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Obligation to Revisit the Quorum

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Accept the results of the existing quorum method until the end of this calendar year, and only revisit the issue if the quorum percentage is not rising by then (see first post).
Poll ended at Sat 20 Aug , 2005 6:15 pm
Agreed
  
100% [ 7 ]
No, let's discuss it again now
  
0% [ 0 ]
Total votes: 7
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Jnyusa
Post subject: Obligation to Revisit the Quorum
Posted: Wed 10 Aug , 2005 6:15 pm
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Our newly ratified Article 12, ¶2 states that a Charter Amendment Committee must be formed if the quorum calculated from a moving average falls below 20%.

Our quorum percentage based on the last seven ratification votes is 17.47%.

Our committee is still, technically, in session, so I think that we should acknowledge this issue and state for the record that a review of the quorum is being postponed until a later time.

Rather than leave the issue completely open-ended, I would suggest formally that we not convene a Charter Amendment Committee to review this issue until two further conditions are fulfilled:
(1) Our first Mayor has been elected and inaugurated (September 22) and can serve on the committee as required.
(2) Additional Binding Votes or Ratification Votes have been held so that we can see whether the quorum percentage rises after the wave of new registries that accompanied our opening has passed. All those people appear as active during the past 60 days because they keyed in their registration during the past 60 days, but if they do not continue to visit then the 60-day active number will fall again and the quorum percentage will rise. It will be approximately mid-September before the numbers are able to fall as a result of that particular group of registrants deciding whether to remain active or not.

Thus, my proposal in the Poll above that we make a formal committee decision to:

Accept the results of the existing quorum method until the end of this calendar year, and only revisit the issue if the quorum percentage is not rising by then.

How quickly the quorum perentage moves depends of course on how many votes are actually held. But we are expecting at least three votes between now and then (revote on thread dreadful, a ToE Amendment, and the Mayoral election), and there will probably be some other charter issues taken up in November as a result of Voronwe’s thread in the Business Room where future issues are being collected.

**** Two Comments for Posterity:

During committee discussion and member discussion of the quorum, two issues emerged that were borderline controversial and their resolution has to do with the way one views the quorum mathematically.

Those issues were left somewhat dangling, and I would like to post here the mathematical explanation because ... because I would like to avoid a re-discussion of those issue both now and for the sake of the Amendment Committee that might reconsider the quorum in the future.

1. Faramond’s objection to extending a vote for seven days if a quorum is not reached was based on his analysis that someone might defeat a measure by voting for it during those seven days, simply by being the voter who fulfills the quorum.

While ‘strategic voting’ may be a concern from a civics point of view, it is wholly independent of the length of time for which a vote remains open. All voters, both for and against, contribute to the fulfillment of the quorum so a voter casting a ‘yes’ vote can end up defeating a measure whether they are voting on the 10th day or on the 17th. Similarly, a voter casting a ‘no’ vote can cause the measure to pass.

A person who wishes to vote yes can never benefit by withholding their vote since a measure will be defeated if (a) the quorum is not reached, or (b) the quorum is reached and the ‘no’ votes prevail.

The only people who can benefit by withholding their vote are those who would vote ‘no.’ The extension of the voting period makes it less likely, not more likely, that this particular strategy - not voting at all - will succeed and actually encourages those who oppose the measure to vote transparently.

2. Idylle questioned whether the use of ‘visits’ instead of ‘posts’ in compiling the 60-day active list affects the quorum. It does not.

When we calculate the percentage who voted during each of the last seven votes, the 60-day active number is in the denominator. When that number is large (visits > posts), it causes the percentage to be smaller. The percentage is then multiplied by the 60-day active list at the time of the current vote. The 60-day active number is now in the numerator, so that the smaller percentage is being multiplied by, again, the larger of two possible numbers (visits > posts).

Because this same measure appears in both the denominator and the numerator, differences of absolute magnitude between this measure and any other measure are cancelled out.

We do not get the same quorum number using visits as we would get using posts, because visits and posts are not perfectly correlated to one another, but there is no systematic difference of magnitude between the two results.

I did run a computer simulation using fictional, uncorrelated data for ‘visits’ versus ‘posts’, and confirmed that the quorum number derived from these two measures varied by only one vote.

*** End of Comments

This Poll will remain open for seven days or until a simple majority of eight people has decided the issue one way or another. I no longer remember exactly who's on this committee and don't know if they continue to watch the Jury Room.

edited for spelling: my spellchecker did not catch 'immerged' - is that weird or what?

Last edited by Jnyusa on Wed 10 Aug , 2005 8:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Wed 10 Aug , 2005 7:07 pm
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Voted.

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Posted: Wed 10 Aug , 2005 8:10 pm
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Is my vote required?

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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Wed 10 Aug , 2005 8:29 pm
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You're on the committee—you can vote. Jn's post is complicated, but the vote is just whether to defer the issue until after the first of the year.

