This morning I internally formally proposed the following measure with the intention of making progress on the current deadlock and restoring trust in the next edition of the Steering Committee:
Add a ballot measure to the upcoming election in November. The ballot measure lets voters decide whether or not that same election is a full election (for seven seats: four two-year terms and three one-year terms) or a regular election (for five seats: three two-year terms and two one-year terms). If the ballot measure is passed by a majority of voters then the top seven vote getters are elected and if the ballot measure fails then the top five vote getters are elected and John/Robert keep their current seats/terms.
Because there is no current Constitutional mechanism for adding a ballot measure, passing this would require a supermajority (five votes in favor) of the Steering Committee.
I proposed this because in numerous discussions surrounding the recent vote of no confidence some people claimed a mandate/majority for their point of view (whether that point of view was to stay the course or to hold full re-elections), with others claiming that Discourse and/or loud voices are not a representative slice of the Nix community/electorate. I tend to agree with the latter group of people: the only actual way we can determine the way the community feels on the subject for certain is to put it to a vote.
I already put this to a formal vote, which broke down along the same lines as the vote of no confidence:
So internally the ballot measure failed, but I haven’t lost hope in this particular proposal since from where I stand it seems like the most apolitical and peaceful resolution to the current controversy.
What I want more than anything is to restore trust in the Steering Committee as an institution. The way I see it, regardless of whether the ballot measure succeeds or fails it helps restore trust in the Steering Committee:
If the ballot measure fails then that sends a clear signal that the community believes that the Steering Committee should stay the course and not overreact to the surrounding drama and it will help quell loud voices
If the ballot measure succeeds then that also sends a clear signal that the community has lost confidence in the first edition of the Steering Committee and that the only path forward to heal is to elect a clean slate
If you would like to see this ballot measure pass then I encourage you to reach out to your Steering Committee representatives to help them change their mind (we need five votes to pass it and currently only have three votes in favor).
Arguments against the ballot measure have been included in a collapsible section of today’s meeting notes.
Because this thread is a discussion venue, unlike the notes thread for which replying is disabled, I will include these arguments here in full to save you all a few clicks:
This feels like the third (? I kinda lost count) attempt of trying to remove Robert and John before the actual election. If people are so upset with this whole thing, they will elect people that will want (and vote for) a SC dissolution. The world (or Nix for that matter) won’t end in 1 month and a half until we have our results. Why are you rushing this matter?
We arrived on our constitution because of widespread agreement that we had a “leadership vacuum”.
And here we are… defeating countermeasures to deadlocks. With all respect, this feels like a very backwards logic. To me, a paragraph like this:
I wish for forced resignations, votes of no-confidence, and terms forced to end early to be reserved for serious accusations of very inappropriate behavior
Is the definition of timid. The bold action would be saying yes, taking the election on the chin, whether or not that means giving up a spot. The timid option is to delay this until after the election.
This is not an argument for or against from my side, just an observation that the logic seems self-negating.
Arguments against the ballot measure have been included in a collapsible section of today’s meeting notes.
I don’t agree with these arguments against but I very much appreciate that they are documented, and that we get to see the votes.
Thanks for the relative increase in transparency to everyone involved in that.
What I want more than anything is to restore trust in the Steering Committee as an institution. The way I see it, regardless of whether the ballot measure succeeds or fails it helps restore trust in the Steering Committee
To me this logic from @Gabriella439 makes a lot of sense.
if this measure was placed on the ballot without full prior agreement from the SC, and found to be popular by voters, how would the SC react?
phrased differently, to what degree is the SC reactive to its own body of created law, v.s. to revealed community preference?
i don’t know that we need to answer that in this Discourse thread. but i do think contributors should be asking themselves which of those things make it a useful body.
I really wish for early rotations to not be associated with any blame, accusations, or impropriety whatsoever Why see early re-election as a failure, instead of as a success? I assume you believe in processes: let’s have the process help us, but let’s not blindly clutch on to protocols and procedures when they hinder us. Let’s not drown in textualism and originalism, citing “values” on every available occasion, and let’s abstain from reproducing the broken parts of our governments
Because what I wrote in the second paragraph of my argument that you quoted. I think we were trying to address what we saw as real problems with moderation in good faith, and that sort thing is a scary thing to do for SC members if they think it will result in a month of high stress, lost sleep, lost work, character assignation from leaks, and then an unexpected election.
