Secretariat's Council (MEMBERS ANNOUNCED)

[Araraukar]

That's more than 24 hours.

You'll notice that IA is lamenting about the GenSec-initiated review of National Control of Elections.

For which I made you a legality challenge thread to argue in, rather than the poor proposal's drafting thread.

Personally I think it's better if the Council does look at things on its own too, but maybe you guys need to do that in a different manner; just post a "this council (or whatever you're calling yourselves now) is concerned of this proposal breaking this and that rule, could the author please provide a counter-argument?" And then refrain from the bickering match that follows, no matter how much each of you wants to defend the self-made challenge or takes offence at something Gruen says, etc.

[Sciongrad]

I'll remind everyone that the moderators also had the power to review proposals without a challenge. This is not a change in policy. I understand this whole GenSec thing is new and it feels scary but bear with us please. We're also players and want this game to run smoothly.

[Araraukar]

I understand this whole GenSec thing is new and it feels scary but bear with us please.

Then I suggest you make sure SP doesn't refer to your own forum as the Sekrit Lair anymore. Also, Bear is with you.

I don't get where the huge paranoia comes from...

EDIT: I find "Sekrit Lair" as funny as all the "omg! they must be evil cause we can't see what they talk about on their forum!" paranoia. As if these guys whom we've known for years, had all suddenly transformed into supervillains or something. (And guys, if you have, you totally need to think up new names for yourselves. Try to use alliteration if you can. )

Lotsa edits because brain needs sleepytimes now.

[Separatist Peoples]

I understand this whole GenSec thing is new and it feels scary but bear with us please.

Then I suggest you make sure SP doesn't refer to your own forum as the Sekrit Lair anymore. Also, Bear is with you.

I don't get where the huge paranoia comes from...

Sekrit Lair is a damn joke.

But if you would prefer the sense of humor be excised, I am well practiced in being a dour prick. I thought we'd all appreciate some levity. I see I was wrong.

[Araraukar]

Sekrit Lair is a damn joke.

I'm sorry, my amusement didn't carry over well in that post. I was jokingly referring to your earlier joke, not angrily demanding that you never ever joke again.

Edited the previous post to hopefully convey my meaning better.

[Separatist Peoples]

Sekrit Lair is a damn joke.

I'm sorry, my amusement didn't carry over well in that post. I was jokingly referring to your earlier joke, not angrily demanding that you never ever joke again.

Edited the previous post to hopefully convey my meaning better.

Nope. Too late. I am Grumpy.

If anybody need me, I'll be in the Angry Dome.

[Sierra Lyricalia]

So it seems to me that what we have created is a Star Chamber-like council which initiates its own prosecutions without any kind of oversight, does so out of sight of everyone else, and uses their own positions to push their own agendas. If this isn't the case, nothing has been done to fight the perception that this is the case.

The issue with the proposal National Control of Elections makes it again clear why transparency is needed. There is utterly no accountability right now because we don't know who is taking what actions. Lacking such accountability means that it is impossible to do the checks and balances which members of the Council have told us to exercise: remove the people we believe are abusing their power. It is like the FISA court, you can subpoena the information you need, you just can't know what information you could possibly need.

If we are going to have these self-initiated prosecutions, it would be at least be more reasonable to only allow the Council to do self-started prosecutions if the member of the Council who proposes that prosecution is forced to recuse. Not doing so would be unreasonable: a judge is not allowed to make a decision if he believe the defendant is already guilty or liable, a juror is removed from the bench if he cannot make a fair decision.

If nothing can be done to alleviate these issues, there is no reason to play this part of the game.

The problem is we'd barely decided on how to handle regular, ordinary legal challenges from fellow players before - oops, here's this proposal in the queue that might be illegal, gosh that's our job to do make sure illegal resolutions don't pass, better act fast so it doesn't get Discarded, which would be the single biggest possible insult we could give to the particular player in question - shit, let's post notice now so he's got time to try to come up with a defense - hmm, that could have gone better.

The fact that we're still getting our shit together is behind the arbitrary-seeming behavior you've seen from us. Frankly we're doing this kind of on the fly - we're new at this, you may have heard - and once we've been able to establish procedures and methods for working with proposals under review, and their authors, it'll hopefully be as fair to you guys as the ideal we're striving to make it.

