In short, for about a week we'll have a few voting questions open for the community to decide things.
This referendum will run until around 10:00am PT (UTC-7), February 14th 2020. That being Valentine's Day, it's a pretty rough estimate.
About MEEP:
As seen in the moderation overview,
Moderation may submit questions and proposals regarding moderation policy, voting policy, and the code of conduct to Moderation Engagement and Enactment Processes (MEEPs). MEEPs are binding referenda and comment periods on the questions and proposals submitted. Moderation has full discretion on which questions and proposals are submitted to MEEPs, though no substantive change to the COC may be made without either the consent of the site owner(s) or ratification via a MEEP.
In order for a submitted question or proposal to be ratified, at least 10 users must have voted in the MEEP, and more than a majority of all those voting must have voted for the question or proposal. That means, in practice, that in a MEEP with 10 total voters, the minimum threshold for a binding result is 7 votes in favor of the proposal or question. If a MEEP fails to produce a binding result, moderation will maintain the pre-MEEP status quo, unless doing so is entirely untenable.
The Questions:
Below is an enumerated list of the content to be voted on. A brief explanation of each question is included as well. Please vote "yes" or "no" to each of these questions.
1. Ratify the new Voting Policy?
Voting "yes" to this question will replace the current voting policy, extended policies, and various rulings, with a single new one.
tl;dr: While lengthening the policy to better explain to people why their votes were removed, this will generally allow us be less nitpicky.
Major changes:
- Specified Winner Selection as arguments only (this came up in a previous referendum, but the policy was never updated to reflect it). Likewise clarified missing multiple rounds as allowing conduct only votes against them.
- Changed S&G to “legibility,” which was already implicitly done by a previous referendum.
- Allowed more things to be borderline to decrease exploitative reporting, and allowed some things to be implied (such as not listing “and the other side did not FF”).
- Moved Sufficiency into a Core Value section, and added voter reading requirements.
- A ton of exposition.
- Made categorical votes all follow the same three steps (they kinda already did…).
- Added Foregone Conclusions to the special circumstances, along with plagiarism, and cheating, plus renamed the area disqualifications.
- Changed “Troll Debates” to general non-moderated, which includes comedy. Also added a clause to allow some minimal level of moderation intervention (such as someone voting just to harass someone they dislike).
- No longer calling every bad vote a vote bomb (something can be garbage for other reasons).
- Added a vote rigging section (I think I took a lot from the expanded policies doc).
- Expanded and modified the forfeiture policy.
- Clarified the Outside Content policy.
- A lot of little things are just because I hate nitpicky complaints.
2. Allow Kudos points within votes?
Voting "yes" to this will further loosen voting standards with regards to mitigating points against the voter's majority allotment; wherein they may substitute lower scoring categories to decrease the margin of victory they assign. This is to serve as a favorable callout with respect to the other side's efforts. Votes using this to inverse the majority recipient, will be deleted.
Note: A long term ideal solution would be a direct modifier to the argument points. However, this referendum is focused on policy we can immediately implement; as opposed to future mechanics we can only request.
3. Update the debates information page in the help center?
4. Switch to SupaDudz' suggested handling of Restraining Order violations?
Voting "yes" will switch from admittedly on the fly consequences, to a codified set.
Voting:
I'm not that attached to how people vote, so long as it's easy to understand. People may also change their votes, but please don't be a pain about it.
