Will include the full list soon-ish.

Post your re-assignments here...

Note: the database is still doing that thing where it lists the wrong province for senators in provinces alphabetically following provinces with vacant senate seats. Best ignore that for now...

The March 2020 Clark is now here.

www.talossa.ca/files/clark.php?cosa=54&clark=3

Or here: www.talossa.ca/files/print_clark.php (this is the printer friendly version)


In PDF Form (which was made from the print_clark.php page):

www.talossa.ca/files/clarks/March2020Clark.pdf

or can vote online here: www.talossa.ca/files/clark_vote.php

Or in this thread, until the 21st of the month, at 19h30 TST.

Senators or Cosa members are allowed to create a single thread in the Senate/Cosa chamber to post all of the Senate/Cosa Votes that are not cast in this thread. If MZs want to create separate voting threads on the Cosa or Senate board on old witt votes there will also be counted. Any votes not posted either using the form above, the current thread, or any of the Senate/Cosa threads on either witt might be ignored and void. Please do not vote by email or private messages.

When you vote, do not indicate any conditions which may make it sound like this vote isn't final: you can always change your vote later.

Please do not vote by email: We've had problems with email votes being caught in the spam filter.

All Cosa Members and Senators will be emailed today.



Glüc da Dhi
Secretary of State

Quote from: Miestrâ Schiva, UrN on February 16, 2020, 04:16:58 PM
Agreed.

Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on February 21, 2020, 04:00:46 PM

I agree that if any of this happened it would not be great,

So any thoughts on amending this proposal to minimise these risks?

One possible alternative could be to have the general electorate vote on candidates one at the time where the first candidate is the person who is closest to being a citizen for 30 years. (wanted to say 59 but that may be a bit long)

Or we could institute some kind of electoral college where the members are selected separately over a longer period.

Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on February 21, 2020, 04:02:21 PM
Are all of the proposals for more complex election processes more along the lines of "woah dude, what if we..." or should I actually incorporate them into the amendment.

I kept the election process the same in order to avoid making a huge omnibus change.

This is gonna be a huge change regardless.

I would seriously consider actually incorporating some of the ideas that have been raised here and some others that have not yet been raised as well.

Really disappointing that we're going for possibly the worst option when a lot of the alternatives haven't really been thought out.

Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on February 28, 2020, 09:32:15 PM
I'd like to Clark The Non-Hereditary Monarchy Amendment

This has technically only been in the hopper for two days...

@Amada Merþedes

Thankfully nobody noticed the original post said 27th of June...

It is my pleasure to open call for bills of the March 2020 Clark.

Eventually, the clark can be viewed in real time here:

www.talossa.ca/files/cosa_vote_result.php?cosa=54&clark=3 (for the votes)

and here:

www.talossa.ca/files/clark.php?cosa=54&clark=3 (for the bills )

It is NOT too late to submit bills, of course, as you have OFFICIALLY until the morning of the 29th of this month, provided your bills have been in the Hopper before end of business day the 24th, of course. I will make the Clark on March 1st's morning and bills submitted up to a few hours before that will probably also be taken.

PLEASE note that in order to support a bill, you need to:

1 ) Be a Senator, the Secretary of State or the King
or
2 ) Have been nominated as a Cosa Member for the upcoming Clark BEFORE the 24th,

To vote on the Clark, you will have 3 options:

1 ) You will be able to vote in the Clark thread (which will be created later on the 1st of January), or in a separate Senate or Cosa voting thread. I will enter your votes in the DB.

2 ) You will be able to vote directly in the database, using your usernumber and DB password (which you can retrieve at: www.talossa.ca/files/login.php using the PSC of the election) or by login via Facebook (which requires manual activation on my part).

3 ) Votes cast on the Senate/Cosa boards on old Witt will also be counted.

[p][/p]

Glüc da Dhi
Secretary of State

Many many thanks to Lüc da Schir who has done A LOT of work creating the forum and getting it all to work and then helping me with moderation rules as well. Basically this is all his doing, so we should all be very grateful to him!


