Welcome to Gaia! ::

But we're not building Rome we're setting up a senate.

The population issue was already addressed in the consitution page. This is our long term large growth plan. We wanted our users to be happy so we need a system to keep that going at every stage. This is for when (or if) we have multiple forums and a large pop.

Its not a long parliamentary procedure. You misunderstand the meaning. This is a feedback system not some decision making entity. We will use the senators to gather what the people want. Then we can act on whats good and whats not. Essentially turn everyone into constant beta testers with (hopefully) quite a good system for relaying various problems.

You just said yourself there won't be a large population so why treat it as if there is? I'll address this with something simple. The senators represent the people because people can go to them with their problems. Also do you not think people would be more reassured if they knew the devs and admin were actually physically looking at their problems and having their cases argued? Its a matter of trust. Humans links make that trust more compounded.

We can deal with corruption when we come to it. Considering the position doesn't actually garner any advantages I fail to see the problems..... look at it this way. Your thinking in terms of the real world. This is a digital community where different rules apply.

Moderators would provide a watchdog role for senators anyway but considering they're volunteers you want them to do two jobs? Asking a bit much there aren't you.

The list is a smart idea. If people can see their senators have gotten their points over.....

This isn't a government. Stop using that analogy because its just not apt. A senate is a completely seperate entity that works as a feedback system. This is not the american version of the senate this is the roman model. I've looked into the sociology and history books and this is tailored more to suit our circumstances than some massive countries.

If you want to keep raising concerns then i'm not going to keep answering them all because its a waste of my time. I have put thought and effort into planning this out and i'd like it if you'd stop just raising objections which i've already looked into. Please trust my judgement on this. I have used resources at my disposal to look into this and it is my ardent belief that, if correctly applied, this can create a functional system within our sites structure.

Thank you.

Tell you what. I'm technically the admin for the site so far so I'LL personally look into every senator and make sure the mods keep an eye on the new representatives.

Thats the point of the senators. People won't just pick the stupid thing in a poll they'll see their ideas being directly told to the devs.

Ok so ignore what I wrote on the mods acting as watchdogs. I'll even set aside a special group to act as a corruption watchdog if it'll assay your fears. They don't get anything. Theres nothing to gain from them. We have no contracts to be bought no money to gain. Its for fixes and possibly desires. How the hell can that be influential!

Thats the point of this idea. You can sit here and raise as many objections as possible but at the end of the day your just raising negative options when what we need is some positive thought. Wehn the site launches i'll see this instituted and THEN we'll see how it works.

Its not going to be like that though. We're going for a reactive system here. The whole point is its gonna work! And fyi we can deal with minor problems when they come up.

But the point is we're seperating ourselves from the GDG (GD Generation). Read the brief..... we're supposed to be a better version appealing to a different set to what Gaia is currently aiming at.

So a forum.... oh wait we currently have one of those on Gaia. Well obviously theres no problems with Gaia because they have one of those! Thats what this Guild is all about building a the-current-Gaia-is-great-tribute-site. Again with the whole senators will all be dicks. I happen to trust the people this is aimed at to be more responsible. Plus they should be more diluted if they do get in so the effect will be minimised.

After this post i'm not responding to your posts anymore. I have effectively covered everything just posting your same old objections repeatedly isn't a smart process. I mean i'm here trying to actually come up with something positive to help the site and your not refining. Theres a difference between helping and hindering. Choose a category and get on with it but don't expect me to bother any more. I can honestly interpret this as either a grudge against me or a lack of logical thought about the process.

By the way, if you just want to change sites, you could always set up camp in http://www.roliana.com/ and not bother making a new site. But I think that site is licking up everything gaia does... there are several other sites like gaia, with shittier grapics and better access to mods and admin that you could possibly influence with a large group of recruits.

:/

Okay, your word placement is throwing me off. Do you mean to say the new site's feed back forum will be ignored, or gaia's current feedback forum is being ignored?

And the senate is a big joke too? So all they get to say is that there are bugs? That they think the site's buttons are working? It sounds like they're completely pointless, especially since it'd be better to have everyone mention what bugs they're getting in a single sticky somewhere and have someone sort through them and fix them as the they come through.

If you want people to feel loved, really, just having some feedback mods to say "thanks for your feedback." Then have the bug fixed, or let it's status be known.