I promise you absolutely that we will fuck up, sometimes spectacularly.

I also promise that we will do our damnedest to make each particular kind of fuckup only once.

I know it's annoying hearing "bear with us" over and over, but we're still in that fledgling stage. We will grow out of it; we just haven't been able to build the necessary ladders yet. But they're coming.

[Araraukar]

I promise you absolutely that we will fuck up, sometimes spectacularly.

Think of the forum as a group of paparazzis that are just waiting for you to trip up on the catwalk... so when you do, make the best of it, knowing that most people will be able to understand that you're just human. (And a bear.)

I know it's annoying hearing "bear with us" over and over, but we're still in that fledgling stage.

In terms of human lifetimes, the council's barely been born before being slapped by a midwife to see if it'll start crying or not. Once the umbilical cord's been snapped (you managing a in-queue emergency without stumbling too badly), we'll see if you'll live. (Figuratively. None of you's allowed to die, ya hear?!)

[Bananaistan]

So it seems to me that what we have created is a Star Chamber-like council which initiates its own prosecutions without any kind of oversight, does so out of sight of everyone else, and uses their own positions to push their own agendas. If this isn't the case, nothing has been done to fight the perception that this is the case.

The issue with the proposal National Control of Elections makes it again clear why transparency is needed. There is utterly no accountability right now because we don't know who is taking what actions. Lacking such accountability means that it is impossible to do the checks and balances which members of the Council have told us to exercise: remove the people we believe are abusing their power. It is like the FISA court, you can subpoena the information you need, you just can't know what information you could possibly need.

If we are going to have these self-initiated prosecutions, it would be at least be more reasonable to only allow the Council to do self-started prosecutions if the member of the Council who proposes that prosecution is forced to recuse. Not doing so would be unreasonable: a judge is not allowed to make a decision if he believe the defendant is already guilty or liable, a juror is removed from the bench if he cannot make a fair decision.

If nothing can be done to alleviate these issues, there is no reason to play this part of the game.

The problem is we'd barely decided on how to handle regular, ordinary legal challenges from fellow players before - oops, here's this proposal in the queue that might be illegal, gosh that's our job to do make sure illegal resolutions don't pass, better act fast so it doesn't get Discarded, which would be the single biggest possible insult we could give to the particular player in question - shit, let's post notice now so he's got time to try to come up with a defense - hmm, that could have gone better.

The fact that we're still getting our shit together is behind the arbitrary-seeming behavior you've seen from us. Frankly we're doing this kind of on the fly - we're new at this, you may have heard - and once we've been able to establish procedures and methods for working with proposals under review, and their authors, it'll hopefully be as fair to you guys as the ideal we're striving to make it.

I promise you absolutely that we will fuck up, sometimes spectacularly.

I also promise that we will do our damnedest to make each particular kind of fuckup only once.

I know it's annoying hearing "bear with us" over and over, but we're still in that fledgling stage. We will grow out of it; we just haven't been able to build the necessary ladders yet. But they're coming.

The procedures need to be sorted. Not necessarily right now but in the near future. Arbitrariness is the enemy.

1) In this particular case, there are at least 2 councillors who have already decided that the proposal is illegal. As IA says, "a judge is not allowed to make a decision if he believes the defendant is already guilty or liable, a juror is removed from the bench if he cannot make a fair decision." This is clearly an issue going forward if justice is to be seen to be done. A decision needs to made about just when a council member needs to recuse themselves and what further part they can take in the council deliberations after recusing themselves. Perhaps a published code of conduct is the way to go.

2) The perception could be, given the lack of transparency and accountability, that a council member may withhold their opinions during drafting so that they can initiate their own challenge behind closed doors in the sekrit lair perhaps because they want to engage in some "judicial activism" and create precedent in relation to a particular point or that they want to settle a score. Therefore, I think that the transparency issue around the deliberations of the council has not been adequately addressed so far.

3) You need to sort out how and when you notify players of your self-initiated prosecutions.

4) Expecting players to start legality challenges against their own proposals is utterly unreasonable.

