Tribunal Abolishment Act

[Simetrical]

Edit: Here's a detailed explanation of my rationale, copied from a later post.

We don't need to make everything on the site a huge ordeal. This is why people hate dealing with governments. People should not have to hate dealing with the site. People should not have to go and file some kind of formal request, or make a public announcement, or anything like that to get their case heard. They should just PM the moderator in response to the PM they received. That is what they expect to have to do, and they should have to do nothing else.

The fact of the matter is, the staff is a perfectly competent body, and any disagreements with its decisions in any particular case are going to be matters of opinion. To say that three people, one of two of whom will probably have been kicked out of staff in the first place (whatever their protestations of innocence; there's no way tBP won't run and win), have some kind of moral authority because they're "independent" from the staff is absurd. The staff are the people who run the site. We aren't fascist dictators, we aren't out to eat your babies, we aren't going to abuse your liberties or anything like that.

But if you think you're treated unfairly, you know what, you have recourse. You can ask us to reconsider. If we still disagree, well, probably getting more opinions isn't going to make the decision better. It may change it, but whether for good or for bad will be a matter of pure opinion. And the opinions of a few random elected people are not any better than those of staff. They're all opinions. The staff as a body is not going to act rashly, no one is going to be out to damage the site. Whether to suspend for a week or a month, that's not something you can really be "unfair" about, or not consistently. The oversight makes no difference, it just adds an extra layer of bureaucracy and ranks and an extra out for perennial offenders who have two chances to be acquitted rather than one.

tBP seemed pretty affronted when I suggested that members of the Tribunal might be biased. You know what? They probably won't be. It's nonsense. They'll have the decency to recuse themselves when there's a personal issue, and it'll be fine. But the same thing is true of staff. There is no bias that needs to be accounted for in staff by some "independent" Tribunal. Staff will make decisions that, if they are not appropriate, will be at least arguably appropriate. And you can't do better than that, because whatever alternative the Tribunal likes will also be arguable and no more.

So, yes, I have other objections. I object to the entire idea that TWC needs to emulate real-world government with checks and balances. What applies to real life doesn't apply here. An independent judiciary is necessary to stop people from being driven out of their homes or beaten or murdered for dissent, not to protect trolls or flamers. Power corrupts, but not when self-interest lies in fairness. Some admins are too short-sighted to realize that banning troublemakers will only exacerbate problems, but I think I can say with certainty that all current admins realize that banning detractors or acting capriciously is the worst thing with can do for ourselves or the site.

We do not need some kind of pretense of oversight that will have no grounds to oppose us except slightly differing attitude. We don't need more procedures or mechanisms or bureaucracy. We need to keep things simple and look at things reasonably, not just appeal to values like "an independent judiciary" just because we've been taught from birth that such things are necessary for a country. We need to keep in mind that above all, TWC is an Internet forum and does not need to have a legal code the size of Switzerland's. We need to get rid of the Tribunal and any other pointless and unproductive processes.

Proposer: Simetrical
Supporters:

Syntagma Section 4, Articles 2 and 3, are to be removed from the Syntagma and replaced as follows:

Article 2 - TribunalAppeal of Punishments

To defend the democracy and freedom of TWC, and to ensure fair and just punishment towards those who violate the laws of TWC, a Tribunal shall be establishedany member of the site may appeal any decision of the moderating staff publicly or privately.

To appeal a decision, a member may contact a member of the moderating staff and ask that the decision be discussed. In that case, the recipient of the message should initiate a discussion amongst moderators and tell the result of the discussion to the appealer when it is reached.

Alternatively, a member may post a single public thread in such forum as is designated for that purpose. In this case, the thread may not be closed (although inappropriate posts within it may be edited or removed), and the moderating staff should respond appropriately within the thread to defend their decisions or admit error, as appropriate. Other members may comment in any such thread to defend whichever side they believe is correct.