You're really going to have to draw me a diagram of how the information will somehow be better received if there's a line of people to get through. Even if Chinese whispers isn't that big a deal with electronic information, it sure is annoying.

This reminds me of in school, how they had school captains and a student council. Most people who did the job didn't really do anything, and they got benefits. The only things they did for the rest of the students was pressure teachers into field trips and organize discos. They got in free to discos, and they got to choose the theme... there was no way people could go to them with problems that not even the staff would listen to.
The point is, if they were only allowed to give feedback on teacher performance, firstly no one would want the job because there would be no extras for them, and secondly, if there were any problems with teachers, like teachers molesting students that they didn't know about, they wouldn't have anyway of reporting something they didn't know about... then they'd be truly useless... the whole student council would be one big joke. I'd say it'd be better to have the school counselor randomly go through most of the students and keep tabs on which teachers are doing what and if teachers are hated for certain reasons, weather it be their attitude or their teaching style.

Yeah, I need a diagram to understand how the senate will work without corruption and without ending up an annoying joke. :/ You can tell me you know everything and have thought of every single possibility there is... but that all means a load of breast-poo to me if I only know half of what your talking about and that half doesn't sound very good.

Why isn't anyone sharing what's going on by the way... the other girl has a design for the site already... I want to see it... you have a bunch of models, may I see them?

o.o

I know Gaia's feedback forum sucks, but in context you may have been insinuating that the new site's feedback forum would be essentially ignored because you are also relying on the senate. My logical conclusion is that you're overly defensive, stubborn and unwilling to provide a clear view of wtf you're talking about.

You say we're totally short of staff, well I fail to see how we can waste resources building sufficient additions to the site to include a proper senate if we're so short. You said mods wouldn't be paid, therefore they're pretty easy to obtain and look after bug reports are they not? Why does it have to be a senate when all they're really going to do is be bug reporters? Why not call them the Bug Squad? Why would you wait every two weeks to get any bugs fixed? Fix important ones as they arise... how do you know what's important and how do you know when they arise? Get the Bug Squad to update Staff about what bugs are happening as they see the topics in the feedback section. If users are constantly annoying them about a certain bug, they'll be sure to let you know of it's priority.

I'm all for the Bug Squad!
Mods of a feedback section that handle filing bug reports to the people who fix the bugs.
Mods will come in bucket loads when the site is up, and there will certainly be enough mods proportionate to the population.

I fail to see why I'm the one not thinking logically when you're naming bug reporters like they're official members of a parliament.

I'm not going to PM you, you can show my your model here. Why not? You want everyone to know right, so it's not big problem to draw me a diagram of how and why having a "senate" is a good idea. If you're so hard done by with work, then I suggest you let people help you with some of it. Like me for example, who is totally out of the loop and waiting to know what's going on.

Here is my diagram:







May I make a suggestion if you must have something called a senate? Just put the system up like a typical government for each forum. You have your king or president or whatever and they get to be in that position if the month before they had the most replies in that forum overall... and then you have all the other ranks, ranking down to like, citizen or something. But to even be considered for this, a member has to post in that forum a thousand times or something.
You can have a monthly turn over of presidents, and give them some kind of item and some kind of extra powers, like give them low mod powers for a month, people in the higher ranking positions get better features. Give them their own area to discuss certain things.
Just as long as they don't have a direct connection to the admins where they would be in any position to influence them. Keep the users in their fantasy land while the admin fix the problems.
If you do it like this, there should be a huge flux of people posting every month, competing with one another to make the best topics and get the most replies, but there should also be some kind of merit for replying, but of lesser value, like you get 5points for every reply to a topic, 3points for every time a post of yours is quoted, and 1point for every post you make.

The only problem with this would be a lot of text written near avatars to display status. This can be resolved depending on how far you push the senate idea. If you have in built sections which can be viewed from each forum as to who has what points and who are the favourites for the next month etc then you'd only need to place something like gold stars under their username when they're elected as president.

You really seem to be into the senate idea, but don't waste it on bug fixes :/

No it wouldn't be ignored. If you don't understand what i'm going to do don't demand every detail. Its my job not yours. I'm not going to completely outline the entire idea for you simply because you think its bad. I notice you haven't posted anywhere else apart from this thread simply because i'm active and you can have a little moan here. I'm honestly so sick of this i'm just going to give up on the whole idea or get you banned from this thread. At first I was willing to talk this over but all you've done is raise the same problems time and time again.

