Suggestion No Confidence Vote

[Arage Bao]

It's been a while since I did a suggestion, but it's that time again.

The suggestion is pretty simple:

• The community of a Major Faction should be allowed to post a No Confidence Vote to their Faction Staff and Owner at any time, if they disagree with choices made by them. If a majority agrees, an election should be held for a new Major Faction Staff and Owner.

Any vote that happens because of this should not be conducted by a poll. Instead writers should clearly state their vote in a post as a response to the raised thread. This minimizes annoyances like polls that have no clear writer accounts attached to it and such.

My arguments for it:

1. The majority of work for a Major Faction is often done by the community. They are the ones posting to the threads, fighting in the invasions, building lore in the faction threads. They should have an outsized voice for their leadership at every point of the faction's life.
2. While Minor Factions are often private affairs, Major Factions are things that sign up for the Map Game and actively participate with the rest of the Chaos Community. It makes sense then that a Major Faction's leadership is beholden to its membership and able to be withdrawn, if they stray away from what the MF's community wants.
3. It encourages Major Faction staff to align with what the majority of their membership desires. Instead of making decisions that they might think is good, but is not to the benefit of their community.

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There are probably more arguments for, but these are the ones I came up with off the cuff. It's all arguable and it's all my own opinion. Below are the counter-arguments I can figure.

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1. If people are unhappy with the direction, they can simply leave the faction and make their own.
   • Counter-argument: This is true. But it's also very shortsighted. What if the membership love the faction itself and simply disagree with the choices being made by the Faction Staff? What if they put a lot of work into the faction and don't want to leave? This is a tension between who actually owns the faction. The community that does most of the work or the Faction Staff that leads the faction.
2. This can be weaponized by random people who hate Faction Staff to join in rapidly and vote, while not having any stake in the faction's future itself.
   • Counter-argument: Possibly true. But if this gets implemented Chaos Staff should be the end judge on it. They review the vote and make sure its kosher. It is quite obvious to see if 20 people joined in just to vote against a Faction Staff they don't like.
3. A faction might be made for a specific reason. Go Major. And at a certain point the membership wants to guide it into a different direction. Is it fair to push it into a different direction when it was made for a specific path? Especially keeping in mind that starting a faction can be a significant amount of work and planning.
   • Counter-argument: If your Major Faction has a specific direction successfully, then it shouldn't have a majority of people who want to have such a radical difference in direction that they will vote out one faction staff for another. But that does bring up a good point. A Vote of No Confidence is not about different appetites of roleplay. It's not about Sith writers being part of a neutral faction and suddenly wanting the faction to reform to a Darkside faction. It is about situations where staff are abusive, heavily incompetent to the detriment of the faction as a whole or clearly acting against the interest of the faction for their own gains. If it's simply a different vision, then the obvious choice of leaving a faction to make your own makes far more sense.

Please discuss and post up if you have additional opinions/arguments to be made. I am sure there are more angles to think about!

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

Rarely needed, but needed when it is. I dig it.

EDIT: Know what, ignore me. Lot of good angles in this ginormous thread, carry on.

 

[Kaska Arden]

I put my confidence in no confidence voting.

 

[AMCO]

What Jend-Ro Quill said - something that'd ideally never be used, but which might be useful as a last resort. The rules should obviously be phrased as such, I certainly wouldn't support an overly broad implementation of this, but if done right? I can see the potential.

 

[Ragnar the Blooded]

ok i agree

 

[Ryv]

I agree with this suggestion.

Any faction staff team who fail to take in their member base into account have no reason to be at the head of a community.

 

[Dagon Kaze]

ok i agree

 

[Aaran Tafo]

Power to the people!

 

[Elpsis Kerrigan]

I'm not sure if I can express confidence in the submitter of this proposal to issue a vote of no confidence, considering they neglected to post a TPM gif.

Regardless, I like the suggestion.

 

[Unknown]

This makes too much sense to not fully support it. With the counter arguments it answers the questions that could arise from it. I think the only thing I could think of as a concern would be, if an idea such as the Bryn'adul which is something that is the brain child of their faction owner, suddenly gets voted out of position - the Bryn or any unique faction such as that is that person's intellectual property? What should be done then?

Arage Bao

 

[Adron Malvern]

Factions get split over a MF owner or Staff member not agreeing to shift their views fairly often. A part of me doesn't mind the splitting because it can actually be the birth of a decent story Icly. However we seem to be on the OOC side of things. I don't think the MF Owner/Staff should get to trash/ horde the hard work of an entire community just because they originally made the faction or were given control.

So I am for this.

