Well, the Curia has its normal bickering, its normal infighting, and its normal minor controversy, but it’s been a little more extroverted over the last fortnight than normal… but let’s leave that ‘til the end.
Consilium de Civitate
Since the last Helios, 14 promotional votes have taken place in the CdeC, resulting in a stunning 10 new Citizens and 2 new Patricians; all those whose votes succeeded deserve hearty congratulations on that score. However, the CdeC has also undertaken a heady task – 4 disciplinary cases have had to occur, resulting in some very harsh punishments for certain members of the Curia. Well, life goes on, though, no?
Closed Votes
As a whole the Curia has been quite busy too; we’ve had a
Tribune elected, with Garbarsardar pipping Tacticalwithdrawal to the post by a matter of only 5 votes (less than 10% of the voters!) on a manifesto of harshness equivalent only to that of when he was a moderator… tremble in fear oh ye appellants, for the Garb will not spare ye, not according to
his statement.
Of course, the Curia hasn’t just elected a Tribune – its also ratified 3 Tribounoi into their posts; all ratified by large margins, the men in question are
Ragabash;
Scorch; and the ever-controversial
Manji, who still managed to obtain the second widest margin of success – nice going, Manji!
And yet more people-centric votes, that’s right, Opifices have been made; in the form of the promotions of
Stuie &
dvk901; much congratulations, of course, to the pair of them.
But even this could not prevent the Curia voting on at least
some legislation – that’s right, we’ve entered a period of mass voting it seems, but this is no bad thing! Two Bills have passed into Law – self-legislation, to some extent, but with dramatic ramifications. The first is the decision, passed by a wide margin, to
set the Tribunal’s rules as per the wishes of the Curia; the extent to which the Tribunal bows to the will of the Curia is, of course, an interesting matter and even now remains to be seen. Further, there have been two Constitutional Amendments; the first, again passed by a massively wide margin, was to tighten up the rules on
Votes of No Confidence in members of the staff elected by the Curia; the implications of this have not, however, been tested, since the Curia has not seen fit to actually apply a vote of no confidence to anyone as of yet. However, there was one more closed legislative vote as yet uncovered – a failed vote to drastically tighten up the
requirements for entering the Miles (now, once more, Patrician) class, rejected by a narrow margin because it failed to meet to the required majority of two-thirds.
Current Prothalamos Debate
Now, we come to probably the most interesting section – the Curia’s legislative debate, in the Prothalamos. While I will not cover these chronologically, or even all of the debates, the first debate to look at is rather… old. Beginning in mid-April, it continued until a week ago when, as many debates do, it fizzled out, without a vote. The subject? A wider, more democratic,
more open Curia; originally proposed by Tacticalwithdrawal herein, many other iterations and proposals with the same purpose and intent have been made, some foolish, some superb, and some just plain silly. Since this is the way of things anyway, one might ask what difference it makes, of course… but then, an open Curia makes a lot of difference; talk to Professor420 for a long discussion on why!
And the next is an equally long running debate, but not in this thread – a proposal to
change the names to Medieval ones.. Well, all I can say is, so long as we get
some appropriate theme I don’t much care if it be Turkish or Mayan, so long as its not the present profusion of confusion! Ah well… c’est la vie Curielle, non?
Another old debate which has not died, and will – if the present proponent gets his way – be in the “Closed Votes” section by next Helios, is that of the
Syntagma Change Window. A mid-March proposal by Tacticalwithdrawal, it never got beyond debate to an actual vote, and people have fiddled with it ever since – a version is soon to go to the vote that bears little resemblance to the original proposal, but has some of the benefits and many of the flaws; we shall see whether the Bill is passed, let alone a facilitative feature of the Curia, or just something that squeezes its life from it.
There are two… controversial, shall we say… matters of debate in the Curia at present, as well; subject of a multiplicity of threads in each case. The less controversial one, but with rather more threads to its name, is the area of Medals; proposals from
Mimirswell for conversion of honourary ranks to medals, which have raised one or two objections but seen majority support, including by holders of the ranks that will be abolished; from
Belisarius for a variety of new medals to be created and some of the old ones to be tweaked in new and interesting ways (a thread there that ended up with everyone chipping in with a rewrite or two); and from
Ragabash, in an attempt to widen the qualifications for a specific medal. In this case, the Senatorial robe, in an effort to reward all Curial activity; it seems to have fallen a little dead in the water, at least temporarily, despite support from many members of the Curia.