The moderating staff need not publicly acknowledge any decision that is not part of the public record, such as private warnings or actions within hidden forums. They must still respond privately if contacted privately by anyone with legitimate direct knowledge of such a decision. In the case of an action within a hidden forum, a single public thread may be started within that forum according to the previous paragraph.

The Curia is free to consider and pass Curial Decisions regarding moderating decisions, which will be considered by the moderating staff.

The purpose of the Tribunal is to provide those members of TWC who have been punished in the past by the Moderation Branch a place to request the reversal of their punishment. This is in no way a guarantee that the punishment will be removed, but every case presented will be reviewed by a panel of three judges.

Members may create a thread in the Tribunal Forum with the Case Number and the name of the appealling member. The Judges will study the case details in a private sub forum, and may request any additional information on the member from the Senior Moderators. The Judges will then post the majority decision in the original thread, and ask the Chief Moderator to remove any warnings if so required. The Judges are not tasked to decide the appropriateness or validity of a Forum Rule of Term of Service, and may only rule on whether the Term was correctly enforced and the punishment suitable for the offence.

Article 3 - Judges

To serve on the Tribunal, a panel of three Judges is elected by the Curia, using the procedure outlined in Section 2 Article 2, from among the Senatorii. In addition to having the rank of Senatorii, a Judge must also have no staff warnings and cannot hold a Staff Officer position. Each Judge serves a three month term. The Judges are granted local moderator privileges in the Tribunal. A Judge may resign his post, and will be removed summarily under any one of the following conditions:

• Becoming a member of the Moderating Staff as per Section 1 Article 3;
• Incurring an infraction of any level;
• or being subject to proceedings laid out in Section 4 Article 1

Rationale: this reduces bureaucracy; it allows all members to comment, not just a select three; it permits members to contest decisions privately and not have to publicly announce that they were warned and publicly ask for forgiveness, which can be rather humiliating/offensive/whatever; it keeps moderating decisions centralized rather than having people unaffiliated with staff second-guess staff decisions.

[Fabolous]

I support.

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

kinda destroys the whole point of the tribunal which is as an independant arbritrator of moderating decisions?

Plus, I would see this as massively increasing beurocracy as, instead of 3 trusted individuals making quick decisions we are back to a long, drawn out discussion situation (and anyway, if you really only wanted everyone to be able to comment in the tribunal threads that is just a very small change).

So no, I don't support - I like the idea of independant scrutiny.

[imb39]

Given the current system setup where every infraction gets its own thread, I think this is will simply repeat a process by the same people who already check those warns - this happens on a regular business as you already know.

[Garbarsardar]

The whole point of the Tribunal is accountability and independent scrutiny. Which is also one of the main purposes of the Syntagma which was just ratified.

What you propose is already happening in staff; we make sure that the decisions of moderators are concordant to the ToS.

The Syntagma goes a step further in providing with means of an appeal.

If you don't like the Syntagma why don't you propose to scrap it instead of deleting it piecemeal.

[Obi Wan Asterix]

The whole point of the Tribunal is accountability and independent scrutiny. Which is also one of the main purposes of the Syntagma which was just ratified.

What you propose is already happening in staff; we make sure that the decisions of moderators are concordant to the ToS.

The Syntagma goes a step further in providing with means of an appeal.

If you don't like the Syntagma why don't you propose to scrap it instead of deleting it piecemeal.

My words. I would only add that before committing to any such change I want to see the functioning of the new Tribunal under the new system.

[the Black Prince]

i don't support, for garbs reasons...

the point of this is independent review of individual moderator actions in enforcing the terms of service.

[Tom Paine]

I really don't support. Independant arbitrators? Out the window. Vested interests? Oh, look, lets welcome them in. Sorry, Sim, but this is a really bad idea for the forum in terms of moderation staff accountability, which remains paramount.

