Charter barter

[spookuni]

A standard part of headmin team formation is the establishment of a formal (or informal) 'charter', which is just the general setup all of the headmins agree to abide by when making decisions / doing headmin stuff.

As an example, this is the charter from our (Rave/San/Spook) term

Policy: Informed
Complaints: Informed, action taken against an admin by upheld complaint unanimous
Ban appeals: Uninformed
Candidacy Acceptance: Unanimous
AC -> Trial: old system (Unanimous to pass, extend trial on majority)
TA -> GA: old system (Unanimous to pass, extend trial on majority)
GA -> special: Unanimous
Deadminning: Unanimous
Batcaves: Uninformed (batcaves are private discussions between headmins and specific admins for anything from promotion to review to explanations as to the decision to deadmin someone)
For AC -> TA promotions, and policy discussions, if a headmin goes fully radio silent for longer than two weeks, move to uninformed voting, with the same caveat for AC promotion delays if it's 1 yay 1 nay

Where
Single - headmins can do whatever
Uninformed - a simple majority of headmins can take action, whenever
Informed - a majority of headmins can take action, but all headmins should get a chance to state their opinions
Unanimous - totality of headmin support is required

As potential headmins you'll need to work with the other elected candidates, but how much consensus you need for individual decisions will be up to the three of you. What does your ideal charter look like, how much input / oversight do you want on your choices from your peers and how much oversight do you want over them? If fast response times are your priority, are you interested in going down to single headmin requirements for anything?

As with my other question, there are no wrong answers here. This is purely a chance for you guys to think about something you'll need to decide on as a headmin well before its deadline, and have a think about where you stand on it in relation to each other.

Maybe this term we'll see the mythical single-headmin on everything charter...

[General Thrax]

One King Under The Mountain

I don't think I can come up with anything concrete considering the process of making it is a long way off, but something I'd want is not too far off from the one posted. I wouldn't mind requiring input from the other headmins for most things, but I wouldn't be opposed to going to Single for something like Ban Appeals, like what Fikou suggests.

All I can really say for right now, though. I would prefer to hear what the other two headmins say upon the elections finishing before we get the "ideal charter"

[Fikou]

I definitely wanna push for ban appeals to be Single, and maybe lower some steps of the adminning process.
It'd all depend on how aligned I am with the other headmins though, if we have very similar philosophies on a lot of stuff we can lower it further and vice versa

[iain0]

Spent a while mulling over charters, the choices and mechanics of them are pretty interesting. Notably they only mean anything if you have differences in the team, which I guess is where the mythical single headmin charter joke comes from, if everyone always agrees then all the options have the same result with single headmin just being fastest. So if one was that confident, lowering things is a good move, but the actual choices are for when there's conflicting opinions. Scoping how often and where you expect those might be depends entirely on the team, but there's always theoretical room to lower things.

I'm interested in nuances of "informed", I like the idea that anyone can say that they want to have their say on a particular topic, but with the fallback that if a headmin goes absent (either extended MIA or by their declaration) then the other two can just run with majority, or if a headmin doesn't register interest within a short time e.g. 24 hours the other two can run with it (I'm imagining everything gets a new discord thread so you get 24 hours to drop in and say 'i want a say on this, get back to you later')

I'd largely end up where your charter lay I think ; promoting and demoting are fine places to have Unanimous (aka Veto), with a caveat that onboarding admins should have a fallback to uninformed for extended absence, possibly not just the AC to TA step, at least not without an upper bound (such as unexplained MIA headmins retire after one month or something) to avoid locking that process for months. Majority extend seems fine. Day to day necessities should be informed/uninformed, ideally with that 'show interest' step and the ability for headmins to register uninterested ahead of time if going away and confident in their fellow headmins, policies complaints and appeals all must be able to progress, the exact choice probably depends on the team and familiarity within the team.

[Sightld2]

I agree with Fikou, If I had my way I think it'd look something like this

Policy: informed
Complaints : Unanimous
Ban appeals : Informed > Uninformed > Single. Depending on how quickly they can be ran through.
Candidacy acceptance : Unanimous
All the inbetween : Informed
Deadminning : Unanimous
Batcave: Uninformed

[Timberpoes]

Here's some additional input from a second-term headmin:

Tyranny of the Majority
Uninformed allows any two headmins to make a ruling, totally bypassing the third headmin and not involving them in any way, shape or form.
Informed requires that all headmins will have had the opportunity to read and common on something before the team is allowed to make a ruling, but again any two headmins agreeing will mean you've got a ruling and the third can be overruled.

Both these allow any two headmins to overrule the third.

They're commonly used for appeals and policy. Appeals tend to be uninformed since their scope is usually limited to impacting just one person. Policy tends to be informed because policy changes fundamentally impact everyone on the server and the best policy is made when all three headmins are involved.

My advice is stay away from informed for time-sensitive decisions. Informed is naturally slower than uninformed as it always involves all three headmins at a minimum. It can also leave two headmins in a difficult position if the third is inactive, of lesser activity or goes AWOL with an agreement in place that the other two can just handle stuff on their own.

Veto Powers, Activate

Unanimous requires all three headmins be in agreement for an action to be made.

This switches the power balance. Because all three headmins must agree, a single minority headmin can veto the decision entirely by voting no. More individual power.

They're commonly used for upholding admin conduct plus promotions and demotions.

These are the most powerful ways headmins can influence the admin team. Because exercising your veto can piss off your two co-headmins, unanimous generally falls into the realm of being the most important and most difficult-to-reverse-if-you-fucked-up decisions your team will make.

I'm Solo, I'm Han Solo

The final option is unlisted. Single vote.

The reason it's unlisted is because it's pretty must just symbolic for a single headmin to give any ruling. In all matters where the term has agreed unanimity isn't required, the other two headmins can overrule the single headmin. This can lead to a lot of fuckery, where the headmin team do and then undo a decision.

It also creates conflicts internally where the first headmin to answer has all the say, so individual headmins may be scrambling to make rapid decisions before any of their co-headmins can beat them to it and make a different decision. Will such decisions have had the appropriate due diligence put behind them?

I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader to determine if that is a desirable outcome.

Solo Appeals

Single headmin is commonly cited as a possibility for ban appeals, but headmin decisions on ban appeals are not always unanimous. Should a 1/3rd dissenting headmin forcefully remove a ban the other two think should be kept, just because they got to the appeal first?

Accordingly, any headmin team that wants to give a single headmin executive control over appeals should think very carefully about when they want this power to be used.

Do you have a hothead like myself on your team that has a very strong internal sense of justice and is likely to run riot in the appeals subforum if they don't have to consult the other two headmins? Probably shouldn't give them the authority to rule on every single appeal solo. Or do if you want to see a 3500 word thesis in the admin complaints subforum.

That's not to say it can't work.

Not many recent headmins can cite any experience with handling appeals solo, but I'm a bit of a diva and will pop off from time to time. Including breaking charter to handle appeals solo. So here's my experiences:

I always restricted myself to upholding appeals solo and never to overruling appeals solo.

The negative impact of a ban or note being overturned by one headmin, only for the other two to go "lol, no" and put it back is pretty huge for both the player, the admin and the headmin team. Everyone gets put in an awkward spot.

The negative impact of a headmin going "I don't think this should be overturned" followed by the other two going "actually, we're overturning it" is only an embarassment to the headmin team and has no real negative impact on the player or admin beyond any ordinary 2/3rds decision to overturn in the first place.

[Kubisopplay]

I'd probably gravitate towards most things being at Informed, or uninformed, unanimous only for deadminning probably.