Why so many people become disappointed with this community

POSTED ON FEBRURY 16, 2018
A FORMER MEMBER OF COUNCIL POSTING IN THE ANNOUNCEMENT THREAD

Tellahane wrote: In a vote by the council completed today with 7 for, 1 against, 5 abstain, the vote to turn Jediism category to make it publicly post-able by guest users has passed. The category permissions have just been updated to reflect that change.

A CURRENT MEMBER OF COUNCIL REPLYING IN THE AFFIRMATIVE

MadHatter wrote: I was just about to post this in the membership affairs thread, lol beat me to it.

A FORMER MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL ADMITTING THEY WERE THE ONLY ONE TO VOTE NO.

Tellahane wrote: oops sorry! =p I figured since I was the one against vote and I had to be the one to do the permission change anyway I figured it would be best if I just went ahead and did it all

The evidence could not be more clear. Why is council remaining silent on this? What is the discussion? If this does not suggest coverup or conspiracy then I dont know what does. There are no clear lines of communication between council and the membership and the only replies we are getting are feeble excuses that are obviously not true. This sort of activity is the very thing that this thread was about. The perception is that at best this temple functions as an operationally incompetent entity and at worst its just truly sinister. The problem is most cant tell the difference. I present these points as talking points that I believe are very relevant to this thread and i welcome open discussion.

Sounds like it's time to take a breather. Council has said they're on it. Perhaps some system update changed the settings. Let us not charge in due to our ignorance on the situation...

To be clear - what directly is your question.
The way I read it is what do guests have access to post on right ?

No, Carlos. We know what guests can and cannot post to.

It was brought up that the Jediism board is still not accessible for guests to post on. The original question was why.

Then the previous vote in February was mentioned. The response to that was that it (ie, guests having vs not having permission to post in the Jediism board) once more under discussion by the council.

It was then commented upon that no record of the vote from February could be found. Record of that vote was provided, and it was stated again that the council is discussing it.

The questions some have then are thus:

Why is the council continuing to discuss something which was voted upon and which record for the vote can be provided. Or rather, what is it that is being discussed to begin with.

Another question to consider is why is the record that is being provided not considered official enough.

And those questions exist because of the input that has been provided over the last few pages.

I don't think anyone is necessarily questioning that the change was or wasn't made when it was originally announced. Rather why isn't it being corrected now that it's been brought up as still being an issue. As Ari just stated, there are explanations to why the change may have been made and inadvertently reversed. Yet, it doesn't seem to be a matter of technical issue holding the change up, but rather, we're getting officially told it had to be discussed again, and that it's a council procedural matter...

That is what is being questioned.

Arisaig wrote: Sounds like it's time to take a breather. Council has said they're on it. Perhaps some system update changed the settings. Let us not charge in due to our ignorance on the situation...

There is no ignorance of the situation. The vote was taken and passed. Its no longer a council issue, only an admin issue. I think we just want to know why council is even involved? It should be in the hands of the admins and they should be enacting the change as necessary.

Before the conspiracy theories get too far down the tracks, let me do my best to clarify what happened then and what is happening now here in an open forum for everyone to see.
And yes, I'm writing this in blue on purpose. It is my hope that this will stand out as an official explanation from a current sitting Councillor as well as someone willing to answer any questions that come up from my response.

First, the actual issue is not a contentious one. We accept that guests who can see a forum post would like to be able to respond to those posts as well. We also accept that members of higher rank also want to see this happen. When it was originally discussed, this was the goal of our conversation within Council and the vote that took place.

Next, we discussed the issue and took it to a vote in Council back in February. A Councillor can vote to APPROVE a motion, DENY a motion, or ABSTAIN, which is the same as a NO vote according to our bylaws. Recent adjustments to our bylaws have also put a time limit of ten days for Councillors to vote. This was not in place when this original conversation occurred in February, so technically a Councillor could still vote on the motion today and change the outcome. Now, only those votes cast in that time limit of ten days count toward a majority. In order for a motion to pass, a majority must be reached one way or another. Councillors who are absent and don't vote at all will now be considered ABSENT after ten days and not included in the total needed for a majority.

The confusion we have currently with this issue is despite the posts by more than one Councillor revealing the outcome, there is no thread in Council Chambers detailing who voted which way.
For a vote to be official, we have to post whether we APPROVE, DENY, or ABSTAIN along with our name, date, and time. This thread becomes the official record of a vote being taken and can be referred to in the future should there be any confusion, argument, or disagreement. For this specific motion, we can't find this official thread in Council. The votes occurred in a bunch of different conversations about it and not every vote was cast correctly. That means legally, this vote never happened.

So what now? We're trying to clean up the mess by discussing in Council what happened, making sure we all understand how the voting has to work, making sure we are following all bylaws, and then properly communicating the results to the membership. This is an ongoing process meant to clean up a lot of the mystery and confusion that has occurred with a number of motions made in the last few years.

I want to be clear. There is no nefarious plan to hide anything or undo work that has already been done. We are not secretly undoing changes that were asked for by our membership and approved by Council vote. We are trying to clean up our records so that we can be MORE TRANSPARENT, not less. If a lawyer was to walk in and ask us for documentation of our procedures here, we want a clean record to provide. I know it seems like a whole lot of rumbling over what should be a pretty simple issue, but it is important that we get this stuff right as we move forward and establish the proper habits. If we can't even get the easy stuff right, how can we expect to execute properly when a tough issue arises?

I will follow up with other Councillors today and attempt to get this issue resolved as quickly as possible. Thank you for your questions and for your patience. I'm not here to make excuses.
I'm here to give you information. It is up to you to decide how you interpret that information, but I would hope we all can see that we have to work together to make things better here.

Thank you, Senan. That's all I've been asking for, personally. A bit of clarification as to what's getting discussed and why. Now we know.

I would personally say that since a vote was announced with tallies, the enacting of it should go through anyway. Especially since this is something that was announced quite a few months ago, and enforce the "procedure" going forward. But again that's just me.

I also believe that the council has their own private chat channel? FB or discord or something? Or I had that impression at one point in time. Is it possible the official vote was made through that method? Just an idea of where those votes may have been counted.

Thanks again.

Thank you for your in depth response, Senan. Happy to see a councillor clear up some issues before they can get out of hand.

May the Force guide the council in their upcoming voting process.

Avalon,
You are correct that Councillors use a variety of other means of communication including discord, chat, skype, Facebook, and so on. That is why it is so important that when we are actually voting on a motion, it is done within the Temple forum in its own official thread. That way there can be no question about who voted when or how, and as Councillors come and go, the Temple will always be able to access past actions and the results.

I also tend to believe that we should honor the previous decision and move forward with it, but we have had some changes to Council and our bylaws since then and not all of us even realized the access had reverted back to the previous setting. We'll get it cleared up and executed correctly.

We have a record of:
-votes
-request to delay implementation

We have no record of:
-what the majority was and if it was reached
-whether the delay in implementation was extended indefinitely
-whether the decision was reversed

What will happen next:
-the council is deciding