5) Refusing to discuss legality issues in the drafting thread is utterly unreasonable.

6) Given that the council is still in its advisory stage, and doesn't quite know what it's doing yet, should I bypass the whole thing and request a moderator ruling under the old practice?

[Imperium Anglorum]

Between the total arbitrariness which Banana talks about above and what I see as a worrying trend for this Council to find ways to sign itself more power and reduce the manner in which any accountability could be exercised, I ought be worried. Between that and the fact that any concerns have been met with dismissal and 'We aren't a court! But real courts do this!' judiciously applied against any checks on power, why ought anyone play this part of the game?

Months ago, I said that:

If we go with recusing — then two options occur: (1) people don't want to have to recuse themselves and (2) people don't recuse themselves. The former is easily manifested (and, I would argue, is manifested in moderators now) in "I don't want to be accused of being biased. Thus, I won't say anything". The second is also easily manifested in "I don't believe I am biased because I believe I am right". Both (possibly together) would make recusing things impossible.

Exactly what is happening here is the latter. And what Banana noted is that people will stay quiet so they can open up challenges behind closed doors. If I wanted to abuse my power, I would be doing things just as arbitrary as the things which the current Councillors are doing right now. And while I trust Sierra Lyricalia marginally more, he has not provided any evidence for his claims, which cannot be happen anyway, because the private forum is closed.

[Bears Armed]

I'm sure that already typed up a reply to this thread, earlier, but it seems to have vanished... so...

Also, Bear is with you.

ninja'd...

The problem is we'd barely decided on how to handle regular, ordinary legal challenges from fellow players before - oops, here's this proposal in the queue that might be illegal, gosh that's our job to do make sure illegal resolutions don't pass, better act fast so it doesn't get Discarded, which would be the single biggest possible insult we could give to the particular player in question - shit, let's post notice now so he's got time to try to come up with a defense - hmm, that could have gone better.

The fact that we're still getting our shit together is behind the arbitrary-seeming behavior you've seen from us. Frankly we're doing this kind of on the fly - we're new at this, you may have heard - and once we've been able to establish procedures and methods for working with proposals under review, and their authors, it'll hopefully be as fair to you guys as the ideal we're striving to make it.

I promise you absolutely that we will fuck up, sometimes spectacularly.

I also promise that we will do our damnedest to make each particular kind of fuckup only once.

I know it's annoying hearing "bear with us" over and over, but we're still in that fledgling stage. We will grow out of it; we just haven't been able to build the necessary ladders yet. But they're coming.

The procedures need to be sorted. Not necessarily right now but in the near future. Arbitrariness is the enemy.

Agreed, and we are working on it.

2) The perception could be, given the lack of transparency and accountability, that a council member may withhold their opinions during drafting so that they can initiate their own challenge behind closed doors in the sekrit lair perhaps because they want to engage in some "judicial activism" and create precedent in relation to a particular point or that they want to settle a score. Therefore, I think that the transparency issue around the deliberations of the council has not been adequately addressed so far.

As should already have been announced (and was?), the council's discussion threads will be made fully public within a few weeks of the relevant rulings... and the possible introduction of greater transparency than that is still potentially possible.

3) You need to sort out how and when you notify players of your self-initiated prosecutions.

Agreed, except for your use of the term "prosecutions" which I regard as too strong for this context.

4) Expecting players to start legality challenges against their own proposals is utterly unreasonable.

I am basically in agreement with this, as far as it concerns actual challenges, but players making requests pre-submission for rulings about the legality of specific points in their proposals -- explaining why they think challenges might occur, and giving their arguments about why those challenges would be incorrect -- has certainly been allowed in the past and I think should still be allowed... and I think is, if the player can see the possibility of a challenge, a good idea.
(Asking for rulings on the legality of points in drafted "proposals" that one obviously doesn't intend to submit, might be another matter: Personally I'd prefer anybody who has that sort of question to just start an OOC thread about the rule in question, instead, but this is a matter about which the council hasn't yet come to a conclusion.)

5) Refusing to discuss legality issues in the drafting thread is utterly unreasonable.

