FYI, we (or at least I) encourage community lead referendums. If you want to put the work in, you're welcome to initiate one.
That said, I'll give feedback on the bullet points...
First, and I'm sure you already meant this, but I advise making all those proposed separate referendums into questions in a single larger one.
- I propose a MEEP that states that the majority opinion of debaters on DART outweighs the opinion of the moderation team and on those rare occasions where mods must stray from the voter-approved MEEPs, the DART community is constantly consulted and negotiated with as part of any decision the moderators make to modify MEEPs. Mod rules state that MEEPs are binding and so moderators should see themselves as bound.
There's a fair bit to unpack here...
If I understand this correctly, the main goal is to codify that mods communicate far better when deviating from course set by previous referendums.
Further, a refinement to the official referendum rules to specifically state that referendums are binding. While I respect Bsh1's work in codifying it, I would personally be glad to see the referendum process rewritten (the extension by no more than 12 hours, is weird in practice... Plus two days does not seem to be enough time to give people a fair chance to participate; even if the week I aimed for proved needlessly long). I would also love to see the specific name MEEP done away with.
So yeah, please rewrite the referendum
rules, and lets get the new ones voted on.
- I propose a MEEP to eliminate the office of DART President, since I think we've established that nobody seems to expect anything from that office and so that office proved a divisive waste of time.
Seems premature. Maybe the president will do something... Maybe not... I don't care much; I just hope we don't go back and forth on if it exists every referendum from now on.
- I propose a MEEP that eliminates EDUCATION as a Forum Category and makes HISTORY and CONSPIRACY THEORIES new Forum Categories and arranges Forum categories so that the most recently posted to Category is seen at the top of the Category list until a Category with a newer post pushes all the Categories down one. This way, posters are less tempted to miscategorize Topics for improved visibility.
I've previously lead some
forum restructuring, and would glad to see more of it. Ultimately, there is no one optimal set of forums here, as we'll have a slowly shifting userbase with different needs over time. Yet, I am loving the idea of a conspiracy theory forum, and suspect it would aid site traffic.
- I propose a separate Debate Tournament page that's built to be faster and less formal-debates have no set rounds but each debater has a 10K character limit. There can be up to three debaters on either side of an issue. Debaters can argue back and forth as much as they like until they hit that 10K limit then they're done. Debates end as soon as all debaters hit their limit or 72 hrs passes. It takes 7 votes+24 hrs to end the voting phase. To earn a berth in the tournament, debaters must have voted on 3 debates. Leaderboards for tournaments refresh to 0 every hundred days.
Sounds like some very cool long term functionality. You'd have to get Michael to agree to code it, which will be when he has time and gumption for it, but still sounds cool.