Note: The Hexbear People's Committee is an RPG/LARP and has no bearing on anything outside of being a "Model UN" style simulation of a political party.
Voting on HPC Resolution 001-1 isn't closed yet, but it looks like it will pass, so in the interest of "getting this show on the road" I'm going to open discussion on the initial topics from the "schedule" section of that resolution. If there is a last second wave of "Don't Pass" votes, this will all be deleted and the revolutionary cause will be dead.
It passed yay!
I think it's best to focus on roles over the resolution process, but the two are intertwined so there is discussion to be had on both. Hopefully we can get these section drafted into a Resolution as soon as tomorrow to be put for a vote.
A side-topic is to nominate names for the Party that we should start considering.
For roles and positions I think it makes sense to add them as necessary rather than creating a bunch that remain unfilled OR a few people having multiple positions. The first is bad for morale, the latter is authoritarian.
For the Hexbear v Party member:
IMO, the less division between the People and the Party the better. The way I envision it, we could make every citizen (represented by an Account) a member provided they meet certain criteria - the account is a week old, is not a throwaway, and the person isn’t a wrecker (which, I admit, is hard to judge). That way, all members (and essentially all true citizens) would have voting rights and be able to draft propositions.
For identifying Wreckers I’d suggested an “Electoral Police” whose mandate can include going through the (public) messages of accounts that have been brought up as “sus” to determine if we need to take away membership (before submitting the account to the Army of Admins and Mods to be dealt with in a proper manner).
For everyone else - A Proposition/Draft Committee can handle the task of hearing various proposals and combining/merging them as is needed to prepare them for a proper vote before all members of the Party.
I think this is a core point that the three of us involved in the discussion (so far, others please contribute) agree on. Everything else you said is relevant, but could be postponed for future discussions or resolutions. I think that we need to figure out what is absolutely necessary (perhaps even "no positions, only process") to get this started. If we can get something minimal bootstrapped, participation in the Party will likely increase. Maybe we should orient more toward process, and the roles (if any) will reveal themselves in that discussion.
I guess I have three questions for you, Comrade @Grimble , and any other participants in committee discussions (as a reminder, anyone with an account is welcome to participate) :
I am thinking that as long as the process allows for editing the process, everything will be ok once we get going. Both you and Comrade @Grimble appear to have understandable concerns about protecting the integrity of the process, which I will discuss in a reply below.
One thing I want to focus on is additional participation. I think the initial two posts (the idea and the first proposal) got higher participation is that they were in the biggest comm - r/chapotraphouse. But this thread was in c/ttrpg, which is basically dead. Literally all the comments are just us three, except for some people who wanted "in" on the discussions so they said "me too" to subscribing.
So, by continuing the discussions in this thread, no new people were exposed to this idea, nor were the people who showed interest updated whenever we responded to each other.
One idea I have is to make new posts in c/ttrpg periodically, tagging everyone who's shown interest. Maybe it can summarize the discussion so far and encourage people to comment.
Absolutely agree, I originated this concept myself, but I don't want to put it on rails toward anything in particular, so I wanted to see how this initial discussion thread would evolve. My feeling is that some people are less interested in these initial stages and we'll pick up some momentum once we incorporate the "Party", and start telling our story.
Part of this is a balance between spamming the site with our own niche activity (which will tick off the BC), and posting to generate activity. Hopefully the three of us can draft a Resolution that people can discuss. Easier for people to dogpile a draft Resolution that may have issues than it is to create one, which should generate some participation. I've been tied up with some offline stuff this week, but I may have time tonight or tomorrow morning to write something up that we can put to a vote, if reading this wants to do the same based on the comments in this discussion post, they're more than welcome (post it in this thread so we can review it before putting it to a vote).
I agree with this.
Do you mean strictly "referendum" here, as is understood to be "a general vote by the electorate on a single political question that has been referred to them for a direct decision."
Any person who wishes to put up a proposition/rule etc. for a referendum by the general Hexbear populace can appear before the Committee (via a post) and say "I wish to have a referendum on x topic." Then, we help them draft the proper question/proposal etc. and put it up to a vote (via a post).
I'd suggest a post, much like the original resolution .
Probably not, at this stage. As long as you, the Chairman, and the rest of the Committee members can help properly format the proposal, then that's all that's needed at this stage.
Sorry I crossed "Resolution" (which would be through internal party process) vs "Referendum" (like you said, an electorate driven process). I think there's a place for both processes to exist in parallel.
Like with many topics, we can start with a "Resolution" process, and later pass a Resolution that establishes a "Referendum" process.
The Committee will dissolve once the Party is incorporated, its only purpose is to create the Party. I am thinking that for a "Referendum" there is a petitioning process (a draft of the Referendum must get "x" upvotes to be put to a vote, but what is x?).
I'm in agreement with your last two responses. I do want to distinguish between "Chair of the Committee" (me) and "Chair of the Party" (voted on later, may be me, but I'd love to see it be someone else). I was leaning toward the role of the Chair to primarily be formatting Resolutions/Proposals and putting them up for a vote based on the decided process. The Chair has no veto power and is duty-bound to follow the democratic process, but then you get into the technical details about how to hold a vote of no-confidence outside of their purview. Maybe that's taking it a layer too deep.