MOTION: External Staff Advertisements PASSED 7-0-0

Started by Jubal, April 21, 2020, 04:59:42 PM

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Shall this motion pass?

Aye
7 (100%)
Nay
0 (0%)
Abstain
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 7

Voting closed: April 28, 2020, 04:59:42 PM

Jubal

So I kinda thought I'd done this already, but I just realised I never got round to moving a bill to making external staff advertisements permanent as a thing and I've been doing it without having any authority to do so. Oops. Anyway, this does that for a bunch of roles. The senior, constitutionally defined admins it currently does not allow us to advertise externally for, which I think is sensible - I think we generally need people with good understandings of the community to deal with those roles, they're very necessary, and if we hit unforeseen circumstances we can always endorse external advertising for those as a separate thing.

This also makes the roles probationary for four months, which I think is sensible given our prior experiences with people getting given admin jobs and then rapidly vanishing on us again.

Simple majority vote, one week.



This Plaza moves:

1
a) That a full and functional staff team is necessary for a fully functional Exilian, and it is therefore necessary to advertise externally for certain roles.

2
a) That three administration roles not noted in the constitution (that is, those of heteriarches or despotes) are currently endorsed as ideal by the Plaza, comprising the respective areas of Communications and Social Media, Content and Editorial, and Membership and Development officers.
b) That should it be necessary, external advertisement for the two junior of the regularly elected staff roles, those of Tribounos or Spatharios, would also be acceptable.
c) That where necessary, the administration should be able to externally advertise for any junior staff positions, those of Logothetes and Hekatontarchoi, that they see fit to create as per their constitutional powers to do so.

3
a) That the adminsitrative council may advertise for these externally to the current citizenship for the roles designated in section 2.
b) That the current administrative council may advertise for all or any of these three roles as they see fit, at times of their choosing, and are not obliged to fill all of them.
c) That all of these roles should be scrutinised and voted on by the citizens as per normal procedure.
d) That all successful applicants to these roles will immediately be granted citizenship and, where applicable, patricianship, as per normal procedure.
e) That in cases where a staff member has individual power to create a new role, Sebastokrator should approve external advertisement being used for such a role.

4
a) That external applicants should be treated as probationary for a number of months after recieving the role.
b) That granting of citizenship as part of recieving a role, if not otherwise earned, will only be treated as permanent if they remain active in the role for two months or more, and granting of patricianship only if they remain active in the role for four months or more.
c) That adjudication of their status of remaining active in the role should require visible evidence of their continued activity in the role, with discretion given to the Sebastokrator to make judgements in unclear cases with the option of recourse to the Tribounos if a decision of this sort is challenged.
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...

dubsartur

wow um sorry I do not know if I can I even spare the brain-space to read that before the deadline, I am unemployed for a year in a pandemic and trying to raise money to get my first academic book printed

Jubal

Don't worry: it's not an obligation in any sense to vote on everything, if you haven't the brain-space that's a perfectly valid reason to not do or to register an abstention (you can also change your vote at any time before the deadline, so it's permitted to e.g. abstain and then come back and decide if you have time).

In general I try and ensure there's discussion time while drafting motions/before votes if I think it's going to have a significant impact on the direction of the site, less so if I think it's a fairly straightforward administrative matter or I'm in a major hurry for some reason. But yes - I'm very happy to be questioned/pulled up on stuff, and also for people to take their own initiatives, but also don't feel it's in any sense an obligation and I will freely admit that the fact we have set-out rules for most eventualities does make our systems a bit overly complex in some ways. Maybe we need better systems for providing summary explanations of what motions are meant to do?
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...

Glaurung

TL;DR version: this motion explicitly grants the admins a permanent power to advertise for and recruit various staff members externally to Exilian.

It's probably not necessary, as admins already have a very wide power to act independently in the interests of the forum, but it's probably also good practice to make things explicit like this.

Background: we've tried repeatedly to find people for these roles, first internally and then externally. The external recruitment attempts have been on the basis of similar bills providing temporary powers; it would now make more sense to formalise this on a permanent basis.

dubsartur

Thank you Glaurung!  I just don't understand the organizational structure of Exilian, and legal English takes careful reading even if I had enough of a context to interpret it.

Glaurung

Quote from: dubsartur on April 25, 2020, 03:33:39 PM
I just don't understand the organizational structure of Exilian,
Our fault, I think - those of us who've been around for a while are used to it, and forget that newer folk might not have worked it all out. We should probably have an "Introduction for New Citizens" pinned post to point people at. In the meantime, please keep asking us to explain stuff you don't understand: we ought to be providing this information anyway, and you're helping us understand where we can improve.

Glaurung