Even if they're discussed in the drafting threads, having the basic arguments for each side of the case and then the final ruling in a separate & more concise thread instead will make it significantly easier to collate a coherent body of precedents for future reference -- for use by would-be authors, as well as by the committee -- than leaving it so that somebody has to go through the entire drafting thread to copy all of the relevant posts (and bits of posts) into that collection would.

6) Given that the council is still in its advisory stage, and doesn't quite know what it's doing yet, should I bypass the whole thing and request a moderator ruling under the old practice?

No.
For one thing, we'll probably get our procedures sorted out more quickly if we have actual cases (rather than just hypothetical situations) with which to work; and for another thing, now that the council has been established, I'm fairly sure that any such requests to the Mods would simply get forwarded to the council anyway.

[Bananaistan]

The procedures need to be sorted. Not necessarily right now but in the near future. Arbitrariness is the enemy.

Agreed, and we are working on it.

That's fair enough and I can fully accept that it is still a work in progress. Though it is a bit off putting to be the test case used to sort some of these issues.

2) The perception could be, given the lack of transparency and accountability, that a council member may withhold their opinions during drafting so that they can initiate their own challenge behind closed doors in the sekrit lair perhaps because they want to engage in some "judicial activism" and create precedent in relation to a particular point or that they want to settle a score. Therefore, I think that the transparency issue around the deliberations of the council has not been adequately addressed so far.

As should already have been announced (and was?), the council's discussion threads will be made fully public within a few weeks of the relevant rulings... and the possible introduction of greater transparency than that is still potentially possible.

I hadn't seen this so my apologies. I did see SP referring to it this morning and replied there. I honestly think that this will take the sting out of almost all this.

3) You need to sort out how and when you notify players of your self-initiated prosecutions.

Agreed, except for your use of the term "prosecutions" which I regard as too strong for this context.

Fair enough also. Referencing the published guidelines, perhaps we could use "self-initiated review" or some such combination based on the word review rather than prosecution?

4) Expecting players to start legality challenges against their own proposals is utterly unreasonable.

I am basically in agreement with this, as far as it concerns actual challenges, but players making requests pre-submission for rulings about the legality of specific points in their proposals -- explaining why they think challenges might occur, and giving their arguments about why those challenges would be incorrect -- has certainly been allowed in the past and I think should still be allowed... and I think is, if the player can see the possibility of a challenge, a good idea.
(Asking for rulings on the legality of points in drafted "proposals" that one obviously doesn't intend to submit, might be another matter: Personally I'd prefer anybody who has that sort of question to just start an OOC thread about the rule in question, instead, but this is a matter about which the council hasn't yet come to a conclusion.)

I would also agree with your further point here. Had I not removed the section with the potential duplication of WAR#2 in National Control of Elections, I would have had no problem with starting a legality challenge thread to seek a ruling in that respect.

5) Refusing to discuss legality issues in the drafting thread is utterly unreasonable.

Even if they're discussed in the drafting threads, having the basic arguments for each side of the case and then the final ruling in a separate & more concise thread instead will make it significantly easier to collate a coherent body of precedents for future reference -- for use by would-be authors, as well as by the committee -- than leaving it so that somebody has to go through the entire drafting thread to copy all of the relevant posts (and bits of posts) into that collection would.

This is fair enough in general so long as the defending author is not expected to start the thread themselves where they have no query. Of course it's not unreasonable that this still needs to be ironed out as part of how the precise nature of "self initiated reviews" will be dealt with.

6) Given that the council is still in its advisory stage, and doesn't quite know what it's doing yet, should I bypass the whole thing and request a moderator ruling under the old practice?

No.
For one thing, we'll probably get our procedures sorted out more quickly if we have actual cases (rather than just hypothetical situations) with which to work; and for another thing, now that the council has been established, I'm fairly sure that any such requests to the Mods would simply get forwarded to the council anyway.

Fair enough but as I said above, it's not nice being the test case!

[Christian Democrats]

So it seems to me that what we have created is a Star Chamber-like council which initiates its own prosecutions without any kind of oversight, does so out of sight of everyone else, and uses their own positions to push their own agendas. If this isn't the case, nothing has been done to fight the perception that this is the case.

