Unless folks want to discuss elaborating on/adding more to the mechanism, I don't think this thread is needed.

As I said in the other thread: there are other things you can do on staff to contribute without being OS. OS is for disc stuff, policy voting and being in a leadership role, and all of those are fine to wait for 1-2 months before you're ready. Getting a little more experience while you're at it.

I also had to wait about 2 months before the first promo cycle after joining JS. It can be very annoying to wait, I get that. But if talent really want to be part of staff, patience is also a good quality to train.

Even controversial candidates get voted in as OS, so it's not really that much of a barrier (which is a totally different discussion). If I really end up being in the minority that's against this fast track, I'd suggest increasing both the quorum and percentage of votes needed to pass a special election by quite a lot. The base logic here would be that a special candidate should've made such a big impact that more people would be able to vouch for them via vote.

We are presumably not going to to rush anything too much if this policy passes, I agree the 6 month promotions cycle can sometimes be inconvenient, but at minimum I think there should be a reasonable limit on the time period someone is JS for before promotion (I'd say 3 months).

If a candidate is worthy of promotion, they will show it quickly. I'm talking cases like Elenee, Ralliston, ais, etc. They showed their worth damn near instantly and were promoted quickly while staying within reason.

Historically, extremely promising Junior Staff have been relegated to the whims of the promotion cycle prior to being elevated.

This is a really weird way to say "we have a regular promotion cycle, and sometimes that's slightly inconvenient to some people that will probably get a promotion in ~3 months".

For particularly active, particularly competent junior staff members, this can tie their hands for a long period after they have proven themselves to be more than capable of handling the increased trust and responsibility of an operational staff member.

Would love an example of this. As psychic says, I'm not sure how many times this has actually happened. We have maybe one example of, say, a JS potentially being a VC, but that hardly feels like a good reason to create an entire new promotions policy?

It reads to me that this entire policy proposal exists because some people may have to wait for a regular promotions schedule, which is inconvenient for ill-defined reasons, and crucially I'm not seeing any concrete benefit to this policy proposal. Additionally, there are a lot of weird asides to unique admin remits. Things like

*Acting Team Captains may only nominate the aforementioned candidates if they feel this candidate is fulfilling a role on the team or conducting such exemplary work that they are limited by the trial conditions of the JS position. Abuse of this nomination may preempt administrative review.

Admins are apparently exempt from this nomination procedure, as it is called out explicitly for team captains, but not admins. Further,

Following the election process Administrators must review the process and bestow upon the elected the Operation Staff role and its associated powers.
In the event the process is deemed by Administrators to have been mismanaged, the results should instead be voided.

Is an open door for admin to just step in and say "no" for whatever reason without any recourse at all. Why is this being done? Why is this rider needed? I don't think the admin team would do such a thing, but it is still a very strange and strongly worded thing to write out for this process.

In the event the process is deemed by Administrators to have been mismanaged, the results should instead be voided.

This is rather vague. What defines mismanagement? How many administrators would have to agree on this? What parts of the process are we looking at here? I get that we don't want captains to abuse this power, but there was already a more specific clause about that earlier.

While I may have been an exception, I was promoted 3 months after joining staff. While I am not against this, I am unsure how useful it is.

Effectively how often does the problem described actually happen? Moreover, the key differences between JS and OS is being able to vote on policy and being able to join Disc. I do think a three month wait is fine there.

SECTION I: Policy Need

Historically, extremely promising Junior Staff have been relegated to the whims of the promotion cycle prior to being elevated. For a junior staff member who joins their respective team half-way between promotions and, subsequently, proves to be an exceptional staff member, this often means they are relegated to waiting for 7-8 months before they are sufficiently able to be promoted. This is in the modern system where we have 3 promotions in a year, whereas previously it could sometimes be up to 12 months before a staff member is put up for a promotion.

For particularly active, particularly competent junior staff members, this can tie their hands for a long period after they have proven themselves to be more than capable of handling the increased trust and responsibility of an operational staff member. The goal of this policy is to put to bed this issue and create a non-standard promotion system for junior staff members who show exceptional capability in their roles.

There are many examples of this happening over the years, one of the most recent being Zoobeeny and Divinephobia, but they aren't the only examples on the list.

SECTION II: Nominating candidates for Non-standard Promotion

At any time, acting Team Captains may put forth one or more of their team members who are Junior Staff for elevation to the role of Operational Staff.

*Acting Team Captains may only nominate the aforementioned candidates if they feel this candidate is fulfilling a role on the team or conducting such exemplary work that they are limited by the trial conditions of the JS position. Abuse of this nomination may preempt administrative review.

Admins may at any time put forth one or more candidates for the role for the purpose of aiding in staff duties requiring the role.

SECTION III: Obtaining the non-standard promotion

Nominating Administrators or Acting Team Captains will inform all Administrators and Acting Team Captains of their intent to nominate a candidate for non-standard promotion to Operational Staff.

(Optional) Though it is not required it is recommended that teams merge their nomination threads if they intend to nominate staff members around the same time as to prevent voter fatigue. However as one of the tenets of this policy is the nomination of exceptional candidates outside the normal cycle, they need not feel obligated to do so.

Nominating Administrators or Acting Team Captains will create a voting thread detailing:

A. Their candidate(s)
B. Why the candidates require a nonstandard promotion to O.S.

The thread will remain open for one week.

While the thread is open O.S.+ will be able to vote on whether or not each candidate should be given the Non-standard promotion.

Requirement for a candidate to be promoted to O.S. is the same as in standard promotion, 2/3rds majority with a quorum equal to that required for policy implementation (currently 30%).

There is no obligation for staff members to cast a vote in the thread.

Only votes for or against candidates are permitted.

In a situation with multiple candidates a voter may choose to cast a vote on the election of all, some, or none of the candidates.

Candidates may not vote in their own election.

Following the election process Administrators must review the process and bestow upon the elected the Operation Staff role and its associated powers.

In the event the process is deemed by Administrators to have been mismanaged, the results should instead be voided.

This proposal will not make alterations to our existing staff charter, instead it aims to create a new process to fulfill promotions in times of need or when extraordinary junior staff are hampered by the trial role of JS.