/tg/Station 13

Hey everyone. In a previous thread people seemed keen on the idea of term lengths, and how many terms headmins can consecutively run.

The general consensus I've heard is that 6 months should be the length of each term (every 6 months we have a new headmin election) and headmins are limited to 2 *consecutive* runs (as in, someone could be elected twice in a row to be headmin, then be elected again after at least another term has passed).

I think the discussion of how many terms should headmins be limited to staying in office for consecutively can be discussed in this thread, I personally have no strong feelings on anything, but the poll exists to determine how long the terms should be.

I think a US style two consecutive term limit is a good idea, it means we can cycle around headmins so we don't constantly have one guy maintaining the role for the next couple of years forever. I might even argue that the Coder/Admin elect headmins should be limited to a one term consecutive limit to simply force them to bring in someone different in exchange for not being beholden to the greater community in their election.

Also I like the six month term, it's long enough for the headmins to do their job well but also short enough to keep them from getting complacent with their power and knowing they will have to defend their decisions to maintain their positition, as well as reduce the frequency of burnout's since a headmin can simply step down at the end of their six month term.

ALSO, whatever term limit we go with. If a headmin/s refuse to abdicate or submit to the election they should point blank lose not only their headmin role but their admin status.

I see no reason to have any sort of term limit. If someone's doing a good job, we want to KEEP them doing a good job. If someone's not, they should be pointed to by the other 'mins and announced as such, and then not re-elected. I'd rather not have to deal with fresh heads with fresh "OHH LEMME CHANGE THIS" ideas every six-twelve months.

If you're suggesting that a less-than-optimal candidate will get re-elected, that's an issue with the election system and the voters.

The Player's Headmin Election subforum exists now and upon the end of term can be purged and re-used for the purpose of the election. I think the system we hased out and I facilitated worked well and it isn't reliant on specifically me doing anything (just basically need one person to step up and start making threads).

I'm good with two consecutive term limits myself really as well.

Aurx wrote:I see no reason to have any sort of term limit. If someone's doing a good job, we want to KEEP them doing a good job. If someone's not, they should be pointed to by the other 'mins and announced as such, and then not re-elected. I'd rather not have to deal with fresh heads with fresh "OHH LEMME CHANGE THIS" ideas every six-twelve months.

Problem is, there will always be unhappy people and at what point do people decide that finally there are enough people unhappy and who exactly will decide that and what prevents people who are happy from just coming and saying "no you are just whining everything is fine"?

I don't like the idea of bringing politics in this, but we at least should hold some talks regularly about how well headmins perform.

6 months also isn't very long. If someone really did such a good job I think everything will be fine while they take a break and return to be elected again.

>at what point do people decide that finally there are enough people unhappy and who exactly will decide that
It's called "voting in an election". If people don't like them, they'll vote for someone else and attempt to convince others to do likewise. Assuming electing headmins by player vote works, it should work to solve this issue.

Aurx wrote:>at what point do people decide that finally there are enough people unhappy and who exactly will decide that
It's called "voting in an election". If people don't like them, they'll vote for someone else and attempt to convince others to do likewise. Assuming electing headmins by player vote works, it should work to solve this issue.

After this poll gets a solid turn out we can easily just hold another one, you raise solid points. I just don't feel strongly about it personally.

no term limit
arbitrarily kicking good headmins out of the seat because they've overstayed their welcome on the throne is a horrible idea
good leaders arent everywhere. the ones that do step up and try to make things right should be valued. removing the possibility of those leaders to rule just means that eventually we'll run into the problem that all the headmins are undeniably shit because there's no good ones left who are eligible to run.

Yeah talked about it with others, there appears to be no general consensus that I can determine, we'll hold a headminstration 3.5 thread a bit after this ones been up for a while.

What's the point of a term limit? If a headmin is doing a poor job or we dont want him around anymore, he'd stop getting elected. If someone is doing a good job and the people want him around, dont limit his ability to do the good job.

No reason for there to be a term limit. I think term length is fine at 6 months.

Violaceus wrote:It is I, student of politics who will explain you things.

Oh boy.

But no really, this means we'll have to do the whole carnival of headmin election speeches every x months? I can't be the only one who got that secondary embarrassment from that whole show. It was like grade-school voting for class president all over again.

I personally voted for term lengths to be a year. My argument for term limits is based around the fact that incumbents in all situations have an unfair advantage most of the time.

Violaceus wrote:If I would be a person to decide, I would just want to see much more power exercised by His Highness, SoS, with lower amount of player voting and 3rd parties.

Right now we have SoS who rules like Elizabeth II, independent coders, independent forum admins, independent wiki admins.

For me everything should be centralized and unificated, with one person in charge of all.

As a student of politics you probably understand the need for delegation.

Violaceus wrote:Of course I do, but currently SoS delegates 95% of his power, keeping only power of updating servers and setting configs to himself.

You could talk to him on IRC and gain some deeper insight.

I've spoken with scaredofshadows a number of times on similar topics, he feels very strongly that he does not own the tg community, his hands off approach reflects that, with the ownership being placed as much as possible with the community through a semi democratic approach.

Violaceus wrote:You people don't understand why there is term limit in real world.

But!

It is I, student of politics who will explain you things.

>the guy who claims to be disposed Polish royalty is going to educate us on democracy

The reason we have term limits IRL is because the person in charge appoints a lot of other people in charge. If a person gets elected enough times they can shape the government they're running to be the leader of to better match themselves. You'll look at all the people they go in to work with and think "Well President X has shown they work fantastically with all of them, because they appointed them. If we vote President Y he's an unknown, he disagrees with a lot of those people" so there'll be a tendency to favor X as someone who can function better in the role.

We don't have that here, though. Headmins don't appoint anyone. You could argue that, since they're admins they have a say in who the other admins are, but I'm pushing for a consensus system for trialmin applications that disseminates that power and authority over all of 'bus...so that shouldn't be a problem.

I would even go one-step further and say that actually BEING a headmin hurts your reputation as an admin so much that it's highly unlikely we'll ever see someone get re-elected to the position anyway. The only person to ever do so was Deuryn, only to have him disappear back to his home planet again.

I mean, for fuck's sake I went from being the "hero of the people" to having people print out pictures of me and take shits on them in under a month. Shit rolls uphill here, and behind every complaint that "so and so admin did something bad" is a tiny voice that says "and fuck the headmins for letting it happen!" no matter who is right or wrong.

Limiting the number of terms a headmin can serve solves none of the problems we actually have in our governance, and only creates more. It prevents potentially good candidates from returning to serve the community again.

...though history has shown they'll never get re-elected anyway.

Saegrimr wrote:

Violaceus wrote:It is I, student of politics who will explain you things.

Oh boy.

But no really, this means we'll have to do the whole carnival of headmin election speeches every x months? I can't be the only one who got that secondary embarrassment from that whole show. It was like grade-school voting for class president all over again.

I agree that 6 month terms is a pretty short amount of time. It also doesn't give us a lot of time to get big things done. Do people really want to go through all this again in March?

The original idea, when we first decided on headmin elections, was to have terms for a year and no limits on terms served. The only reason that process broke down was headmin apathy: the people that were voted in by the playerbase turned out not to be able to work well together and individually abandoned their posts.

It wasn't a failing of the system itself but the people in it.