3e added
Article III 2e: REMOVED
Article IV 2d: "(d) The government official who started the poll may or may not follow the opinion of the majority of the voters. In case (s)he does not follow what was decided, (s)he must make this decision public." changed to "(d) The government official who started the poll must order the president based on its results.
Article IV 2e: "(e) Official polls shall only expire in a day chosen by the officer who opened the poll. And if the poll has an expiring day the same officer who started it must include this information in the first post.
" changed to "(e) Official polls must be open a minimum of 2 days and a maximum of 7 days. this must be stated in the first post. The same officer who started it must include this information in the first post."
Article IV 3e: part removed
Article IV 4e: part removed
Article IV 4d "Multiple-choice polls are not allowed as Amendments" removed.
Article V 1c: "Eight" changed to "Ten"
Article V 1f: "elected office" change to ministerial/presidential

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by TKG

I. The President
(b)The President should use turn chats, turn threads, or any other similar method while playing the game.

The purpose of this is so that the president doesn't just play turns whenever he pleases, and so that people can be present in a turnchat should an emergency arise.

Well the President can only play if all ministers gave orders. So if he don't have all orders he has to hold a turn chat. Another problem with turn chats is if noone has time and noone appears, but he has all orders together then he can play and I think he must play, because it is possible to continue, that is the President's job. Finally the president has to give a detailed report about everything That happend in the game. So I still think the president should be able to play even without holding a turn chat.

Originally posted by TKG

(e) The President is in charge of naming all new cities of the empire. A name has to be confirmed by the citizens through an Official Poll (article IV, section 3-II). The name for the new city shall be taken from the Master List Name Thread.

This is just to prevent despotic city-naming from the president. Besides, we've seen that the current method does not work with frozzy's "Frozzy City/Frozzia" fiasco

Actual in my opinion the President has the right to name a city how he wants, he just has to evaluate the name, meaning asking the people if they like/don't like the name. If they like the name fine, if they don't like it fine no problem. The original intension was to allow the President to name the cities as he wants, the evaluation poll thingy was added to prevent the President from giving a name to a city that would insult someone for instance. Well in that case the Resolution poll would be the apropiate mean to prevent the President from giving the name to the city. Unfortunatly that doesn't work with the current number of citiziens needed for a resolution poll.

Originally posted by TKG

Article IV: Polling rules
II. Official polls:
(d) The government official who started the poll must order the president based on its results. Failure to do so will be regarded withholding of information, as defined in Article I section 5, and can serve as grounds for Impeachment (see Article V).

This is very important: if the official who starts the poll does not make orders based on its results, what's the point of the poll? If he orders otherwise, he has not listened to the people. "Ah, but official polls can be used for information gathering", you say. Information gathering polls do not involve making a decision, so its results will not change anything. besides, if you want to gather information, an unofficial poll is more appropriate

(e) Official polls must be open a minimum of 2 days and a maximum of 7 days. The same officer who started it must include this information in the first post

Time limits are important. They not only give a definative end to polls, but prevent last-minute decisions. Example: if a poll is started 1 day before turns are to be played, then not everyone will have voted, thus the results are not valid.

I agree that a time limit should be given, but official polls can be still used for information gathering, such a poll is started by an official. So if you want prevent official to start an official poll for information gathering then you have to forbite it expressly. For time limits what is the appropiate limit, I did in the CTP2 DG an official poll with a time limit of 3 day IIRC and only 3 people voted, so even if you use three days, it could be that not everyone can vote, so how long should I leave polls open, for 7 days? That would mean we have to wait one weak until we can play the next turn chat and I think it is a problem if this prevents the game from rolling. As this would slow down the discussion and the game.

Originally posted by TKG

III. Resolutions:
(e) If more than 1/2 of the voters votes in favour of the resolution, [remove]at least 1/3 of all Citizens vote in the poll[/remove] and the Court does not declare the poll invalid, the resolution is considered passed. All Citizens must from that time on obey it.

The reason for this is simple: out of 44 civgroup members, only 10 voted in the last presidential election. This part just isn't necessary, and more important, realistic.

Let's do a resolution, a total number of four voters 2 Yes, 1 No and 1 Abstain, do you think the resolution should pass? So I still go here for a fix number.

Unfortunatly I don't have the time to comment the rest.

-Martin

[Method]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
Well the President can only play if all ministers gave orders. So if he don't have all orders he has to hold a turn chat. Another problem with turn chats is if noone has time and noone appears, but he has all orders together then he can play and I think he must play, because it is possible to continue, that is the President's job. Finally the president has to give a detailed report about everything That happend in the game. So I still think the president should be able to play even without holding a turn chat.

the point of a turnchat is not to play even though not everyone has submitted orders. it is so that the president can consult ministers should an emergency arise.

Actual in my opinion the President has the right to name a city how he wants, he just has to evaluate the name, meaning asking the people if they like/don't like the name. If they like the name fine, if they don't like it fine no problem. The original intension was to allow the President to name the cities as he wants, the evaluation poll thingy was added to prevent the President from giving a name to a city that would insult someone for instance. Well in that case the Resolution poll would be the apropiate mean to prevent the President from giving the name to the city. Unfortunatly that doesn't work with the current number of citiziens needed for a resolution poll.

well sure, that method works fine, it just takes a little longer, that's all.