The issue with the proposal National Control of Elections makes it again clear why transparency is needed. There is utterly no accountability right now because we don't know who is taking what actions. Lacking such accountability means that it is impossible to do the checks and balances which members of the Council have told us to exercise: remove the people we believe are abusing their power. It is like the FISA court, you can subpoena the information you need, you just can't know what information you could possibly need.

If we are going to have these self-initiated prosecutions, it would be at least be more reasonable to only allow the Council to do self-started prosecutions if the member of the Council who proposes that prosecution is forced to recuse. Not doing so would be unreasonable: a judge is not allowed to make a decision if he believe the defendant is already guilty or liable, a juror is removed from the bench if he cannot make a fair decision.

If nothing can be done to alleviate these issues, there is no reason to play this part of the game.

The problem is we'd barely decided on how to handle regular, ordinary legal challenges from fellow players before - oops, here's this proposal in the queue that might be illegal, gosh that's our job to do make sure illegal resolutions don't pass, better act fast so it doesn't get Discarded, which would be the single biggest possible insult we could give to the particular player in question - shit, let's post notice now so he's got time to try to come up with a defense - hmm, that could have gone better.

The fact that we're still getting our shit together is behind the arbitrary-seeming behavior you've seen from us. Frankly we're doing this kind of on the fly - we're new at this, you may have heard - and once we've been able to establish procedures and methods for working with proposals under review, and their authors, it'll hopefully be as fair to you guys as the ideal we're striving to make it.

I promise you absolutely that we will fuck up, sometimes spectacularly.

I also promise that we will do our damnedest to make each particular kind of fuckup only once.

I know it's annoying hearing "bear with us" over and over, but we're still in that fledgling stage. We will grow out of it; we just haven't been able to build the necessary ladders yet. But they're coming.

I think this portrayal of our conduct is accurate, especially the first paragraph.

As far as recusal is concerned, we have to walk a line. We can't be so involved in proposals that we look like we're engaging in "activism" later. At the same time, we can't be so detached from GA affairs that we look like ivory tower mini-mods.

[Araraukar]

Between the total arbitrariness which Banana talks about above and what I see as a worrying trend for this Council to find ways to sign itself more power and reduce the manner in which any accountability could be exercised, I ought be worried. Between that and the fact that any concerns have been met with dismissal and 'We aren't a court! But real courts do this!' judiciously applied against any checks on power, why ought anyone play this part of the game?

IA, if it was you, if you were one of the councilors, would "finding ways to sign yourself more power and reducing the manner in which any accountability could be exercised" be what you would be doing?

[Excidium Planetis]

IA, if it was you, if you were one of the councilors, would "finding ways to sign yourself more power and reducing the manner in which any accountability could be exercised" be what you would be doing?

Probably. Power corrupts.

That doesn't make it not worrying for the people who are not part of the ruling class.

---

Pulled from the Legality Challenge thread on National Control of Elections:

@EP: Yes, you guys are. When Gruen thought I was the first, he demanded I recuse myself.

Gruen didn't call for specifically the first person to be recused.

The fact is that the first GenSecer to notice is going to be the first to bring it up.

Likely, but not inherently true.

Your own scenario is even more absurd, EP. If I notice it, but then get Bears to be the one to post publicly that it's being challenged, how on earth does it make sense in this logic that Bears must recuse for prejudice but I don't have to?

Because Bears is the one accusing a player of breaking the rules. Bears cannot then also serve as judge. It isn't about prejudice, it is about holding the power to challenge players and then rule on your own challenge.

GenSec is doing its job.

"Doing your job" does not mean "doing everything right".

[Sciongrad]

IA, if it was you, if you were one of the councilors, would "finding ways to sign yourself more power and reducing the manner in which any accountability could be exercised" be what you would be doing?

Probably. Power corrupts.

That doesn't make it not worrying for the people who are not part of the ruling class.

Please do not refer to us as the "ruling class." We're players and we have an interest in improving the game for all of us. You're actually creating a very dangerous mentality by using charged rhetoric like that.

[Excidium Planetis]

Please do not refer to us as the "ruling class." We're players and we have an interest in improving the game for all of us. You're actually creating a very dangerous mentality by using charged rhetoric like that.