With regards to moderation I had hoped to get a lot more done before certification, but sadly I didnt have the time and energy for that. Still, it seems pointless to postpone it even more.

(New) Wittiquette, while still under review should be considered in force and will be enforced as such.

Additional admins will be appointed soon and an admin board will be officially constituted later. In the meantime, I will serve as admin, so if there is a moderation issue please contact me. For technical issues and forum features, Lüc is still the person to go to.

If you are a current citizen of Talossa and want your account on Wittenberg approved, please send me or Lüc or any other admin a pm or send an email to talossachancery@gmail.com

Ziu
At least for the next Clark I will allow voting and bill submissions on oldwitt too (provided the forum is not shut down).

With regards to the Hopper, anything thats been hoppered on oldwitt before certification will still be considered hoppered at the time of its original date. However, all bills that have not been posted in the new hopper before April 30th will be considered removed from the Hopper.

New bills need to be hoppered on new witt to be hoppered.

Further changes to the Hopper are likely to be announced very soon.

Immigration
If a prospective posted on oldwitt before certification that still counts and their time is still running. Prospectives who havent posted on oldwitt before certification will now need to post on newwitt before their immigration period starts.

In accordance with The Wittenberg Transition Act (53RZ17) I hereby certify that this board, wittenberg.talossa.com, which shall from here on be referred to as Wittenberg, as described by El Lexhatx Title J, is ready for occupancy.



Done by my hand in the name of King John and under his Royal Seal this 27th day of February in the year of the common era 2020, in the 13th year of the reign of our gracious sovereign King John, and of the independence of Talossa the 41st.

Glüc da Dhi
Secretary of State

Quote from: Miestrâ Schiva, UrN on February 18, 2020, 05:00:38 PM

Let's put it this way. Would either of the following two events be, in your opinion, libel/slander which could and should be punished in Talossan Cort?

1) A Cabinet minister argues against a Talossan citizen receiving a state grant. Even though the citizen receives that grant, the citizen accuses the Cabinet minister of "corruption and illegitimate bias" for having argued against the grant at all.
2) One Talossan rises to say: "I have no evidence for this, but I'm pretty sure X citizen sent a poison-pen letter to Y citizen's employer, then claimed falsely to have received such a poison-pen letter him/herself, to cover his/her tracks."

No time/energy for a full response now, but the short answer:
1. No
2. I don't know.

Would you say either of these requires an intervention from forum staff?

Quote from: Miestrâ Schiva, UrN on February 18, 2020, 03:02:11 PM

If these rules are actually enforced, New Witt will be 10 times as restrictive as old Witt and people will have to change their ways significantly

True, but the plan never was to strictly enforce them. These rules are actually more lenient I think than oldwittiquette which includes such broad rules as "be nice", "be polite and correct" etc, and which is also rarely enforced. Generally speaking, in my view when you break these rules you tend to be in the wrong, and it would be great if people actually did change their ways. However, people tend to be wrong quite often and most of the time this is very forgiveable. Also, admins are not babysitters.

Context, severity, intention all matter a lot, which makes it hard to formulate very specific rules. In the end everything that is rarely ever the most enlightened course of action and could in their most extreme case be worthy of an intervention was included in these rules.

The actual guidelines for enforcement will eventually be in a separate document, (which will not be as prominently advertised). The general idea behind that should imo not be very different from what is described here: http://talossa.proboards.com/thread/13853/

Quote
To take them one by one:
- "Libelslander": you know for a fact that much of Talossan political discourse has degenerated into allegations of corruption or other criminal malfeasance on one hand and allegations of severe personality disorders on the other hand. Talossan tradition has taken a very relaxed view to this, acting more in the American tradition than the British Commonwealth tradition - in the US, "public figures" have few protections against libelslander unless you can prove actual malice, which is very hard. No-one has ever been successfully prosecuted for libelslander in Talossa. Are you saying that NewWittiquette will be much stricter than current legal standards?

Well, I think(?) libel is illegal in Talossa as well, so it should probably be a rule regardless. Proving it is obviously quite difficult.

