CmdrWilkens wrote:The chair objects and the motion is out of order.
No seriously the motion is out of order, call me a bit dictatorial if you wish but I am not going to hold a vote over disbanding the Senate. If Mike and the admins think we've run our course fine but in the interim no body on holds the power to vacate itself and I interpret that to mean the Senate cannot vote itself out of existence.
Personally, I think it would be the best chance for the Senate to show its general maturity and rationality to be allowed to end itself, to end things on a high note if you will, rather than to be shut down later on as a total broken shell of what it once was, living on life support.
I don't think the vote should be now, of course. As I said, I want to actually discuss this because it warrants discussing. Moving to vote without discussion is one of the things we're not supposed to do here. That we take time do discuss things properly is supposed to be the strength of the Senate, even if it is also our greatest weakness.
Why one may ask? The Senate was created originally because criticism of board policy or mod decision was (and IS) subject to the ban hammer. The Senate was conceived of as a place where exerpeienced and reasonable members could, in the open, speak about that which was otherwise forbidden. As the creation came about the Senate was granted the pwoer to decide on lesser punishments and vote on ban polls. Since the board started there have been, and will be again, marginal cases where a user may or may not deserve the ban hammer, a CT, or some other form of punishment. The Senate's role then and now is to ADVISE the mod staff. The HOC does not serve this purpose nor do I think it should.
Actually, I'd say it does. Mike himself made a thread in the HoC where he takes direct advisement from all members of the board. Granted, it's for a quote of the week, but previously such a thread would have been the bailiwick of the Senate almost exclusively. It's also started more discussions and movements for policy change than the Senate would ordinarily. One of the most telling examples was Strikethrough, something which had been suggested to the Senate multiple times in the past, and was always relatively easy to implement, but always seemed to meet with resistance, or at least lack of inertia in the Senate handling of the situation.
In fact, there's really nothing wrong with people making suggestions about board code, policies, or so forth in the House of Commons, as long as they are reasonable about it. Unreasonable things get locked and flushed, much like any other forum.
As far as banning, serious cases are handled directly these days as they rightly should be, we don't have the show trials like we did much earlier in the board's history, they just disappear when they go too far, and there aren't as many these days.
Titling...well, that's even less common. I can't even remember the last time the Senate handed out a title anyway.
That being said the Senate is far from perfect. The quality of the membership is certainly of some question and I know there are more than a few individuals who have objectiosn to my paticular style of operating this forum. That I tend to be overly officious and folks find that objectionable or otherwise disagree with my methods I find well enough (hell I even gave folks a mechanism to kick me out of office).
So does that mean if we kick you out, then we can vote to dissolve ourselves?
There are plenty of low traffic forums on this board and I think it honestly would be for the best if the Senate was one of them however traffic level does not a reason for removal make and unless and until the admins come down and tell me that the Senate has served its purpose I will not open or condone a vote for us to remove ourselves.
To be honest, I'd like to see SWvST, PSW, and PST locked and archived and all subsequent traffic routed to OSF, which would be re-named simply, "Science Fiction". The need for those original forums has long since passed.
See, it's not just the low level of traffic. If it was just that, I'd say keep on. In fact, before the HoC, that's exactly what I've said. The matter here is duplication of purpose. One forum does the job better than another. Why keep the forum that's not performing? If the need comes back, ever, it's the simplest thing in the world to unlock the forum and put it into active duty again. Nothing need be deleted, it would just be mothballed. Even the Senate usergroup could be altered to show the status of former Senators to show that they took part in this place.
It's actually fantastic that the only people actually looking at facts are those interested in reform, the implications of which should be obvious.