Yes we'll be short of staff but no just recruiting mods won't solve the problem. You need to be sure your getting mature people to be mods just taking them in en masse isn't a smart move. Setting up the senate is as simple as adding another forum and locking everyone except the senators out. OMG THATS SOOOOOO DIFFICULT! Its not just bug reporters. Its a feedback system for the whole site. If someone wants to say something is good or bad a senator is a direct route for them. Rather than a feedback forum which they won't be able to see a lot of movement on. I call them senators because:
1. I came up with this idea not you so tough luck honey but I get the honours
2. It gives it a nicer image
3. THEY'RE NOT JUST BUG REPORTERS. They're basically a link directly with just 1 chain between the users and the devs.

The feedback forum will essentially be there to pick up the little odds and ends that aren't major enough to be considered a big thing for senators. I'm talking about minor issues like "this link doesn't work" or "sometimes my inventory doesn't show me an item thats there" not stuff like "the entire inventory system is too cluttered" or "the current forum posting system lacks options and the users want more".
Can you see where i'm coming from? If not then stop trying to understand it and move on. I mean ffs I don't understand particle accelerators so I don't go and start telling them what they're doing will destroy the world simply because I cannot comprehend the process.

Its not just about the senate its all the models for the system who should go where and why. I have it on paper but if you want it then fine.

Organisation of the senate itself
This is the actual area where the senate will report. We need a system whereby everyone can post their users queries etc without clogging up the forum with just a long list of posts (although I have considered this as a point. Just letting the senators post a list of things then the devs can work their way through each issues giving it as little or as much time as is needed). So I propose we have a numerical system whereby each senator will be assigned a number and they post in that order. Every issue will be deat with so the actual order will make no difference to the coverage of the problems. Normal forum rules will apply within the senate so no swearing or any other violation but of course a little leniency will be allowed because they're unlikely to post porn or anything unsavoury. As the announcements section on gaia is set out with each post in its position by date thats how our senate will effectively be archived. Every meeting will be stored so they can access the old information at any time and see if any issues have been addressed or ignored or need a higher priority although the devs should have that handled pretty well. Issues priority will be dealt with on the basis of.
1. How many senators have received complaints about that issues (even if they haven't got it on their list they can still mention they've had it brought up)
2. The extent of the problem (if its causing people to be unable to play a large area of the site or do something thats a major part of their site participation)
3. Finally how long its went undealt with. If an issues been undealt with for a month (for whatever reason) it should become highly prioritised.
This list doesn't reflect the priorities directly but it serves as a rough guideline.

The senate will never be tampered with and no posts will be deleteable even by the devs so they serve as a perfect record with no possibility of tampering.
The senate will have a single moderator who will serve only when theres a meeting. He will be sworn to secrecy about what passes and will essentially be there to make sure everything runs smoothly during the meeting and to fufill normal moderator duties. He may possibly use the time he's not moderating the senate on other forums if we're desperately short on numbers. We could also possibly do a rotation between moderators from the seperate forums.

Time periods
I propose the senate should be set up after an interval of time whereby over 1000 users have been attracted. This means we should see them come into use once the forums become active. If this seems stagnant (as we're unable to predict exactly the flow of users) then it is open to postponement or early institution. The senate meetings could vary with perhaps as much as twice a week (with account taken for absences etc) or as much as once a month. I reccomend we go for a short interval between meetings with a biweekly event and possibly a "special" allowance per month for any really large issues. The meetings themselves will last as long as needs be. During the meetings devs will not argue the actual point of the request but will instead simply note down what will be required and what action will or needs to be taken.
To allow for time differences a starting time for the meeting will be chosen so that it coincides with reasonable hours for most people. If someone cannot make it to the meeting for whatever reason he will be expected to elect a deputy and brief him on his duties. Failure to send representation will require a small investigation by the senate moderator where the senator who was missing will be expected to explain why, make his missing queries known and also be given a warning. A three strike system will be operated with warnings. Holidays will work the same way but with a deputy being expected to cover for a longer period of time.

