[spoon-discuss] Straw Poll on the Government Turnover

[Zarpint <athena@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 27 May 2004, Daniel Lepage wrote:

> On May 27, 2004, at 2.24 PM, SkArcher wrote:
> > I strongly urge all players to recognise an SoE.
>
> When last I checked, Dave didn't really like SOEs... I don't think I'm
> going to recognize one, because I see no need.
> 	Somebody remarked that going into a SOE makes rule changes easier... I
> don't think that's true at all. With normal props, everybody can
> propose changes, and any number of proposals can be passed every nweek.
> In a SOE, we still need 10 days to do everything, but we only get one
> passed prop out of it; if the same prop is made as a normal prop, we
> can vote for it while still proposing other things.

That's why I think it's easier. We all have to decide on exactly one change,
rather than having many that might conflict, and risk having two pass
that partially cancel each other out, or are totally incompatible.

>
>
>
> By the way, I'm also not too thrilled by the "open source government"
> movement. Although I agree that piling all of the work on Dave is a bad
> idea, and that so far few ministries have been claimed by players, I
> don't think the right solution is to jump straight to the other end of
> the spectrum and make everybody responsible for everything, since I
> expect a lot of confusion and redundancy ("I added the points I got to
> the roster." "Wait, I already added those!" "No, *I* added those. For
> everbody." "How come I didn't get any?" "You did, but you lost points
> from the other thing." "But I'd already subtracted the points form the
> other thing!" "Wait, I subtracted those points too!" etc.).
>
> A better solution would be to improve the current system. We could make
> ministries smaller and easier to do: being a "minister of all things
> proposalish" responsible for maintaining a website of all props,
> counting votes, and changing the ruleset would be a lot of work,
> whereas being a minister who simply had to periodically post all
> pending proposals to a notification forum would be easy. Right now, all
> the worst ministries are very daunting, and so get left to Dave; that's
> why e has too much work to do.

Several players have objected to the idea of Ministries in general, I
believe. I have no objection to your plan.

I call for the following informal Straw Poll:

{{
How should the game be managed?

1. Open Source Government: any player may perform any task needed, with
incentives for performing them, and mechanisms to make sure all needed tasks
get performed.

2. Ministries: All players have several small ministries, to change frequently.
They could rotate automatically, or we could have elections. We would have
mechanisms to make sure all ministries are functioning properly and incentives
for players to take ministries and do the needed tasks.
}}

Ending date: June 1. The results will determine the proposal I write in
an attempt to hand over power.

Wonko and anyone else interested, please write up lists of smallish Ministries,
proto-props, finished props, or anything else helpful to all of us.

> 	We could also provide more incentives to be a minister: higher
> salaries, extra respect/bandwidth, maybe even a clause like "All
> players who have not held a ministry in the past five nweeks cannot be
> awarded Wins."
> 	Finally, we should increase the ministerial turnover rate - rather
> than having an election once an nyear for a few small ministries, we
> could have three-nweek terms for *all* ministries, with some incentive
> for old ministers to turn the job over to new ones. This will also
> force us to develop a good system for switching control of a ministry
> from one player to another easily, which will make us able to instate a
> new minister very quickly should a minister disappear.

I like all these ideas.

Zarpint
Kurt Godel, Meta-Minister

-- 
Zarpint Jeremy Cook    "All thy toiling only breeds new dreams, new dreams;
mcfoufou@xxxxxxxxx         there is no truth saving in thine own heart."
dynamicwind.com               --W.B. Yeats, The Song of the Happy Shepherd
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