This one will have a unique system of governance: We will not have elections among our own non-staff members, our administration will instead vote on which members are most eligible, and then send PMs to those whom they consider worthy of being staff members, giving them a choice to accept or decline. We won't let any one user have too much power, because that is a dictatorship, and we won't let casual users elect staff members because Athenian Democracy is essentially mob rule, neglecting the needs of minority voices and the main purposes of this group. Instead, it will be very loosely based on the Roman and American systems of Republican rule.

Our administrators are made up of two categories: Magistrates and Senators. The Magistrates post suggestions to Senators in their discussions, giving ideas for who to vote for in later staff positions, and what rules will be passed, and will post guiding suggestions to Senators in their discussions, but Magistrate suggestions when a Senatorial session is taking place don't count as official votes, only as mere guidelines that may be helpful to the Senators. Senators actually vote on the real decisions. Their votes count. The Founder is the President, and he can approve and disapprove of Senatorial votes, as well as propose ideas for the Senate to discuss, but he can't make a vote himself during the initial Senatorial Discussion. This will all be carried out on a separate administrative Group. All administrators are allowed to moderate the group, post on this group, and promote this group.

The Contributors simply promote the group and frequently post, and are likely future staff members.

This is specifically designed for checks and balances. However, There will be adjustments to this system as the group grows and the staff grows.

So, what do you think of this system of governance?

5605741

Sounds good to me. I approve this.

5605741 I like it

5619519
5619722
I have been considering either making the magistrates the only ones who can actively moderate the group or dropping the magistrates entirely until the group grows enough for having use for people who just give ideas to the senators and give them tips.

5620956

The idea for Magistrates is good, start with them, since they help in choosing the Senators, and once we have enough people on this group we can choose the Senators.

5621257
What I think I'll do is have it so that the magistrates can select senators, like you said, and only they can moderate and enforce the decisions of the senators, but they can't cast actual votes, only post suggestions and guidelines for the senators for the senators to choose to adhere to or object to. Also, while the President can't casually kick out senators, he can do this to magistrates, because they answer directly to him.

Does this sound good?

And finally, I might turn the President into a two-ruler system: A pair of consuls instead of a single figure.

5622901

The part of the magistrates sounds good, not too sure of the president. It would be better to be able to choose a President or to make sure that said president is trustworthy.

Holy carp it sounds complicated

5624389
I'll probably drop a couple of magistrate functions and limitations to keep it simpler.

The idea is simply to prevent panem et circuses policies that FIMFic groups in general can succumb to.

5605741 Okay

It seems reasonable to me, I have no complaints.

I just want to point out, as someone studying history in college, that Athenian democracies weren't simple "mob rules" either at any point, there were always some regulating and governing positions, though not many. A good rhetorician could easily use these to make people vote in their advantage, so some historians have compared it more to a aristocracy of orators. And for the most part except for the last era under Pericles, the lower classes had neither the power nor the time to take much part in politics, too.
It's interesting to compare them to today and other ancient governing systems. In the end, it was probably neither really a mob rule or a democracy. A true democracy doesn't ignore the needs of minorities, and avoid tyranny by majority by having some guaranteed rights set out e.g. in a constitution.

5626747
Ah, thanks for the clarification!

Is there any modifications to this system of governance that you would recommend?

5623291
5624389
5624909
5626747
Okay, I'll make one modification to this: Anybody who is an administrator can moderate, not just magistrates. The senators simply have to make votes before adding, removing, or replacing rules, and the senators have to make votes before deleting a thread (though the OP can delete the thread without administrative interference).

This should make the administration simpler, and the the process of managing the forum a lot easier, to let all administrators have moderation rights during the early days of this group.

5619722
5621257
5624389
5624909
5626747
I'll also ask if I should make another modification: Should non-staff users vote for who gets to be magistrate, and should they cast the final vote if the thing we're voting about is a change in rules rather than merely deleting a thread?

5627060 That seems fair to me.

5627095
Should I drop one of the voting options? It occurred to me in retrospect that having them both might make this group more complicated than it already is. Besides, FIMFic groups are seldom Democratic as it is, so some might view this as a weird decision.

Let's discuss this on the administrative forum!

That's right, I made that too! Now it's time to make some promotions and then we'll start legislating as this group goes public!

5627118 The former could be dropped, but a general vote about rules seems important to me.

5627125
Yeah, doing that would keep things simple, let's see what the others say!

So far, here's the idea:

The President can appoint magistrates, who appoint and provide counsel to senators, but only the senators can actually make the real decisions. The President can then approve of or dismiss the idea of the Senate (which, as he's me, he probably will anyway). Then he hands the final product to the users in general for them to decide if it works the way it is, should be modified, or not applied at all.

Is that good?

5627060 sure

5627140 It does seem good to me. Thanks for all the work you are putting into this.

5605741

K /
No wonder what do we do?

5627140

This sounds good, the last thing needed is to make write this (a la Constitution). The President chooses the Magistrates, the magistrates help in the creation of the Senators, the Senators make the rules and then it gets the approval of the President and the non-staff members. This reminds me to the Constitution of 1811 in Venezuela.

5605741 My question is, what's to prevent this group from turning out like "Christian Bronies" did, where it became overwhelmingly atheist, driving out the Christians, and discussion degenerated into silly little in-jokes? There's a reason Saint founded Christian's Haven, after all.

5631988
It wasn't diversity that caused that, but the well-meaning but misguided panem et circuncenses policies they allowed, which ruling like it was a Republic could have prevented. You don't cater to the majority on value of them being the majority because you never know if they know what's good for them or not. For example, (late 2013 or early 2014, right?), the majority of FIMFic were into some causes, stereotypes, viewpoints, and styles of arguing that many didn't even know were of then-fashionable "Social Justice" origins, most couldn't even know this because they were just everywhere at the time, it was just normal stuff promoted in schools, including my own college. Even I didn't know what it was back then. But as the popularity of these was fairly new, they just latched on to them without even stopping to ask themselves what they were doing.

As of today, the popularity of these lines of thinking is, in spite of the media trying hard to promote it now, beginning to run thin. But as it stands, the use of a diverse senate that we can't do much without passing a lot of important things through it, which will prevent this kind of thing from happening, and we have guidelines for debate so that people are learn that sassy gifs and randomly playing the "circlejerk" card without cause don't equate to a good argument.

While we're at it, the current Christian Bronies administrative team is pretty cool, but the decisions from pretty much every single other administrator beforehand, even the very first one, were severe mistakes that ensured that the current administrative team would inherit an irritating user-culture that seems to drive them crazy.

5632021 That seems reasonable enough. Consider my question answered.

5632022
To be very fair, few of the original adminstrators of Christian Bronies were doing this to it on purpose. Honestly, the common FIMFic users at the time, such as myself, only have ourselves to blame for that. FIMFiction has a culture of entitlement, entitlement towards authors of stories, admins of groups, even the official staff of the site. We put people in positions in which they have to pander, or else. This Republic and our official rules are both designed to firmly yet users know that they can't do this, that we won't pander to them lightly and swiftly, especially if it might have long-term consequences or hurt any minority voice, regardless of what belief system that minority voice adheres to.