I agree that a time limit should be given, but official polls can be still used for information gathering, such a poll is started by an official. So if you want prevent official to start an official poll for information gathering then you have to forbite it expressly. For time limits what is the appropiate limit, I did in the CTP2 DG an official poll with a time limit of 3 day IIRC and only 3 people voted, so even if you use three days, it could be that not everyone can vote, so how long should I leave polls open, for 7 days? That would mean we have to wait one weak until we can play the next turn chat and I think it is a problem if this prevents the game from rolling. As this would slow down the discussion and the game.

if a poll is used for information gathering, then no decision is made. Thus, the official can't really order the president based on its results, can he?
as for time limits, perhaps making it 3-7 days is more appropriate. we started off with 3 in the ACDG, but found that we might not have time for the poll to end before the turns were played, so we shortened it to 2 days. perhaps with so few people as we have here, 3 days may be better, yes.

Let's do a resolution, a total number of four voters 2 Yes, 1 No and 1 Abstain, do you think the resolution should pass? So I still go here for a fix number.

ok, maybe. but 1/3 of the citizens is definately too high

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by TKG
ok, maybe. but 1/3 of the citizens is definately too high

Unfortunatly I am also short with time today like the rest of this week and next week. So I only comment this one above. (I know I should also comment the other ones.)

Actual so far we all agree that the current number of citiziens is too, I did a suggestion in my long post above of the fixed number of citiziens, so that it does not depend on the number of the citiziens. For instance an absolute number 9 citiziens has to vote in a resolution poll so that it can be considered as passed. So that would make us independent of the number of members of our civ group, this way we have only worry about the number of actual participants.

-Martin

[Method]

9 seems fair.

[checkMate]

EH - EM

Speaking of the constitution.

It's time for the Judges Nomination.

[Method]

where's miggio?

[Martin Gühmann]

Of course we can still talk about it if it should be 7,8,9 or 10, but it should be something like that. I think we could use the mean of unofficial polls, to get to know the exact number. That would be also a good idea for the other stuff, so that we can put it into one big amandment.

Another point is the length of that amendment poll:

(f) Amendment polls shall expire in five days and the citizen who started the poll must include the expiring day in its first post.

From my point of view the five day period is just a suggestion, because there is the word "shall" and not "must". (According to my grammers book) The advantage would be to leave it open for more then five days is that it would allow more people to vote for and we votes. Even if I must admit that the suggested five day period should be long enough, if we would have enough regulars here.

-Martin

[Method]

but the part about multi-choice ammendments is really the crucial part. also, IMO, we shouldn't restrict them to yes/no either. see this thread. in the case of #8, for example.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by TKG
but the part about multi-choice ammendments is really the crucial part. also, IMO, we shouldn't restrict them to yes/no either. see this thread. in the case of #8, for example.

In the current situation you can do it as an unofficial poll to ask the people what is the best combination for the amendment. We had such a multi-bit chioce poll in the CTP2 DG, our problem was our to deal with "incorrect" votes like voting for ebery option. But after further consideration the problem could be solved if we see giving the vote to No and Yes to proposal no. 5 for instance as abstain concerning proposal 5 also no votes for both options should be considered as abstain. That needs to be written into the constition. So that it is clear how the result should be interpreted, if someone do such a thing on purpose or by accident.

-Martin

[TheBirdMan]

I think that this § is slowing the game. And I think Martin wrote the same in his post 31. march.

Article IV, 2 e
Official polls must be open a minimum of 2 days and a maximum of 7 days. this must be stated in the first post. The same officer who started it must include this information in the first post.

I say, that if the members want to have influence on the game, then they should visit the forum as regular as possible.

Change the polls to be open a minimum of 36 hours and a maximum of 72 hours!

[Method]

IMO, 36 hours is too short for a poll (that and polls only allow you to put in how many days they should be open for, not hours) and 72 is too short for a maximum. though 7 days is way too long for a maximum length, i think we can trust our officials not to make ridiculously long polls.

[TheBirdMan]

No, 36 to 72 hours are not too short. In my opinion. If people are given a looooong time to respond, then someone is just asking for a slow game.

[checkMate]

I guess it doesn't bother anybody that we have an unconstitutional court at the moment.

[Frozzy]

I like TKG's suggestion, and since no one has any qualms about the term starting on the 1st, it works.

If you really are worried file a case in the topped thread

[TheBirdMan]

I might - course I DO mean what I write. People tend to use ALL the time they are allowed to use ...... plus a little more.

[Method]

*bump*

would anyone like to add anything? otherwise i'll just put this poll.

[checkMate]

Well now the 10th came and went as well.

[Method]

just hold on! nominations start on the 15th. elections start on the 25th. new government begins on the 1st.

[checkMate]

I guess I missed something, sorry?

[Method]

was that not another reminder for nominations?