[Belisarius]

I do not support on the grounds that the system proposed is mostly standard when it comes to private matters and the system that has just passed has not been tested yet.

[Virgil]

I prefer the old method to this one. Reasons why have already been stated by members far more respected than I.

[Tom Paine]

By old method, which do you mean?

[Virgil]

By old method, which do you mean?

I mean the tribunal method. The whole purpose was to have a public forum to openly discuss these matters - not further over burdening mods with pointless pm discussion. Lat the people have theri appeal. They have already privately been reprimanded - why go behind closed doors to discuss it? leave it as it was.

my thoughts anyway.

[the Black Prince]

i went for 3, because its a common number in judicial circles.

magistrates court are presided over by a Chairman and 2 other magistrates. Appeals on sentence in the Court of Appeal are heard by a Lord justice and 2 wingers, appeals on points of law are heard by 3 Lord Justices.

plus, its called a Tribunal... three is logical.

as to process, if you think a moderator has acted inappropriately, you complain about the moderator to Chief Moderator. if, however, you have an issue with a moderation decision, you don't go to the staff, you go to the tribunal to review the decision.

The reason its limited to ex-moderators (NOT ex staff) is so that the people reviewing the case have moderation experience. Given that reviewing a moderation decision effectively is retrying with a new moderator, it should be people who actually have experience of moderating.

As judges, i would expect all of them to act impartially. I find it very hard to believe that anyone in this position would find for against a member, or against a staff member on the basis that he disliked the member in question.


given that you make mention of the possibility that finding 3 members willing may prove hard, why increase the number? given that original moderating decisions are made by the single moderator, it only needs three people to review that decision. I think any more would be superfluous to requirements here.

[the Black Prince]

oh, if we do go with garbs changes can we avoid the word plaintiff?

in the UK, Lord Woolf recommended dropping that word as obsolete outmoded and outdated as far back as '95. We use Claimant and Respondent, or Claimant and Defendant these days

[Obi Wan Asterix]

Firstly I second Tac's testimony that the Tribunal has been improving its performance regularly...

"If its not broken don't fix it"

As they say....

Secondly I like Garb's approach with Tac's changes the most.

Thridly, I agree with the Black Prince's wording change proposal.

[the Black Prince]

i'd agree to opening it up to patricians, so long as at least one is a senatorii.


the other changes though, are unnecessary.

no where in the present system defined in the Constitution is there any duplicity in who you appeal to. The tribunal isn't a duplicate of staff discussion on the issue, because as far as the constitution is concerned, the "trial" is the initial moderation, by a single moderator, and the tribunal is the sole court of appeal. from a constitutional viewpoint there is no grounds nor process for appeal to senior staff, its quite simply a case of if you get moderated and don't agree, you appeal to the tribunal.

if some members want to complain or ***** at staff first, thats up to them, they are free to do so, and i'm sure the staff will entertain their complaint and investigate. but independant staff workings are not the issue here. staff could equally just as easily say, if you want to appeal, go talk to the tribunal, thats their job. any duplicity in the arrangement is not created by the constitution.


as for the numbers, i see no reason to increase beyond 3.

but ultimately, i don;t support any changes to the existing process. A fair amount of Sims complaints are based on his belief that this will not work, or will work poorly. he can produce no evidence of this, because we havn't even elected the Judges yet.

if it ain't broken, don;t fix it, and in this case, we don't even know if its broken or not. lets see how what we have works before we play around with it

[Garbarsardar]

Guys, I just proposed the changes to show to Sim what would be a reasonable approach to his concerns.

Change 1 (the plaintiff thingy) states the obvious really, so it does no harm. And yes tBP, please change plaintiff to something nicer...

Change 2 exactly as Tac said.

Change 3 was there just for demonstration purposes, a 3 member tribunal is just fine. I was a Tribunal Judge and it worked smoothly. So I will gladly scrap it.

All this ofcourse considering we want to change the Tribunal already...