I think being able to do something that will temporarily be unpopular or neutral, but has the potential to become popular by the next election, is a feature, not bug, of representative democracy. I understand that fans of direct democracy do not like this part of representative democracy, but with all due respect, they and I just disagree.
I would be calling this a feature of representative democracy even if I wasn’t the one whose term people have been trying to cut short extra-constitutionally, just to be clear.
But see, I already mentioned that I, for one example, did not sign the petition in response to the moderation team situation. I’m very tempted to extrapolate and assume that, maybe, your effort was not, in fact, “unpopular”. Sure there was some critique of the wording, and some phrases, such as “objective moderation”, are apparently seen as loaded. Sure the K900 situation was received badly, which is a concern that is separate from policy design. But there’s obviously been a lot of demand for a better moderation story. And if you think you have solutions, you don’t even need to be a voter in the SC to propose them. Especially now that the moderation team is gone too.
Was very much uncalled for. The leak could have treated you with more empathy and granted you the benefit of the doubt. And even if the thread failed at that, we should offer the same to Peder and Winter.
Well here’s my non-ironic take on processes: I think it’s desirable to change this expectation.
I want to ask you for more insight on your moderation policy efforts, but maybe I try DM?
i don’t understand it. i don’t understand why any one of us is expected to act differently based on the desire of the SC v.s. the desires expressed in an annual Nix Survey v.s. the desires of those we’re actively collaborating with, or any other claim.
we evidently are expected to. the mod team “resigned” rather than say “no, we won’t act on your request” when the SC asks it to act in a specific way. but i don’t understand why. i think i’m just lacking some crucial cultural myth that comes naturally to everyone who’s still engaging in this process.
have fun with your election. i’m going back to coordinating with my fellow contributors the same way we were before any of this… happened. if the SC asks me to do something i disagree with, i’ll block/mute; i’ll respect anyone else who does the same.
On the bright side the moderation team and the SC very much agreed to disagree at the end of this term, and even if the majority in the SC for how to go forward from there fell apart with their resignations, new majorities for how to proceed can be found in the next term.
It being a fresh term at that point means there will be a long runway to see the decisions that emerge through into a stable situation.
Instead of the SC technically being in charge of moderation, but not being perceived to actually be able to interfere with the moderation teams operation, those questions will be settled one way or the other.
While I’m saying this, I also feel for the large amount of frustration these developments and difficult decisions must have caused on all sides.
I have no doubt the people here care about Nix and want what’s best for the project. I’m also optimistic that what happened can make us find a renewed appreciation for each others roles in contributing towards what makes this project and community function so well most of the time.
mhmmm offtopic while trying to fall asleep, and admittedly a fairly derivative take, but: “representative democracy” is such an unfortunate name, making both the electorate and the elected imagine that it’s got something to do with “representing” the “people”; it really should be “minibatch democracy” or “monte carlo democracy”. Speaking of bugs and features, it’s not, of course, that representative democracy is fundamentally inferior to direct democracy or vice versa, it is that the bare notion that “the most numerous” posses a “legitimate” “right” to coerce and trespass the individual is in itself incredibly… (raise your hand if you just thought the f-word?) sadistic, in that it claims a humanistic justification for being inhumane and asocial.
if the SC’s perceived legitimacy derives from its function as a representative body, how is the SC to instill confidence if its delegates themselves already lacked the confidence their actions are representing their base?
Technically speaking, the question of whether they represent their base, the question whether they interpret correctly who their base are, and the question of what tactical choices people make and expect from other SC members with different support bases — these are all different questions, and neither is easy.
(The interaction between «I represent you, I have the same base values» and «I had to stare into the issue for ten hours of pure time, and now my opinions are different, that’s why» is obviously yet another hard question, given that not everyone has half an hour to spend on reading highlights from a ten-hour analysis)
Why see early re-election as a failure, instead of as a success? I assume you believe in processes: let’s have the process help us, but let’s not blindly clutch on to protocols and procedures when they hinder us. Let’s not drown in textualism and originalism, citing “values” on every available occasion, and let’s abstain from reproducing the broken parts of our governments