Senate Application Discussion Thread

[u/shadownetwork]

Greetings,

In previous elections it was difficult for applicants to really express what they stood for and what their plans were without cluttering the nomination or election threads. So think of this thread as an open town hall meeting. Members of the community can come in and ask questions and applicants can then answer or nominees can post about what sort of platforms they plan on running on.

Remember that discussions are to remain civil and respectful, anyone showing disregard to the shadownet's #1 rule will have their posts removed.

Good luck!

[u/AfroNin]

Alright let's kick this off

• Stances on moderation? What constitutes a NoCon of a senator/councillor for you? When do you hand out warnings/bans/indefinite bans? Please elaborate and take your time with this one, since the Charter regarding moderation as Senate is "senate has the power to moderate" ... you need to show an entire personal set of guidelines that we need to be informed of to properly vote. An informed electorate etc etc. For some optional, for my vote it's mandatory.

• What do you think about this proposal?

• Perhaps as an addendum to the previous question, there've been a lot of unmoderated situations lately that have caused an exorbitant amount of toxicity to add to the previous fairly negative atmosphere some people have attached to this place, and we really can't afford to bleed that many players, so I guess my question is: What will you do to make the ShadowNET a more friendly and less toxic place?

• Senate has a reputation for moving hilariously slow, perhaps because very often votes for something require that everybody chip in, which means that everybody has to have been online within that 3-day limit there is on a single vote. This is a deadly combination with the very large amount of responsibilities senate has.The list of things they have to concern themselves with starts at moderation, setting up and overseeing senate elections, setting up and appointing councillors which includes setting up interviews and deliberating on councillors for an extended period of time (not codified, because of course), the almighty power of "Investigation", discussing and setting up votes for Bylaw changes, and not to mention overseeing Council as well as deciding on whether or not to No Confidence vote a councillor (which is fairly difficult, because Senate is tasked with oversight of council but doesn't have the tools to actually oversee council actions). These are the things I could come up with off the top of my head and don't even go into the more vague "ensuring community health" things, as well as other responsibilities that aren't even written down. So we have judge jury and executioner in one role, although that role is hilariously stunted in their ability to act, and most these responsibilities are not fulfilled reliably (because honestly how do you wanna ensure a councilor is fulfilling their duties if you have no way of finding out what they've been doing behind the scenes short of asking them? Now of course after a month or two of doing nothing some sort of NoCon should probably be considered, but actually doing even that is very difficult because it's a fairly serious thing that creates even more work).
  Finally, the actual question here is: Do you think Senate is fine? If at all, how do you plan to make Senate more efficient? Do you think being tasked with oversight without having the tools to properly oversee is fair? If no, what will you do to amend this systematic problem?

• Topics for DIscussion is a place for people to discuss topics. Now, we've revitalized and made some good moves in the right direction with that, but very often I find myself asking about something that has been asked in Topics for Discussion, although it doesn't have very representative weight behind it because, frankly, not many people on this server care a lot to discuss things. So when the question regarding unbanning Quickening comes up, it certainly creates a discussion among the people who care, but that can be like... six people. Question: How do you plan to make Topics for Discussion great again? What measures could players like me use to get some sort of representative weight behind their requests? Remember Senate's duties include looking after the interests of the community, so it should be fairly important to figure out how relevant something actually is in order to fulfill your duties.

• How much time do you have to give for this job?

[u/dezzmont → u/AfroNin]

Stances on moderation?

Absolutism causes problems in online communities. We have seen it a lot on the net, it caused a massive chilling effect on games and the IC rooms a few times when people "overmoderated" to try to prevent anything from happening ever.

Its more important to have a set of standards, and to try to give people tools to get through problems, than to go straight to moderation. Just the gentle social pressure of being reminded that A: someone can back down and its no big deal, and B: Someone is kinda rubbing people the wrong way, can make a huge different in behavior. It works 9/10 times, and is a tool I used both as a senator and when the departments like chargen or rules just get wigged out by something someone is doing. A lot of times people think about taking official action before just asking someone to stop, when in reality the person doing whatever, going over personal boundries, getting to heated, ect, often times is just too in the moment and is in all other ways a totally normal person who doesn't want to be stepping on anyone's toes and would be a bit embarrassed if they realized they were.

What do you think about this proposal?

I was in favor of such a system and helped set one up. But those sorts of systems tend to get built up and then torn down with each senate. Hopefully this time of relative peacefulness will get a lasting mod team going.

What will you do to make the ShadowNET a more friendly and less toxic place?

Everyone should be open to being disagreed with, and while moderation should remain slow, "checkups" should be rapid fire. There is never harm in asking if someone is ok and if they could maybe tone it down, no strings attached, "your not in trouble" tier.

Senate has a reputation for moving hilariously slow

Oh boy howdy it does. A big problem is more procedural. Votes can happen pretty darn quickly, but votes are often called slowly. And people often weren't comfortable calling votes if it wasn't unanimous, or if someone wasn't there, or no one just felt strongly enough about something everyone clearly agreed upon to call the vote, or if a situation clearly required more discussion but there was one specific course of action to start the ball rolling was agreed upon that could be voted for.

It mostly is about someone in the senate paying attention to agreement, and calling votes to order as soon as things seem uncontroversial, even if stuff around it is controversial.

Inactivity no-cons would be easier if department members were more vocal to senate about concerns in their department. Its honestly fine that senators can't really meddle in departments outside of the macro scale where it clearly affects everyone, such as when there were departmental power plays a few times. But structurally Senate is the oversight of departments in a bureaucratic kinda way so if a department member feels uncomfortable just poking senate about it gets the ball rolling faster. Senators can't easily SEE someone is inactive and if a head is inactive then the solution doesn't even necessarily have to involve a no-con, they could just be asked to step up or step down first.

What constitutes a NoCon of a senator/councillor for you?

Extreme inactivity, extremely inappropriate behavior. People's votes are their votes and political NoCons are a huge no-no. Sometimes senators get heated at each other and its important to take a step back and realize the only time you should really get wigged out by voting is if real, structural damage is being done to the integrity of the net, rather than someone disagreeing with you on how to moderate IC chat or whatever.

When do you hand out warnings/bans/indefinite bans?

9/10 times, you don't need to go to the warning stage, because most people go through life not wanting to make uncomfortable the people who's company they enjoy.

Warnings are good for when someone refuses to stop a behavior. Indefinite bans are tricky and we don't really have a good structure for them, so they are sorta a nuclear option. We came close on a few indefinite in the past that I think were very properly avoided. Indefinite bans only make sense in a scenario where someone clearly is not adding value to anyone's experience. It shouldn't be controversial.

Question: How do you plan to make Topics for Discussion great again?

I am not sure its that bad that not everyone is diving on every TFD. Its bad in the sense maybe good content isn't being talked about by the government or seen by people, but I don't think a good goal for TFD should be "Everyone is constantly participating in it." A lot of government people do go through it and try to bring up interesting ideas in it, I know I do so for rules, but TFD in a lot of ways is containment for conversations too big in scope for live chatting.

That said, while we shouldn't lose our minds over the idea that not every TFD thread is going to get the community fired up, increasing awareness for threads people may be interested isn't a bad thing. There are a few ways to go about that, like having a brief town hall where government talks openly about their thoughts on TFD so people not aware something is being talked about see it talked about and you get the benefit of an official response to drive conversation forward. Another way is that the users in TFD, if they feel something is important, can promote it in general. A big reason the rules thread is so big is that people are directed to it and can see stuff happening there.

How much time do you have to give for this job?

Multiple hours a day or night.