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The amount of threads we've had on 'is the senate useful / how do we make the senate useful / what do we do with the senate' is getting silly. Frankly on most forums this amount of navel gazing would be a sign that the community is in its death throes. Hopefully that isn't the case for SDN, but still, how many threads are we going to have without any action being taken? Here are some of the major ones, and this only includes existential arguments, it doesn't include all the debate about exact procedures;

Ideal size of the Senate?
Our Purpose - Knife bitching about the exact same point and of course no senators replied.
Mr Bean's Grand Senate Reconstruction
Single nominee votes (are a sign of HoC failure, according to Dutchess)
New Senators and participation
Pleb comments (about the Senate) in Testing?
Censure of a Senator by the Plebes?
Board Culture
Senate Size Shifting
Senate Reform
Should we consider voting for new senators?
Ideal Size Of The Senate (HoC version)
How do you think the senate votes should be run?
What is the Senate
RE: Single Nominee Votes and Senato-Boardian Relations
Senate yay or nay, definitive
How do YOU see the board?
Bi-cameral legislature?
The Imperial Senate Commentary Thread

As we have just discovered, the Senate isn't even allowed to vote on its own basic role or existence. Leaving aside the black humor of that, AFAIK there's no reason why we can't have a vote here to see what the board population in general thinks. After all, there's no expectation that HoC votes actually get implemented, right? In fact we did exactly that nine months ago, but it was just yes/no, no detailed suggestions. So here are the options I culled from the above threads;

1 ) Eliminate the Senate. If the mods actually want advice, they can read the HoC. (proposed by Hotfoot here).
2 ) Senate converted to an honest 'old boys club', starting from a blank member list. Board dicussion goes to HoC as above. Senate membership to be gained by winning Coliseum threads, winner determined by Senate vote. Give senators cute badges again. Proposed by Simplicius here
3 ) 24 senators, for 1 year term, HOC elects two a month (Vendetta's suggestion here, echoed by Bean here, Coffee proposed a 6 month term version, but that's really impractical, Shroom Man proposed something similar etc)
4 ) Cap number of senators at 30, as suggested by Lady Tevar here. Kick out all the grandfathered in senators to get down to that limit. From there on, nominations from HoC will compete directly against oldest existing senator, as proposed by Stuart here.
5 ) No new senators except by mod fiat, senators have no responsibilites and cannot be removed (Dutchess of Zeon's suggestion here). Her later suggestion of 'add senators if 97% of the senate agrees to do so' is functionally equivalent.
6 ) Continue status quo. Which is to say, keep using Mr Coffee's idea of HoC senator elections (from here), regardless of if there's a no vote every month, keep the HoC as proposed by Hotfoot (from here), and with the Senate having navel gazng plus the occasional ban vote.
7 ) Status quo but election of new Senators will be done in the HoC, at a low rate (e.g. 4 per year). No term limits. A best effort will be made to get Moderators to actually pay attention to the Senate with regards to punishment votes.
8 ) Make the Senate relevant by giving all Senators mod powers over testing; proposed by Duchess of Zeon here - I can't find any prior instance of this suggestion.
9 ) Revert to old status quo; eliminate HoC, Senators can vote for new members if they ever feel like doing so again. Proposed by Havok here
10 ) Eliminate HoC and also eliminate Testing for good measure (the later proposed by Duchess here).

If I missed anyone's suggestion, feel free to post a link to it. As I said, I'm not expecting any direct action, but I'm curious how much if any consensus there is.

Can you add an option for Mike's statement that he wants the Senate to actually oversee bannings and control mods? I'd like to vote for the invisible 'give the senate an actual job, with responsiblities, chop deadweight/grandfathered/no contributors' option.

Stark wrote:Can you add an option for Mike's statement that he wants the Senate to actually oversee bannings and control mods? I'd like to vote for the invisible 'give the senate an actual job, with responsiblities, chop deadweight/grandfathered/no contributors' option.

Since Mike's made a personal commitment to it, I think that's now a given for all options except (1) and (2). 'Chop deadwood' presumably means (3) or (4), but if you have another way to do it, say so.

I just want to state that I do not in any sense endorse any of the opinions which Starglider has attributed to me in this thread. They were flawed, foolish, and reflexive proposals, and I think allowing board policy to be discussed without bans in the House of Commons will remain the best result, as long as the best of the Senate (and that doesn't include me, I simply don't contribute enough to the board anymore to warrant it) are promoted to moderators at its dissolution. In the end, some reflection and consideration have shown that Hotfoot was right and I was wrong.

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:I just want to state that I do not in any sense endorse any of the opinions which Starglider has attributed to me in this thread. They were flawed, foolish, and reflexive proposals

Thank you for admitting that. A disturbingly large number of people are literally incapable of such a concession.

That said, while you no longer hold those positions, they were seriously proposed in the Senate, and it is worth checking if anyone else still agrees with them.

