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Reposting
Okay, so this proposal is interesting but I don't really know how to feel about it yet because it seems like a lot more details need to be fleshed out before it's ready to go to vote. I'm just going to drop my thoughts and questions down as I go through the document and hopefully this gives a chance for people to think about the details of what the proposal will look like in action as we discuss how to tackle them.
>Regional Borders
The regions as they are currently depicted seem off and should probably be adjusted. The rentry does seem to reference this a bit, but if this is being put forth as a proposal then we should probably make sure the regions are accurate to the proposal's requirements. In general, the regions seem like they will be a pain to work with, especially if they need to be reconfigured for every vote depending on which contributors have joined or left, possibly silently or temporarily. The first step would be to list which threads are currently considered "active" so we can get a sense for how they should be divvied up and if it's even possible to do by the standards set forth here. For that matter, what makes a thread "active" in the first place? These things should probably be ironed out at some point.
>Furthermore, it can be decided to make a smaller split in such a case to balance out, such as dividing a holo region containing 4 threads into 2 regions with 2 threads.
This seems like it will cause a myriad of problems and I cannot imagine how anyone would broach the topic of asking for increased splits without the thread descending into the shitflinging mess this is trying to avoid. In what way can this be done that is demonstrably fair or objective? The entire idea is predicated on the fact that a group of people are being singled out for having too much influence. It will be the exact same arguments we're having now with new language.
And moving region borders around will be its own headache with regard to people having reason to put up accusations of foul play. With the current regions, we have several where only one thread is consistently active in regards to votes not directly relating to them and some with none at all. So in matters requiring 2/3 regional approval, how many regions would actually be able to come to a decision and make a vote? It seems like only a couple would bother if we take previous voting trends into account.
>Intraregional Discussion
Now let's take a look at how the regions themselves work. First off, who all is in a region and gets to be a part of the discussion? Is it still just the "reps" from the old system? If we are adding in the other writers for threads which have them, then how is someone like WARsuner handled, where he splits his time between multiple regions? With there being more push for people wanting to write for unrepped nations, do they get a say in regional discussions?
In addition, how is voting handled within a region or will regions just figure out their own system? People have mentioned it possibly needing to be unanimous and the note that each thread needs to do lore verification for the vote to go through seems to lean that way as well. This is somewhat exploitable since it requires a falseflagger to only have a single persona in a few regions to stall out the voting process entirely. If it is based on (super)majority, then depending on the makeup of the region I could easily see potential for more hatred to fester with someone being constantly blocked by their neighbors. There is also the worry that a single opinionated voice could easily take over a region's vote if the others are apathetic towards the matter. In general, if other people in the region are busy or not interested in the issue, are the remaining members allowed to vote for their region?
>To give an example, let's say North Indie only has one active rep. This would mean they would vote along with their southern neighbors.
While this attempts to address some of the concerns above, it ultimately seems pretty flawed. In a regional discussion, this gives the singular member of their region almost no control over what happens to said region, while the alternative is to lend them unilateral control over it. One might attempt to redo borders to remedy the situation at the time, but a big potential flaw of the regional system is that there doesn't seem to be any good solutions to what happens when a thread is geographically isolated from anyone active, and the future could have this occur to any number of places. Ultimately it seems like there are so many restrictions for how regions can be placed that it feels impossible to do so fairly with our limited number of anons.
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