That isn’t all the Medal threads though; we have five proposed Philosopher’s Robes already by Garbarsardar (proposing Longfiddlyname, sorry,
ThiudareiksGunthigg) and Belisarius (proposing, in three different threads,
Garbarsardar;
Tacticalwithdrawal;
Siblesz; and, for some unfathomable reason,
me) so expect to see some of those medals floating around in the near future; and outgoing Wiki editor Perikles proposed two
Wiki medals for makanyane and Spiff. Medals galore, the shine is blinding!
The final subject of Curial debate I want to look at here is the Tribunal, that fine old institution recently democratised and recently caught trying to overturn Hex and moderation policy on a variety of issues central to the preservation of the site. Since the democratisation was already a subject of controversy amongst the upper echelons and amongst some members of the general membership, a proposal has been put forward to
return the Tribunal to its original state; formed by, of, and with Hex. Many Curia members who have posted in the thread have posted in support; a few have posted against the measure; and some have used it as an opportunity to launch attacks on Hex as a body and on various individual members. Two compromise proposals have been put forward in the thread and rejected, and a third attempt to fix the problems (not taking any notice of the actual cause of the problems, of course) was launched in a
separate thread; we shall see what the will of the Curia says, and which way it sways.
Votes! Yay, Suffrage!
Onto those which have in fact gone to the vote, and I won’t say much about these (that could be called campaigning!) but the first takes the form of a personal proposal by me to amend the Constitution to avoid the Speaker (me, at present) needing administrative rights – codifying the Hex-set status quo, in fact, into law.
Read the debate here, and
go and vote here.
And another one, by tBP, proposing change to the Citizen’s Behaviour sections of the Constitution (no, I can’t quote Article and Section) to bring it in line with CdeC practices, rather than have the CdeC change her practices to those delineated for her; vote on that one
here, after reading the debate
here.
Finally for the votes – yep, there are only a few concurrent ones presently – a proposal by Leonidas the Lion, which was debated
here, that in the user profile we be allowed to see all the ranks of members; a sound proposal, and presumably technically possible (at least, no one to date has said it is not); and up for the vote
here.
Curial Miscellany
Medals again arise in the Curia main… a thread for the discussion of the implementation and medal design has arisen, and Manji has appointed himself Medalmaker-In-Chief
here so go and praise him; and members qualifying automatically for some medals have been asked to remind people that they do
here.
Names are also a problem… still, yes. We retain a thread on new names in the Curia main to augment those lying dormant there and in the Prothalamos,
here, and even the badges are a subject of distaste and dislike it seems from
these threads.
Now we come to what is a, thankfully, closed, but only recently, debacle; that helped force Soren into resignation, and has caused mass chaos in the Curia. This is the Soren-Prof affair, and I am
not willing to go into any more details than just naming it, so don’t ask for them
but if you want more… well,
here’s the thread at the heart of it all.
I next give you one of the most long running debates of all; started in the wake of the reversal of the reforms to the Curia preceding these ones; gaining gathering momentum but little additional strength; and annoying a lot of people, the
debate on the future of the Patrician rank. Given force by ex-elitists such as Setanta and Setarcos Aneist, the rank is the centre once more of various controversies in the wake of the introduction of medals, due to their overlap; join the debate, post your own view, and see how long it takes for me to disagree!
Finally, for this section, some pretty much breaking news; the
Second Speaker's Report to the Curia has been published, on the activities in Hex over the last fortnight; go read it, and yes, an opportunity for questions is given.
Involve Yourself!
Later in this Helios there is a plug for the TWC Wiki. But what good, one might well ask, is a Wiki without an Editor-in-Chief to oversee the wiki and ensure it remains at a high standard? The sad
resignation of Perikles as Wiki Officer leaves the position open, and we are therefore awaiting applicants to hold a Curial election... only citizens may apply to hold this role but I urge all citizens with any interest to so do!
Apply here.
We're also opening a Curial Committee. TWC needs to continue to expand even if the TW franchise ends; therefore, the Hex Council has decided to look into methods of diversification into other games franchises; what franchises and how we can go about it. If you think you have some nice ideas on the matter, apply
here or (if you are a citizen) you may also apply
here!
Now, having read that monster of a report… have a good fortnight until the next, and good politicking!
Helios the Eleventh
Originally Posted by Shaun
.