Starglider wrote:
Thank you for admitting that. A disturbingly large number of people are literally incapable of such a concession.

That said, while you no longer hold those positions, they were seriously proposed in the Senate, and it is worth checking if anyone else still agrees with them.

I hope not, though there will certainly be a few.

I voted for elimination. Personally I don't really see why we need it. If you want to introduce transparency to the banning and titling process it seems like that could be handled more straightforwardly by keeping a public list of banned and titled members along with evidences of their offenses (don't we do this already? Parting Shots handles half of that and I recall there being some sort of "shit list" floating around somewhere). I think that should be transparent enough; we can all see what they were banned or titled for. If we want a forum where people can bring up ideas policy changes and questions and issues with board policy and moderation the HoC seems to work well enough for that while being more accessible and hence giving easier feedback. I have heard a point about the Senate being better in that respect because it's restricted but I don't see why it's hugely important; bad suggestions on a public forum are just suggestions and can simply be ignored, and troublemakers can be banned from it as a punishment. If we want to reward members in good standing some sort of merit badge type thing seems a lot simpler. In short I can't really see a necessary function for the Senate myself.

I have a question concerning oldest senator vs. new candidate: in the event that the oldest senator wins, is that senator then to be challenged again and again, or does that senator get punted to the end of the line and the next oldest senator is challenged in the next election?

Uraniun235 wrote:I have a question concerning oldest senator vs. new candidate: in the event that the oldest senator wins, is that senator then to be challenged again and again, or does that senator get punted to the end of the line and the next oldest senator is challenged in the next election?

You may have to PM that question to Stuart as I don't recall him ever posting in a HoC thread. Let's assume the later, which sounds more sane to me. You can always change your vote if Stuart drops by and says he meant the former.

I would like this option a lot more if votes weren't secret, so that the legacy senators can't just maintain a mutual appreciation club without even having to explicitly acknowledge doing so. However that would require either a code mod or tedious manual tallying.

How tedious would the manual tallying be? There's only fifty or so Senators.

RedImperator wrote:How tedious would the manual tallying be? There's only fifty or so Senators.

Not much, but with luck the already-written-and-tested 'transparent voting' option will make it into the board code anyway. Feel free to start another thread on 'should senate votes be secret' once we're done with this though, like the membership cap I don't think it was ever justified or seriously discussed, it's just 'traditional'. Now that we're firmly in the navel gazing zone we might as well do a complete job of it.

I voted for status quo plus Testing locks for laughs, so I'm in the minority. A conservative vote, as it were. The way I figure it, (many/most/enough of) the Senators, plus Mike, do the behind-the-scenes technical work, thread moving and editing, and continuation of the board culture to let the rest of us mindlessly enjoy SDN.

I'll start to get worried about the board's decline if there are more FUCK SENATE RAR! posts than there are N&P posts.

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:I just want to state that I do not in any sense endorse any of the opinions which Starglider has attributed to me in this thread. They were flawed, foolish, and reflexive proposals,

I'm going to be completely honest here, Marina, and I don't want you to think I'm targetting you because I begrudge you of some unseen slight.

Isn't that how it always works, though? I mean I honestly can't remember any proposals of yours that weren't reflexive overreactions, that may be because those overshadow your more coherent ones so I could be completely off. I've defended you before on this issue, simply because I hadn't watched the Senate all that much, but incidences where you make kneejerk reactions that make you look foolish seem to occur at least once a Senate discussion.

Man I love reading old posts I've written. My view on the HoC has changed though, and it has surprised me with it's usefulness. I didn't think it would get serious usage from anyone besides Ray, let alone actually supplant the Senate, but it has.

That said, if the Senate is dissolved, why the fuck should the members of that group, that are essentially losing that group due to poor performance and inactivity, get to be mods?

If I had to go with an option, I can't chose my old suggestion because I think the HoC has become useful and I can't chose the last option as that calls for the death of Testing as well, (when did I say that?) I would have to come up with something new as I am not 100% behind any of the options presented.

I like the idea of the Senate, and the Great Troll (HoC) has become useful. So this is my suggestion:
-Eliminate the current Senate and recreate it.
-I'd like to see a Senate that is chosen along the same lines, i.e. posting quality based merit, but that is solely made up of regular users, no mods.
-The size of the Senate can be capped at some arbitrary number if need be, but the elimination of the mod list from the Senate will immediately cut down on membership size. (They already have influence on board policy and are already 'above' the regular user. Their membership is redundant)
-Keep the nominations in the HoC, but also have the voting there. This should cut down on 'joke nominations' to piss off the Senate as they will now be choosing the people that have influence.
-Have the rollover vote every 12th month.
-Give the Senators perks and rewards for being there, i.e. silly name badges, sig size increases, mod abilities in testing (just to fuck with the whiners) etc.
-Everyone read what Rob Wilson wrote about what the Senate is supposed to be, because the idea is sound.

