Recommendation for impeachment process

[Valiant70]

Premises:

1. The council members are representatives of the community who vote for them
2. The council members are put in place by the community

Conclusion: The community should be involved with any and all impeachment and removals, and provided with proper evidence such as chat or Skype logs in order to do this. If disclosure of such logs would constitute a violation of NDA or other legally binding contract, a Schine employee should redact the sentences or phrases that constitute the violation, and publish the rest of the log with the evidence to the community.

In regards to what happened: I currently do not know what happened behind closed doors and have no idea if the actions taken were justified or not, nor will I make any conjecture.

Note to moderation staff: please remove/hide any posts from this thread that argue for or against the guilt of the council or Tomino but please do not lock the thread because of these as they are derailing/flame baiting, not a result of the OP.

 

[CyberTao]

Like direct screenshots and quotes? That could be potentially dangerous in the sense of taking stuff out of context, with the real context being hidden by NDA.

I'm also against any form of public voting or anything for it, as this could be really dangerous when dealing with popularity. You can show everyone all the details, but they normally always support the decision of the people they follow. Becomes an issue if 2 people on the council with large followings decided to work together and boot another person (unlikely, but possible).

 

[Keptick]

People seem to forget that the people that voted for Tomino had 4 other votes. Those votes can be used in a recalculation to determine the replacement councillor, so those people are still getting a representation/vote.

 

[aceface]

the devs are taking care of the situation. chill guys.

 

[Valiant70]

Maybe I'm just being too idealistic again.

 

[CyberTao]

Maybe I'm just being too idealistic again.

Well the council should be driven by community input, and they were told to come up with a system for ejection. Makes sense to have a thread to gather opinions/ideas similar to how they gathered ideas for the applications.

 

[Viridis00]

I'm all for transparency and letting the community know the circumstances of impeachment, but letting the council themselves handle impeachment like it was done recently doesn't seem to actually be a bad idea since it would allow them to quickly resolve conflict and let them get back to actually doing their jobs instead of a council member holding up progress due to inactivity or refusal to cooperate. A public impeachment would be slower, undoubtedly lack some internal perspective, and be in a way unneeded since the council represents the votes of their players in the first place. If you don't like how the council acted in that term impeaching someone, that you felt it unjust somehow, just don't vote for them next term.

Going off this circumstance as a precedent

• A minimum 2/3rds majority vote by the council will be required to impeach
  
• Sufficient evidence (ie: chat logs, absence of presence, misconduct) of gross inactivity and/or uncooperative behavior decided by Schine

In addition to that, publish the votes of the council in the matter so if there really is a disconnect between the active community and the remaining council, the players can just decide not to vote them in next term.

Having majority vote and final arbitration by Schine are more than necessary safeguards for a speedy impeachment process. Remember, at the end of the day this isn't supposed to be a community popularity contest, our council is supposed to be working as a more efficient way to proxy our wants and ideas for the game to the game creators. The less time spent over stupid crap the better.

 

[lazarus78]

Heh... I knew that guy was trouble.


Easiest way to replace him would be to go down the list for the next person with the most votes. No need to draw it out, just mend the problem and move along.

 

[Comr4de]

Heh... I knew that guy was trouble.


Easiest way to replace him would be to go down the list for the next person with the most votes. No need to draw it out, just mend the problem and move along.

I wish it was as simple as that but MF has effectively taken schine as a PR hostage.

OP, I can tell you right now that an impeachment process IS being drafted. Basically, there will be three levels from what I can tell right now.

1. Mediation/corrective counseling on the council level.
2. Secondary mediation from Schine handler.
3. Impeachment (requiring 4/6 or 5/6 to pass)

Basically it's going to be that if someone gets impeached they need to be an extreme shithead to get that far. There may also be a contractual appeals process which can be voided if the impeached breaks NDA/does not behave gracefully.

Like direct screenshots and quotes? That could be potentially dangerous in the sense of taking stuff out of context, with the real context being hidden by NDA.

I wanted to release the chatlogs, however I was overruled by my benevolent schine overlords. They made a good point; in situations like these releasing the logs will not silence the verbal and dedicated fans of the impeached. They'll find ways to refute it and will continue to carry on with the drama.

Also the next time someone says that governments have no right to vote elected officials out of office, or that this applies to a council about a video game I'm going to dropkick a puppy.