[imb39]

I'd like to echo Bel's point. We haven't seen this in operation, yet.

Given the options arrayed I am not inclined to support the use of Patricians. I purposefully opted for Senatorii due to their heritage - that is the crucial aspect that Patricians lack. I do not deny that they are capable (afterall, many staffers are Civitates as opposed to Patricians) but they do lack the experience of moderating at this site.

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

I'd like to echo Bel's point. We haven't seen this in operation, yet.

Given the options arrayed I am not inclined to support the use of Patricians. I purposefully opted for Senatorii due to their heritage - that is the crucial aspect that Patricians lack. I do not deny that they are capable (afterall, many staffers are Civitates as opposed to Patricians) but they do lack the experience of moderating at this site.

On the basis we haven't seen how it will work, then it does make sense to give it a try first before we open up to Patricians.

[Simetrical]

Sim, you do present a number of legitimate concerns. However I fail to see how the bill you propose is the answer to those concerns.

It is one answer. It's just more far-reaching than other answers. It also properly addresses the existence of yet another body and process and set of technicalities, by removing it. We don't need to make everything on the site a huge ordeal. This is why people hate dealing with governments. People should not have to hate dealing with the site. People should not have to go and file some kind of formal request, or make a public announcement, or anything like that to get their case heard. They should just PM the moderator in response to the PM they received. That is what they expect to have to do, and they should have to do nothing else.

The fact of the matter is, the staff is a perfectly competent body, and any disagreements with its decisions in any particular case are going to be matters of opinion. To say that three people, one of two of whom will probably have been kicked out of staff in the first place (whatever their protestations of innocence; there's no way tBP won't run and win), have some kind of moral authority because they're "independent" from the staff is absurd. The staff are the people who run the site. We aren't fascist dictators, we aren't out to eat your babies, we aren't going to abuse your liberties or anything like that.

But if you think you're treated unfairly, you know what, you have recourse. You can ask us to reconsider. If we still disagree, well, probably getting more opinions isn't going to make the decision better. It may change it, but whether for good or for bad will be a matter of pure opinion. And the opinions of a few random elected people are not any better than those of staff. They're all opinions. The staff as a body is not going to act rashly, no one is going to be out to damage the site. Whether to suspend for a week or a month, that's not something you can really be "unfair" about, or not consistently. The oversight makes no difference, it just adds an extra layer of bureaucracy and ranks and an extra out for perennial offenders who have two chances to be acquitted rather than one.

tBP seemed pretty affronted when I suggested that members of the Tribunal might be biased. You know what? They probably won't be. It's nonsense. They'll have the decency to recuse themselves when there's a personal issue, and it'll be fine. But the same thing is true of staff. There is no bias that needs to be accounted for in staff by some "independent" Tribunal. Staff will make decisions that, if they are not appropriate, will be at least arguably appropriate. And you can't do better than that, because whatever alternative the Tribunal likes will also be arguable and no more.

So, yes, I have other objections. I object to the entire idea that TWC needs to emulate real-world government with checks and balances. What applies to real life doesn't apply here. An independent judiciary is necessary to stop people from being driven out of their homes or beaten or murdered for dissent, not to protect trolls or flamers. Power corrupts, but not when self-interest lies in fairness. Some admins are too short-sighted to realize that banning troublemakers will only exacerbate problems, but I think I can say with certainty that all current admins realize that banning detractors or acting capriciously is the worst thing with can do for ourselves or the site.

We do not need some kind of pretense of oversight that will have no grounds to oppose us except slightly differing attitude. We don't need more procedures or mechanisms or bureaucracy. We need to keep things simple and look at things reasonably, not just appeal to values like "an independent judiciary" just because we've been taught from birth that such things are necessary for a country. We need to keep in mind that above all, TWC is an Internet forum and does not need to have a legal code the size of Switzerland's. We need to get rid of the Tribunal and any other pointless and unproductive processes.