Mainsite Mirror
Based on suggestions from previous discussions, Quorum I and Quorum II.
I believe that the new site charter will be approved soon, so I want to start working on a new policy for how voting works, intended to overrule the current site charter, specifically the "Policy Issues" Section, to make future changes to site policy easier to enact. I'll try to write it so that it can be neatly slotted into the new policy tree, although some changed may need to be made.
Currently, we require 50% of staff to engage with any "major change" to policy in order for it to pass. Most things we vote on are considered major. Given that not all staff are interested in voting, it can be difficult to get enough votes to pass quorum without directly messaging people who haven't yet voted.
We have three ideas for making it easier:
- Abolish Quorum, policy votes pass if a majority is in support, regardless of how many staff voted. May require more admin fiat to extend or suspend votes without enough engagement.
- Lower Quorum to 30% - Arbitrary number, but it would mean staff can engage with policy less often. In the short term this would make policy easier to pass, although only if current levels of engagement with policy are maintained.
- Allow Staff to Opt Out of Voting, with only staff that Opt In counting towards quorum. I'll work out the details if the majority of people like this idea. For now, I'm assuming opt-in by default, opt out by choice, opt back in at any time. The intention is not to remove people's right to vote, but to remove their obligation to vote. Staff that opt out would be free to focus on other duties unless a specific policy interests them.
I mostly just need to get an idea of which of these are most likely to pass so that I know which of them to fully develop, so I ask that you say which of these proposals you'd be likely to support using the following format, even though this isn't actually a policy vote. This is approval voting, vote Yes for all options you support (obviously if most people want to abolish quorum, the other two are irrelevant). Since Opting Out lowers quorum by other means, let me know if you'd support lowering quorum to 30% in addition to allowing staff to opt out of voting on policy, otherwise it'll remain at 50%. (Voting on Promotions is a separate policy I wasn't intending to change).
||~ Policy ||~ Support ||~ Do not Support ||
|| Abolish Quorum || || ||
|| Lower Quorum to 30% || || ||
|| Allow Staff to Opt-Out of Voting || || ||
|| Lower Quorum to 30% AND Allow Staff to Opt-Out of Voting || || ||Obviously if you have other suggestions or important caveats (e.g. Charter should have a higher quorum to alter, Admins and Captains should not be able to opt out of voting) then include that in your reply, I'll keep any comments in mind while writing the policy. If you think all of these ideas are bad, vote no to all three, that's also useful for me to know.
Closed with the posting of a follow-up thread.
(account deleted)