 

[Keptick]

I wish it was as simple as that but MF has effectively taken schine as a PR hostage.

Care to elaborate? I'm not too sure what that's supposed to mean >_>

 

[Comr4de]

Care to elaborate? I'm not too sure what that's supposed to mean >_>

PM me for details. No point elaborating it on here for it to be taken out of context on the MF G+.

 

[Planr]

Premises:

1. The council members are representatives of the community who vote for them
2. The council members are put in place by the community

Conclusion: The community should be involved with any and all impeachment and removals, and provided with proper evidence such as chat or Skype logs in order to do this. If disclosure of such logs would constitute a violation of NDA or other legally binding contract, a Schine employee should redact the sentences or phrases that constitute the violation, and publish the rest of the log with the evidence to the community.

The vibe I am getting from your post indicates to me that you've misunderstood the purpose and inherent nature of the council. The council is a group of individuals chosen by the community because they share the same views the community holds as important. They are able to make difficult decisions on our behalf so that we don't have to. The views a council member has, generally reflect the same views of the people who voted him in, but what that council member actually chooses to do is his own choice. It is not the responsibility or mission of the council to do exactly what the community wants, but to serve as a link between their viewpoints and schine's. If you disagree with what a council member you voted for has done, maybe you shouldn't have voted for them.

That said, involving the community in an impeachment process is an extremely ineffective and slow method for reaching a decision on what action should be taken. The time required to establish public polls on the issue, and then to get enough votes in to where a general concensus is felt to be reached, is a far greater amount of time than what's needed for the council to do the same job itself. The council alone would naturally reach a similar decision to what the community wants, in a fraction of the time required for the community to accurately weigh in on it.

You also have to remember that allowing the community to be involved in the decision-making process means a lot of people who don't actually know what's going on will be given the opportunity to weigh in, and nobody needs or wants that. We need people who know the best about what's going on to handle the issue, which is another advantage the council has that the community at large does not.

For example, let's pretend there was an internal issue in the council that's resulted in a vote for impeachment of a council member, and the vote was at the community's discretion. The community members would not know firsthand what actually happened, and would vote based on their biased feelings towards the council member facing impeachment, while the council members would vote based on what they actually knew and saw that happened.

In reference to the incident over this past day, it's very likely that if the vote for Tomino's impeachment was up to the community, that he would have probably evaded punishment because of his popularity rather than his actual conduct. This is why the community should not be involved in impeachment matters, because they will generally vote based on emotion than knowledge of the incidents leading up to the impeachment.

Don't forget that there will always be a small minority on one side or the other in the community that will shout louder than everyone else during such a vote, and distort the truth of what the general public perception is, rallying votes to their side with misinformation/slander. We saw this kind of thing (the minority yelling louder than the majority) yesterday with Jath's propaganda-spam PMs, in which he falsely accused the council of not representing what the community wants, when in fact that's not even a relevant issue. Council members are not held responsible for doing what the community wants. They are held responsible for cooperating with each other, and for acting as a bridge between the desires of the community and the desires of Schine.

 

[anouk8]

well from the perspective of some one who A) didn't vote. B) plays on the MF server (but not exclusively) C) was in the team speak, and participated in the conversation. D) has recently read the rules / misconduct / how to talk appropriately about others on the forms.

I am also Canadian and have recently become eligible to vote, let me compare this to the politics of my country.
eventually what has happened is there where 7 seats and because of differences in time zones Tomino was not informed of the first meeting (he was asleep (and please don't claim he doesn't need sleep, keep in mind this is volunteer)). as for the second meeting, if it had been held at its originally planed time which he was available for he would have attended , but because of disorganization the meeting was postponed to the following weakened; the meetings were meant to be biweekly with the dev-meeting on the weekend between, this was set up to make the counsel more efficient. (back to the main bit) because of Tomino's failure to attend the meeting the counsel decided to vote Tomino off (please note the reason why Tomino could not make the meeting was because he has son every second weekend and the meeting fell on that weekend). well that was a tangent back to the politics thing. say 10 different parties were running for election (absurd I know) an 5 of the said parties received semi equal votes now one party gets more votes than the rest by far said party is a majority leaving the party with the second most votes as the official opposition, then the party with the most votes has to make a budget (this is the only stage the party can be removed, through a vote of non confidence, in which the vote is redone and they start again.

the point I'm making is that Tomino did receive the most votes, and because of some minor disorganization part of the starmade community no longer has a representative; which is the heart of the problem.