In this case my proposal for the enforcement would be edit "-Libel/slander ONLY when it concerns unsubstantiated claims that potentially have a major effect on someones reputation outside wittenberg (e.g. such and such is a pedophile or similar) . In other cases, wait for the courts first (admins are not fact-checkers)" and no insta-ban, but a potential ban after a warning in these extreme cases (or if court orders are being violated).

Quote
- "Swearing": we had the Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet using the C*** word in the Shoutbox just yesterday, which is considered beyond the pale in most countries which aren't Scotland or Australia (even such rough-and-ready places such as New York or New Zealand would only take it out of the box in extreme necessity). I would prefer my own personal rule, that profane language (anything from bastard on upwards) should be tolerated only when in the Talossan language.

Can't say I particularly approve of the comments of my friend there, though I was mostly just surprised. I will give him that the recipient isn't very likely to read that and it will be gone from the shoutbox before he ever returned. (Also the difference between someone is a c and someone is being a c, but not everyone will appreciate that distinction.) Either way, it was far from the stream of abuse that has gotten someone banned on oldwitt.

_{Fwiw, unlike what people may think, I'm not particularly bothered by the use of swearwords themselves, though I prefer to use them sparingly because inflation makes them somewhat meaningless. I also use them a lot more often offline. I think it worth considering that a)the whole world can see what you posted, b)they won't disappear, c)you have more opportunity to think about what you are saying. That's also why I don't fully buy into the I'm just being a good hearted Glaswegian/New yorker argument. You don't need to be Canadian to see that what you post on a forum comes across different than what you say in the pub. What can bother me is when words are used directed at a person purely to hurt them and make normal conversation impossible, though I'm also understanding of people saying things in the heat of an argument that they wouldn't say otherwise.}


Again, I don't think its bad to have this as a rule, because generally speaking people shouldnt be verbally abusing people, but I wouldn't propose to ban anyone who calls someone else a teringlijer. Only when someone is repeatedly violating this rule with ill intent and completely derailing discussion they should get a warning and then maybe a ban if they really can't contain themselves.

Quote"Don't be a troll": Actually I entirely approve of this as a standard, but it won't work as a rule without stopping certain citizens from posting altogether. The problem is that good trolling is always plausibly deniable - there is at least one Talossan citizen who has perfected the act of nasty trolling (basically slanderous accusations/nasty personal attacks couched in unobjectionable-seeming language) and then professing innocence ("what did I say?") when people get upset. Another part of the problem is that many of us don't speak English as our first language and might miss some of the subtleties of language which enable really nasty trolling.

Agreed, but I don't see any obvious ways around this.

People shouldn't troll, so the rule should be not to troll, but actually enforcing this is going to very difficult. Essentially it needs to be very obvious to do anything in the first place and even then it should probably be repeated multiple times following some very specific warning explaining why something is being seen as trolling, before you can definitely say there isn't any plausible deniability anymore. Does that mean we just shouldn't mention it? At least, this way, when it is obvious there is some basis for maybe intervening.

Wittiquette is now the rules for users of this forum. (Which is not the same as the rules by which moderators will enforce those rules, which are still under construction.)

However, changes may still be possible.

At this point comments, suggestions, etc are still very welcome.

Part IV: Some additional clarifications to the rules

Breaking the rules in part 2 may result in your postings being edited and/or a warning, and sometimes, a ban. Most of the time you won't get a ban without getting a warning first. However, serious intentional violations of the worst cases described in the first 6 rules may result in an instant ban. Precise details are described in the moderation guide.

The Ziu (Lobby, Cosa, Senate) and Court boards have their own rules which are administered by their own moderators. However, rules 1 to 5 still apply there for online safety/privacy reasons and all rules still apply to non-MZs posting in the Ziu without invitation to avoid consequences elsewhere.

If you are a citizen and do get a ban typically you will still be allowed to post in the Courtroom. Members of the Ziu will also still be allowed to post in the Ziu. However, if you abuse these exceptions (for example by posting things in the courtroom that are not relevant to proceedings there or by breaking the rules again) your ban may become forum wide. All bans are temporary but can be extended if you break the rules again.