Last time I checked, you did not yet have the power to tell players what they can and cannot call your group.

I don't doubt that you are players, or that you have an interest in improving the game for all of us, however, that doesn't matter. The mentality of a WA "ruling class" existed long before GenSec. It was called the WA Elite just a short time ago, and before that I think the UN Old Guard filled a similar role. The idea of a small group of veteran players who wield power is nothing that sprung into existence by my post.

You are a class of players who are quite literally ruling. We should see one of those rulings shortly, I presume.

[Wallenburg]

Please do not refer to us as the "ruling class." We're players and we have an interest in improving the game for all of us. You're actually creating a very dangerous mentality by using charged rhetoric like that.

Last time I checked, you did not yet have the power to tell players what they can and cannot call your group.

Scion asked nicely as a player and as a friend for us to not pretend that he and other members of GenSec are oligarchs. Please, don't paint that as an attempt to impose upon free expression.

I don't doubt that you are players, or that you have an interest in improving the game for all of us, however, that doesn't matter. The mentality of a WA "ruling class" existed long before GenSec. It was called the WA Elite just a short time ago, and before that I think the UN Old Guard filled a similar role. The idea of a small group of veteran players who wield power is nothing that sprung into existence by my post.

If you are really going to insist that Bitely's theory of a WA Elite is valid, then how are we not all the "ruling class"? How have we suddenly been expelled from it, with only GenSec members remaining?

[Phydios]

Please do not refer to us as the "ruling class." We're players and we have an interest in improving the game for all of us. You're actually creating a very dangerous mentality by using charged rhetoric like that.

Last time I checked, you did not yet have the power to tell players what they can and cannot call your group.

Sciongrad was using something called a "polite request", something that everyone has the power to give. They were not invoking their GenSec power to command you to cease and desist.

[Araraukar]

It was called the WA Elite just a short time ago

And that's now basically considered troll-naming. Not the best possible example to draw from.

[Separatist Peoples]

Last time I checked, you did not yet have the power to tell players what they can and cannot call your group.

Quit being incendiary.

You are a class of players who are quite literally ruling. We should see one of those rulings shortly, I presume.

Ruling in the sense of judging, perhaps. Not ruling in the sense of administrating and controlling the forum. Can we not with this? Please?

[Imperium Anglorum]

Between the total arbitrariness which Banana talks about above and what I see as a worrying trend for this Council to find ways to sign itself more power and reduce the manner in which any accountability could be exercised, I ought be worried. Between that and the fact that any concerns have been met with dismissal and 'We aren't a court! But real courts do this!' judiciously applied against any checks on power, why ought anyone play this part of the game?

IA, if it was you, if you were one of the councilors, would "finding ways to sign yourself more power and reducing the manner in which any accountability could be exercised" be what you would be doing?

No. Before, I stood against the formation of a council, here. I have said for months that a fair system would be hard to sort out. I have consistently claimed that selection would probably lead to certain parts of the community being disadvantaged. Two months ago, I said that transparency is the extremely important and must be prioritised in this exact thread. I said that discussions ought be public as well. Everything I have argued for in the last two weeks are the same things which I pushed for before the Council was formed, before nominations were opened up, and before Councillors were selected.

---

Nothing which has been said so far, in my mind, builds any trust. Between the mad stonewalling and claims of 'trust us' which have simply not been marked with anything that actually could increase trust, I don't trust the Council right now. I do, however, applaud Sierra Lyricalia's post. I helps to fill in the motivations, challenges, and problems which the Councillors have faced so far. I dearly wish for those justifications to be true.

But I do not see any evidence that they are true. What I do see is behaviour that is indistinguishable from a power-grab: claiming a power which I have never seen actively exercised by the Moderators, refusing to release unedited discussion records under any circumstances, attempting wilful ignorance as a defence against pressure for recusal, and accusing dissenters to be enemies of the project writ large.

[Bananaistan]

Seeing as how we have decided to move the discussion out of the legality challenge thread, I will now post the following here. I note that GR subsequently replied to EP but not to this.