Note: I'm going to be copying this post. I have not directed slander at any one or tried to tarnish anyone's reputation this post will be my evidence of that. should an admin feel that there is a more appropriate place for this post by all means move it to that location.

 

[MrFURB]

Note: I'm going to be copying this post. I have not directed slander at any one or tried to tarnish anyone's reputation this post will be my evidence of that. should an admin feel that there is a more appropriate place for this post by all means move it to that location.

No, no, as long as it's constructive conversation and not breaking any forums rules about drama, personal attacks, or spam you should be fine. Just remember to keep it civil and there will be no problems. This stuff deserves to be spoken about even if it is already blown waaaaay out of proportion.

 

[Megacrafter127]

because of differences in time zones Tomino was not informed of the first meeting

Tomino is the the timezone GMT ±0 (with DST it would be GMT +1), correct? (correct me if this is incorrect)
I live in GMT +1 (with DST it is GMT +2), and I was informed(if you can call what I was informed about a meeting), a timezone difference of 1 hour usually doesn't have such effects. (Unless Tomino's and my schedule differ greatly otherwise, which I do not know)

 

[CyberTao]

Spoiler: Tee Hee

Tomino was not informed of the first meeting (he was asleep (and please don't claim he doesn't need sleep, keep in mind this is volunteer)). as for the second meeting

This bit right here. I have no idea how true this is, because I've been hearing that there have been 0 meetings (from Vanh, who apparently has connections to Schine now), and another time I heard there was 1 (from another councilor). Are you sure these were 'meetings' and wasn't just the council members meeting unofficially?

This is probably the only thing I'm confused about anymore. Some people say that a meeting could not be scheduled due to lack of time table signing (If he could indeed not attent every 2nd weekend, did he ever tell anyone?), others said that a meeting could only happen without him because of him insisting on ranging it around his schedules.

Whats more, I thought Tomato was claiming that he was given less than 24 hours notice for a meeting (again, not sure if it even happened). Pushing the date back would have resulted in him knowing about the meeting with more than 24 hours I would assume?

Ergh. There are so many sides and opinions on if they even had a meeting in the first place that it makes my head hurt.

part of the starmade community no longer has a representative; which is the heart of the problem.

That is false, I'd have to ask you to look up the STV voting system. It was used to elect people in the first place, and should be used to select the replacement. I'd throw a fit if it wasn't used.


Also, this is a topic about finding a impeachment system. It might happen again someday, so it's better to work out a system now to that this mess doesnt repeat itself. The OP did ask that opinions on the Tomato incident not be posted here, because it could potentially derail the thread.

 

[aceface]

to be honest this whole thing of him getting removed seems pretty shady to me. no evidence of personal attacks were provided, and he represented a whopping 14% of the total votes.

 

[CyberTao]

he represented a whopping 14% of the total votes.

As did every other Councilor. At the end of the vote, Every councilor had 12-14% vote, because that is how STV works.

Tell Tomato to check his math please. I would, but he blocked me on twatter because he didn't like that I didn't agree. Tomato gone very wild.

no evidence of personal attacks were provided

I'm sure if you asked nice enough, they could be provided. I can't blame Schine or the council for not jumping on the chance to defame someone because of a disagreement. That would be childish. *cough

 

[anouk8]

Tomino is the the timezone GMT

yes he lives in England so this would be correct

Every councilor had 12-14% vote

I do believe that Tomino had a much higher percentage than most of the elected counselors. This is only what I have heard I have not seen any of the statistics

The OP did ask that opinions on the Tomato incident not be posted here, because it could potentially derail the thread.

ill admit i dint do the best at avoiding this but the issue of Tomino's removal does to some degree have to do with the removal prose's ( impeachment is just too big of a word for me)

 

[Viridis00]

I do believe that Tomino had a much higher percentage than most of the elected counselors. This is only what I have heard I have not seen any of the statistics

This was from the election thread, a round-by-round gif made by DraconisDomini

In the end, Tomino doesn't represent all too much more than the other counselors when it comes to highest preference.