Election
This issues has given me the most trouble but I have come to the conlusion an anonymous poll on an official thread will be the best option. Each user gets one vote (I am not completely sure but if we could limit it to 1 vote per IP it would be a great help) and the poll will contain all candidates.
For a candidate to be considered he must start his own thread and get up to 20 people to "second" him. Once he has this he can be considered. In extreme circumstances where there isn't 20 people in a forum it will work in a similar way but with the candiate only needing 1 "second" to be considered. If there are less than 20 people then it shouldn't make any situations too strenuous for a mod to work out. In the case of a draw the two candidates will be required to enter a tie breaker vote where everyone re casts their vote and if that doesn't present a winner a random number generator will be used until someone has a higher number and wins.
A subject that may be uncontrollable is the cross voters. Someone who votes in more than 1 forum thereby altering the results. This should be minimised because the majority won't be voting in multiple forums but if they do the candidates will stand and if any issues present themselves then they can be dealt with at a later date when a solution may be more visible.
Debates.
These can be at the discretion of the moderator in charge of the forum but they will be generally encouraged. A set of questions will be drawn up and each candidate will be required to make a thread stating what they think. Both candidates can then post responses to their opponents answers. Any further action will be at the discretion of the candidates.
Losers.
Any action by a loser or his followers against a winner will be dealt with severly. The forum must accept the winner if he has won the vote and if a forum is large and heavily divided a two senator representation can be considered.

Exemptions
Misc forums, announcements and any other forum where the majority of users are not regular but instead use the forum only occasionlywill not receive a senatorial election. Instead if they have some issue within the forum a special subforum will be set up to deal with them. I do not include a full list of all the future forums so i cannot say what will and what won't be included but as soon as one is available conditions will be applied. Anyone who is known to be a mule of a banned account will be exempted from running as a candidate.
I have exemptions for donating to candidates etc etc but they'll essentially be played by ear. If a moderator thinks the candidate is being unfairlly supported in some way he'll be investigated. The same applies for senators even though they're lack of actual impact should make them a useless resource to any normal player.

Perks. Responsibilities. Communities
Senators will receive no benefits from their position. In certain circumstances if a senator is seen to have acted in an intelligent and exemplary way and has rendered some high service to the site he may be given a commendation which will mark him as a trustworthy person. This is more to reward their acheivements than give them monetary aid. They do not have an influence over new site content so they will not be able to use their position to aid some peoples goals.
They will be expected to hold discussions where people can post their problems (or if they want pm) and they should collect all these in time for the meeting. If someone feels they are being unfairly ignored the forums moderator can be called upon to look into the problem. If a senators actions are found to be deplorable ,e.g. constantly ignoring those who didn't vote for him or those who don't agree with him on some points, then he will be asked to rectify the problem but if it continues he will be asked to step down.
Communities should be able to ask their senator about any issue he is supposed to be raising and he should be prepared to give a short answer (at least 1 paragraph) on what is being done to solve it or what needs to be done. If a senator is having trouble keeping up with this workload he is allowed to apoint a secretary who will share the workload and will be open to monetary assitance (the senator CAN pay his assistant if he wants but it isn't an official function and no assistance will be provided). If the community as a whole is happy with their senator they can reccomend him for a Community Commendation.

The Commendations themselves come in three different varities:
The Issue Commendation. Awarded for a senator who has offered intelligent solutions to a single area of the site. Recognises specialisation in a field of the site. Could be represented by a white medal.
The Senate Commendation. Awarded for consistently showing an interest and aiding a solution to a wide range of issues over a long period of time. It is expected most of the senate will earn this as it shows the commitment to the process necessary. Could be represented by a black medal.
The Senate Commendation (High). A combination of the Issue and Senate Commendations. This awarded for someone who offers solutions of the highest quality to a wide range of issues and fufills all other necessary conditions for the other two awards. Can only be received after the other two. Could be repsented by a combination of the two medals it is essentially made of. A black and white mixed colour scheme of some sorts.
The Community Commendation. Shows a senator who is valued by his forum. One whom is seen by his forum to be always assisting their views to find a conclusion and is a visible presence within the community. It carries with it more meaning to the average user because it shows a sense of patriotism to his forum. Should be something very obvious. Perhaps a rainbow ribbon with a bright gold medal.
The commendations themselves could be a small unsellable item that can be displayed on the avatar (all four should be displayable at once).

I could go on with even more minutae but I feel going into the details of what the senators are and aren't allowed to do every single minute of the day is a bit OTT. So I hope your satisfied. If not then i'm afraid your going to have to wait a short while because i'm technically supposed to be admin for this Guild atm and things need sorting.

I'm glad you think so. I think it will be a more accurate system then Gaia currently uses. Less wastage around the joints so to speak.