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Posted: Wed 10 Aug , 2005 8:36 pm
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I'm a little worried about this. Sure, it seems like the logical thing to do and we're all tired of the work that had to be done to get us here, but can we now ignore the very rules we put into place over the last 4-5 months?

I'm the last person who wants to rock the boat and I feel a little like Frodo. "I wish Jnyusa had not spotted this in my time". The fact is that she did and we're aware of it. We should do the right thing and deal with it. Putting it off till later feels like cheating.

:(

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Wed 10 Aug , 2005 8:46 pm
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Alatar,

The article doesn't require us to 'do' something, it just requires us to take a look at the the issue and decide whether something needs to be done. That's why I felt obligated to start this thread.

I'm suggesting that what we 'do' about the issue is wait until the wave of new registrants with zero post count has passed beyond the 60-day point, because I believe they're distorting our participation percentages. Since they are associated with the opening of the board, and new registrations have slowed down considerably in the past three weeks, I'm guessing that the very high 60-day active number associated with the past 7 ratification votes (200+) is an anomaly. If I'm right, then there's no substantive problem and we would be wasting our time trying to solve it.

Jn

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IdylleSeethes
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Posted: Thu 11 Aug , 2005 12:19 am
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Voted,

I would like to note that I think the numbers you are being given are wrong. At the time of our discussion, you were being told all of the members who had ever posted were still active. I checked the obvious ones on the first page and several had not posted since last year and several others since March. It is very unlikely that they are all lurking. I say that being a professional lurker. :D

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Thu 11 Aug , 2005 4:24 am
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you were being told all of the members who had ever posted were still active

Actually, what happened was that for that particular count, the number of posters who had visited in the past 60 days was equal to the number of members who had ever posted. But this equality was a coincidence. When we looked at the actual posters who comprised those two lists, they were not the same people.

Jn

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Eruname
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Posted: Thu 11 Aug , 2005 5:22 am
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IdylleSeethes wrote:
I would like to note that I think the numbers you are being given are wrong. At the time of our discussion, you were being told all of the members who had ever posted were still active. I checked the obvious ones on the first page and several had not posted since last year and several others since March. It is very unlikely that they are all lurking. I say that being a professional lurker. :D
Sorry Idylle but you're wrong. I did the numbers myself. There really are that many people lurking in the past 60 days.

I can't help but find it insulting that you keep on insisting that these numbers are wrong. You haven't seen the admin panel and the list of EXACT DATES as to when the person was last active. You also can't see all the people who stay hidden when lurking. The Rangers are the ones who are in possession of the facts.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Thu 11 Aug , 2005 5:42 am
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Everyone who registered in the past 60 days is going to show up in that number because the act of registration causes them to be active. But, as I said above, as long as the measure appears in both numerator and denominator its relative magnitude cancels out.

With the moving average formula we could use all registered members and we'd still get a quorum very close to what we would get using only those who posted today. There would be a difference in the exact count but not in the magnitude.

The only way the magnitude would vary is if we took a particular measure, such as posters or visitors or registered members, and set the quorum as a fixed percentage of that.

Jn

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Posted: Thu 11 Aug , 2005 8:40 am
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Idylle, have a look at my post in Forum Management to see how I calculate the Active Users. Believe me, as I was surprised as anyone at the numbers, but they are correct.

Edited to Add Link: http://www.phpbber.com/phpbb/viewtopic. ... &start=696

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*Alandriel*
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Posted: Fri 12 Aug , 2005 11:56 am
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I'm really lousy at math :( and I usually hate to put things off yet I believe Jny's suggestions/reasoning to be sound.

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Posted: Fri 12 Aug , 2005 12:29 pm
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On consideration I'm willing to go with Jnyusas suggestion.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Sat 13 Aug , 2005 3:03 pm
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Could I coax two more people to vote on this so that we can consider it 'handled' for the time being?

Jn

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Voronwë_the_Faithful
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Posted: Sat 13 Aug , 2005 3:56 pm
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Jn, I think that at a certain point, if no one else votes, we can declare the vote closed and the issue "handled". There is, after all, no quorum for committee votes.


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Jnyusa
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Posted: Sat 13 Aug , 2005 8:31 pm
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OK, then. Evening of the 17th, per the first post.

Jn

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Thu 18 Aug , 2005 4:30 pm
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OK - so sometime after the Christmas holidays, when people's lives have calmed down, we'll look at the votes that took place during the Fall of this year and see what quorum percentages were used. If the moving average is still below 20%, we'll convene a charter amendment committee to decide whether the charter should be changed or other steps taken.

Thanks, committee members for dragging yourselves back to look at this. :)

Rangers,

This thread can be moved to the History Forum. The following link needs to be placed in the Directory of Charter Convention threads, at the bottom of the list with the title Charter Convention threads.

Obligation to Revisit Quorum
Opened Wed Aug 10, 2005 6:15 pm

thanks!
Jn

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