---

I've also been yammering on about not knowing how many of you had already made your decision and nobody has replied. Can you not see the point I'm making? Perhaps you could answer this prior to calling people absurd:

GenSec 1: Sees a proposal in the submission list, notices a possible rules violation
GenSec 1: "Hey guys, we should review this. This clause might violate this rule."
GenSec 2 (5 minutes later): "After reading, I agree. It does violate that rule."
GenSec 3: "I see the point and I agree."
GenSec 4: "Sorry, I don't ageee."
GenSec 5: "I'm with 4 on this, I don't agree."
GenSec 6: "I actually agree it's illegal."

Can anybody explain why GenSec 1 needs to recuse? What conflict of interest is there, compared to GenSec 2? Why is being the first to notice so bad? What happens if GenSec 2 notices first? All else being equal, suddenly GenSec 1 is free of any conflicts? Does that mean this is all based on animosity towards GenSec, versus a rational and logical theory of conflicts of interests?

What kind of incentives does this create? Why should GenSec members *ever* pay attention to the queue, if they're going to be forced to recuse themselves if they're the first to say something? Is this a perverse incentive that will harm the community, but you're demanding it because it *sounds* right?

Perhaps the following hypothetical conversation would work better:
GenSec 1: "Hey guys, we should review this. This clause might violate this rule. I'll start a legality challenge thread so that everyone can discuss this and we can hold off on making a prejudiced decision before we've seen the arguments and discussed it with the author, other players and amongst ourselves."

And, you know, making up your mind before hearing the arguments is almost the textbook definition of prejudice. In your hypothetical council conversation, why can't there be a "let's have a discussion on this before we make up our minds" and instead of "5 minutes later" have "a few days later and after considered discussion and deliberation"?

Edit: And the first person to notice a possible legality challenge is not necessarily prejudiced. However, anyone who doesn't allow full due process to take its course, who doesn't allow a full consideration of all relevant factors and the opinions of interested parties and their fellow council members and makes their decision before commencing deliberations, is prejudiced. In this particular case we are told at the outset of this thread that at least two councillors believe that this proposal is illegal. There is a world of difference between "I believe this proposal is illegal" and "I believe that this proposal might be illegal but I want to discuss it and hear what everyone has to say before I make my decision". That's what I am yammering on about here. At least two council members made up their minds before listening to what I and others had to say. And that's why I am saying that I have not got a fair hearing.

[Separatist Peoples]

I'm sure we all had our gut reactions, but we also are all open to new information. We all have an interpretation as to where this falls as a matter of law, and are definitely considering the points you've brought up. That's a far cry from having already decided.

I'm not comfortable sharing opinions that are still being formed, and I'm doubly uncomfortable discussing any potential vote results until they're finalized. I don't want to commit anybody. So...sorry, but you gotta wait a bit.

[Excidium Planetis]

Scion asked nicely as a player and as a friend for us to not pretend that he and other members of GenSec are oligarchs. Please, don't paint that as an attempt to impose upon free expression.

I didn't. I merely stated that even if it was, Sciongrad and GenSec don't have the power to impose upon free expression.

If you are really going to insist that Bitely's theory of a WA Elite is valid, then how are we not all the "ruling class"?

I can't say I have always held this position, but for a long time I have insisted that Bitely's theory of a WA Elite is valid, and that Bitely himself is part of it, possibly. The WA Elite consists of resolution authors, respected members of the community, or just plain people who really care about the WA.

How have we suddenly been expelled from it, with only GenSec members remaining?

Oh, we're still part of the WA Elite, but the WA Elite is no longer the Ruling Class.

Sciongrad was using something called a "polite request", something that everyone has the power to give. They were not invoking their GenSec power to command you to cease and desist.

Good.

And that's now basically considered troll-naming. Not the best possible example to draw from.

I don't think the WA Elite is troll-naming. I'm part of the WA Elite, and proud. Am I a troll? Maybe, probably not. The two aren't really related.

Last time I checked, you did not yet have the power to tell players what they can and cannot call your group.

Quit being incendiary.

I'm confused, is that a polite request, or an authoritative command?
(Also: "You can't tell players what they can't say."
"Stop saying that!")