 

[Mellifluous Magenta]

I don't know how I feel about this. Imagine if you join a tabletop game and tried to vote out the GM. If you don't like the GM, usually you just leave and go find another game. In this case, Major Faction Owners/Staffers are GMs and it is generally their creative vision that is the driving force behind the faction. Also, as Unknown just addressed, major factions are very often the intellectual property of their owners/staffers, especially factions like the Bryn'daul and the Agents of Chaos, back when we were still major. However, I would argue that even factions that are derivative of canon Star Wars factions (TSE, GA, NIO, CIS, SJC, Etc.) still have quite a strong degree of intellectual property involved, even if it isn't legally recognized.

This could also lay the foundations of big OOC splits. Imagine a major faction owner/staffer who barely survives a vote of no confidence in a 49/51 split vote scenario. In that case, 49% of the faction may have just signed their "death warrant" so to speak, in the sense that they are now labeled as opposition to leadership.

Sorry if this isn't very coherent but I wanted to get it out quickly.

Edit: Actually thinking more on this, I don't support it at all.

 

[Unknown]

However, I would argue that even factions that are derivative of canon Star Wars factions (TSE, GA, NIO, CIS, SJC, Etc.) still have quite a strong degree of intellectual property involved, even if it isn't legally recognized

While effort is still put in to create the canon factions such as those listed does take effort to mold it into something unique I still feel it falls into a concept of being free for all. No one is stopping someone from creating another Republic just positioning it in the High Republic day. So I feel like those factions that are derived from canon don't really "belong" to the person or persons who thought it up.

Also, while I question the matter pertaining to the unique factions such as the Bryn'adul - I think its something that could be handled case to case and unique factions such as the Bryn are far and few between - most factions are based off something canon or something that is formulated in other forms of fiction.

Again I'm just asking questions to get a better idea for things - but that said I do wholeheartedly think this is something that will benefit the community as a whole instead of being a determent.

 

[Lunafreya Solidor]

Best idea I read in months. And that includes my own.

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

I'd be fine with implementing this as a "last resort" option (mostly because all the major faction disputes I've seen have ended with either a.) the faction completely disbanding, or b.) the ownership changing as the unpopular individual(s) willingly stepped down, unable to stand the pressure of the mob) but I do think it would be a good idea to include a clause which protects anything that might be considered an individual's intellectual property. With most factions, they're just playing with existing SW lore, but in special cases where they're more unique, it would be a concern.

TL;DR I support this, but suggest allowing faction owners who have been voted out a chance to petition to keep their intellectual property, provided they can prove it is theirs. Let them make their case to the admins for that.

On the other hand, this brings up an interesting point. Have Chaos rules regarding IPs, copyright and permissions ever been officially established? Or is it generally assumed that anything posted here is a free-for-all unless stated otherwise?

 

[Tefka]

TL;DR I support this, but suggest allowing faction owners who have been voted out a chance to petition to keep their intellectual property

Major Factions are not intellectual property.

Your writing is your intellectual property, the breadth of which is covered under our Terms and Rules.

The organizations formed under the roof of Chaos serve at the invitation of the SWRP Staff Team. If you want to bring out the lawyers, the rule of law is basically determined by "who can shut it down", to which the answer is ultimately the Mouse.

Next down the ladder is the owner of the server and service provided.

With that said, we've never ruled by the will of the mob on the position of Major Faction Owners - it's always been either the MFO steps down, and a vote is cast to avoid biased selection - or Staff intervenes, forcibly removes an MFO, and holds the vote. I'm not crazy about this proposal, nor do I see it's necessity, but I'll have a closer read and make sure to include it in discussion with the Administrator team.

 

[noctifer]

MFO should have to hold themselves to the community they’ve constructed, I see no issue with this proposal myself.

if you form a community, you should have to fulfill the needs of that community, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to remove those that don’t.

 

[Tefka]

And what happens when a rival faction OOCly infiltrates another faction with a greater number of members only to cast a no confidence vote?

Some of these Majors don’t have the writer numbers to withstand that.

 

[Vora Kaar]

Tefka

This can be weaponized by random people who hate Faction Staff to join in rapidly and vote, while not having any stake in the faction's future itself.

• Counter-argument: Possibly true. But if this gets implemented Chaos Staff should be the end judge on it. They review the vote and make sure its kosher. It is quite obvious to see if 20 people joined in just to vote against a Faction Staff they don't like.

Slightly addressed already, but I feel that this could be more fleshed out with some kind of way to quantify what would be counted as a valid vote from an individual.

 

[Tefka]

Ah, I see, OP proposes Staff bear the weight of telling a majority of voters that their vote is illegitimate.

So we purport democracy under the shield of #tyrannyreigns.

Lol. Why would I expose Staff to this when we already perform this function.