The House of Commons:
For some added drama , make the HoC a user group similar to the Senate, but with no perks other than being able to post in it. Give every public open forum X slots in the HoC. Or just have an arbitrary number that becomes the 'cap'. Or just make the eventual number of people that want to participate the 'cap'. Just make it so that every possible person that wants to participate can. Have an open sign up every year for a week and whoever signs up is in. You can even have the Senate vote on the HoC members in the opposite 6th month from when the HoC votes on the Senate members.

Example: AMP gets, say, 10 slots. So people that post in AMP and feel that is thier primary forum of participation in the board that want to be in the HoC can enter their names for consideration. So DEATH, Pick, Simplicus, Myself, Grahf and Darwin want to be in the HoC, we enter our names for 'consideration' (basically first come first serve), then the Senate approves the volunteers.

It gives the Senate and HoC something to do besides just bitching and banning that may be fun if handled right and is, I believe, in the spirit of what Rob intended with the Senate. Keep in mind that a big part of the Senate was supposed to be a reward and fun. It doesn't have to be drop dead serious all the time. I like the spirit that the Senate was created in. I think it can return to that and I think the HoC can add that without imploding.

Maybe.

Havok wrote:So this is my suggestion:

As far as I can tell that is option 3, but electing the entire senate in one go instead of progressively. Bean did include dropping all the moderators from the Senate in his proposal, I just forgot to mention it. Do you mean an approval vote on however many candidates (could be 100 plus) and the top 20ish get elected for a year? Sounds reasonable to me, assuming we can get an exception to the '10 poll options' limit; it concentrates all the drama/hassle into a couple of weeks a year.

Give every public open forum X slots in the HoC. Or just have an arbitrary number that becomes the 'cap'.

Yeah, there have been various ideas along those lines in the above threads, and they're all equally stupid and impractical. Aside from anything else,

So people that post in AMP and feel that is thier primary forum of participation

I don't think most posters are that attached to any specific subforum. So no x10 drama multiplier for you.

Well it doesn't have to DRAMARIFIC. It can be just fun, which was my point in suggesting it. I also threw out an option for who ever wants to be in it can be in. They just get approved by the Senate who in turn offers up Senate nominations. Quite honestly, I don't know if there are 120 people, based on my 10 slots per forum, that even participate in the HoC.

Havok wrote:Well it doesn't have to DRAMARIFIC. It can be just fun

Mmyeah. That was the plan for the Senate, and look what happened.

Seriously, that 'hugely complex multilevel election system' business might make sense if this was a board about sociology / political theory, but it isn't.

Havok wrote:Well it doesn't have to DRAMARIFIC. It can be just fun, which was my point in suggesting it. I also threw out an option for who ever wants to be in it can be in. They just get approved by the Senate who in turn offers up Senate nominations. Quite honestly, I don't know if there are 120 people, based on my 10 slots per forum, that even participate in the HoC.

I would say very probably, actually. I don't post very often in the HoC, but like with the Senate, I nearly always read all the threads, and I imagine I'm not alone in that.

I voted to continue the status quo and to abolish the senate. Because I think polls that let you select multiple options are silly when these options contradict each other.

General Zod wrote:Because I think polls that let you select multiple options are silly when these options contradict each other.

The concept of having an order of preference is too complicated for you? I mean, I expected some retards would be voting, which is why I limited it to 'favorite' and 'second best', but apparently that's still too hard.

voted

Starglider wrote:

General Zod wrote:Because I think polls that let you select multiple options are silly when these options contradict each other.

The concept of having an order of preference is too complicated for you? I mean, I expected some retards would be voting, which is why I limited it to 'favorite' and 'second best', but apparently that's still too hard.

Or the fact that I just don't see it as that big of a big deal and even kind of hilarious? Unfortunately there is no comedy option. Some people are taking this so seriously it seems to me it makes the Senate and HoC an even bigger joke than they already were.

At any rate, it's too late to edit but I figure I'll try being serious here. Instead of abolishing anything or radically changing anything, the Senate seems to almost never post anymore except for votes or when someone wants to be a drama llama. So why not just make The Senate a subforum to the HoC, use it as purely a voting forum where only Senators or Mods can make polls with any weight behind them, and make all discussion threads except those related to bannings or punishment and such in the HoC? I mean we've already decided any peon that has an opinion on how the board's ran can say what he wants in the HoC already. We're just taking out the middle man of having two discussion threads on the same thing running at the same time, which I don't really see the point to if most of the Senators won't actually voice their opinion outside of votes.

Torpedo the Senate, then the HoC, and then the whole 'thou shalt not discuss board and moderator business' policy. Shift, all that miscellany where it belongs, in off-topic, given that it's, well, off of the topic of the rest of the forums.

Seriously, the only reason EITHER forum exists is because board members have a gag rule imposed on them for... er... hell if I know.

White Haven wrote: Seriously, the only reason EITHER forum exists is because board members have a gag rule imposed on them for... er... hell if I know.

Because of trolls whining about the rules to avoid arguments and flames or something, I think.