What is the overall plan for legislative reform?

[Epistolary Richard]

Recently we have been discussing several different pieces of legislation that form part of Profler's and the Black Prince's overall plan of reform and codification for the TWC constitution.

Various people have commented on how much work, effort and diligence the two of them have put into developing a programme of reform designed to bring the constitution up to date and to give members as much as a chance to discuss the different aspects of it as possible.

But as these amendments are being introduced stage by stage to allow for full discussion I think that possibly some of the opposition they are facing (from people including myself) is simply down to the fact that we don't understand the 'big picture'.

We see individual pieces of legislation but we don't understand how they will ultimately all fit together to form the future intended constitution. The amendments include a mixture of old systems in place and the new systems that they are trying to introduce, including new terminology that currently either does not have a meaning or appears to confuse one role with another.

So, to try and ameliorate that, I was wondering if one, or both, of them could try and give us an idea of what the overall plan is?

I realise everything's in development and can change and so forth, but just a taste of what the final structure of the constitution will be - so that we can understand how each piece will fit into the puzzle and discuss it with that ultimate objective in mind. And hopefully, when we grasp the idea, the process for each individual piece of legistlation will become that much easier.
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[the Black Prince]

currently what we are attempting to do is divide the syntagma into 2, even 3 sections

first being the actual Syntamga and Amendments is the constitution documents. these contains the basics or the curia, the civitates, the staff etc, but don't go into specific details.
the second section is the Acts of Law, these take pointso f the Syntagma, and expand upon them. for instance. the Syntagma might say The Quaestors are responsible for overseeing moderation in the forums. the Quaestor Act would expand on that by saying there will be 6 quaestors, 3 with responsibility for the Total War forums, and 3 for the Common Community. etc

as acts are easier to amend and chnage than the Syntagma, this allows us to modify details without the massive amendments

finally we have Forum Rules and Site Policy, these come either from the Consuls or the Civitates and include stuff like the Terms of Service and the Sig and Avatar Policy. these are not always items that have to be voted on in the curia.

our current aim is to take the draft syntagma, and make those chnages, and at the same time hold debates incorporating the concerns and issues raised about the document when the curia was first reopened. we hope to produce a working format that still preserves the democracy we have here, and the civitates power without compromising the staff's ability to run the site.

a lot of stuff is up in the air, because while me and prof might have rough ideas as to where we want to go with this, only the bits that have been put before the curia actually have been finalised in any way.

for instance, with regard to terminology, there have been several discussions both in and out of staff about group names. the Imperators name has already been chnaged to Network Administrators (amendment 1) and we are going to be looking at the civitates section next.

staff members have been given specific assignments that suit where they post regularly, and from my view point anyway, we're looking to formalise at least some of that. i think it safe to say the praetor bills at least are going to be highly contentious as i'm going to be pushing to introduce some specific responsibilities in there. i know some staff members oppose this, but its what happens at the moment anyway. Profler is already looking after the curia, Archer has been doing work organising the TW Forums and so on. The names like Curator and Censor are going to reflect this, but those plans are still in draft as yet.

bear in mind that the names are merely superflous additions. even if there is no official "Censor" there will be someone who's job it is to maintain records of Civitates and patricians, because that is something that must be done. it makes sense to give that person a title, even if its one of many they might have.
however, should it come to pass that these don;t get incorporated into future documents, a new Act can overrule an old one.
so while we currently plan for titles like Curator and Censor, should they not make it in, that Act would simply override and update the current one.

its a difficult way of doing things, and it does make things harder, at least until we have finished the current legislative program, but the only other alternative is tyo introduce everything all at once, which would create chaos, and mean that something important might get overlooked until it was too late.