Passes 10-0. —Brendan
Adminned at 27 Nov 2010 10:11:51 UTC
Remove the following from the rule “Resolution of Proposals”:
If the Headmaster has voted to VETO a proposal and that Vote’s comment includes the word “Proceduralâ€, the vetoed proposal can be failed immediately by any admin, even if it is not the oldest pending proposal.
My arguments are rather lengthy, so I’ll put them in a comment.
I hate this sentence more than any other in the Ruleset.
This was originally proposed as a compromise solution between slow vetoes (which are processed the same way as self-killed proposals) and fast vetoes (which are processed out of queue). The FAQ contains arguments from both sides, if you’re not familiar with the issue. As you may be able to tell from the text of this proposal, I am a proponent of the slow veto, but I would still prefer the old fast veto to this.
There are two broad categories of proposals that might be vetoed. The first are the proposals which are game breaking, deeply flawed or incredibly off-theme. These are generally vetoed because the Emperor strongly feels that they should not pass. The second are self-killed proposals with small flaws, whose proposers want their slot back so they can repropose a fixed version. At first glance, you might think that the Procedural Veto pleases everyone; only proposals of the second category would be procedurally vetoed by a benevolent Emperor, after all.
I can only speak for myself, but this solution does very little to alleviate my concerns about the fast veto. Proposals of the first category appear very infrequently, which is indicated by the sparseness of vetos when the fast veto isn’t available/used. (Incidentally, one of the reasons I support the slow veto is that the veto icon sends a far more powerful message if it’s only used sparingly.) It’s the second category I’m worried about, for reasons that others have stated several times (and better than I could).
As for my concerns about the Procedural Veto in particular: the distinction between ‘flawed’ and ‘game-breakingly bad’ isn’t clear-cut, and might lead to bad blood between two players if a player disagrees with the Emperor’s assessment of their proposal. When the fast veto is available, some players are going to think that they have the right to a new proposal slot if a proposal of theirs is found to be flawed (incidentally, if you think that this is always true, cut out the middle man and propose to allow insta-selfkills), and will grumble in the comments if the Emperor doesn’t comply, or responds too late to their liking. What message does the Emperor send by explicitly not giving them their slot back?
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