Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Proposal: Yet another proposal to change veto speed

Times out / fails :( - Ien

Adminned at 23 Apr 2010 16:07:16 UTC

After the second bulleted list in rule 1.5 “Enactment”, add the following paragraph:

Proposals that the Expedition Leader has voted to VETO can also be failed immediately by any admin, even if they are not the oldest pending proposal.

Now, I know we’ve gone over this one loads of times already (so much that this particular proposal even has an FAQ entry about it). The usual reason stated not to do this is “why would we want to punish bad proposals by taking away slots, but rewarding terrible proposals by freeing up the slot immediately”? Well, I was around last time this rule was in place, and things didn’t happen that way; if a proposal is terrible, it’ll just get a load of AGAINST votes. The only times that vetos are needed are when proposals are reasonable enough to get a preponderance of FOR votes, but either a fatal flaw’s discovered last-minute (in which case the queue timing change is basically irrelevant), or the proposal doesn’t fit into the Expedition Leader’s idea of the dynasty (this only comes up in dynasties like arth’s most recent, where the theme is secret; in such a case, punishing people for bad theme-guessing seems wrong). However, with such a rule in place, the veto gains another use: the Expedition Leader (who can be assumed to be relatively fair, due to having no way to win) can return slots to players for the good of the dynasty (e.g. when a player is having lots of ideas towards the start, and needs feedback on them, but other players don’t like them protosing). This was used quite a bit in several of the dynasties where the “fast veto” was available, including my first.

Comments

redtara: they/them

21-04-2010 23:04:30 UTC

Idle FOR. I like this rule.

Klisz:

21-04-2010 23:14:12 UTC

for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  for  Finally!

redtara: they/them

22-04-2010 01:26:26 UTC

nospamplz

Darknight: he/him

22-04-2010 01:36:32 UTC

imperial

Tiberias:

22-04-2010 02:16:20 UTC

for

Josh: Observer he/they

22-04-2010 05:28:14 UTC

against

Kevan: he/him

22-04-2010 09:32:08 UTC

against Yes, this mostly meant “self-kill your proposal and the Emperor will benevolently veto it” in practice. Which was effectively just “self-kills can be failed immediately” with an extra step, and some wheedling and grumbling in comments if the Emperor wasn’t quick enough to veto a self-kill, or if they vetoed it but didn’t also admin its failure.

We may as well just say “self-kills can be failed immediately”, and take the pressure off the Emperor. I don’t think I’d want to see the game sped up that much, though.

(As for the “only times that vetos are needed” - there’s also the case where a proposal is found to be world-endingly broken within the first couple of comments. I’m sure you wouldn’t expect an Emperor to restrain from vetoing it on the expectation that it would go on to get plenty of unchanged AGAINST votes.)

Put:

22-04-2010 10:46:41 UTC

imperial

Purplebeard:

22-04-2010 12:01:16 UTC

against

ais523:

22-04-2010 15:38:36 UTC

@Kevan: I’d expect them to refrain from vetoing it at least on the grounds of wanting to see what else is wrong with the proposal, which normally provides useful feedback. (People have been known to wait before self-killing obviously broken for similar reasons.)

Wakukee:

23-04-2010 15:23:38 UTC

Idle against. If you make a bad proposal and s’k it, you should have to wait a bit before proposing a new one. This enourages you to read over a proposal rather than just throw out a first draft to be ripped apart.

Wakukee:

23-04-2010 15:27:16 UTC

(In an unrelated note, I just changed the edit link color to match the color of other links. If anyone wants that changed back for some reason, just shoot me a pm).