Talk:Stolen Rules

From Ancient Ways

Revision as of 04:13, 24 February 2007

What's Latin for "Brain-Fluff"?

Looks pretty good! I have created the first two tables of the chart. You can find them under the Rules Category. The rest will come as soon as my wife falls asleep!

Admin 19:09, 23 February 2007 (EST)

Comments on 2d (Revised) Version

...OK. I like the language. You've done a great job of making Mari's Rogatio de Miscellaneous Brain-Fluff sound more like a rogatio, and less like brain-fluff. It's easy to read, easy to understand, organized, and hangs together well. Nice to see it in its formal clothes; good to know it didn't become stuffy in the process!

On the specifics...

Consuls/Tribunes:

I prefer one of each. Not only do I like Tribunes; not only do I consider them part of organizational Romanitas as I see it; but a Tribune in the Societas has got definable work to do. He arbitrates disputes between members; he reports on the Senate meetings; and he can veto any other Magistrate. I don't see disputes and vetos being a common thing here, but provisions for them are needed, as we have no structure for handling these things as it stands.

So a Tribune would have his work cut out for him, including Praetorial duties. We'd have the historical accuracy of having a Tribune, albeit at the expense of the historical accuracy of having two Consuls. Once more we're back to only imposing as much structure as the active membership's numbers can support.

Our Consuls, otoh, have been the most underemployed people in the whole admin structure. What does a Consul do around here? Does anybody know? So far, ours have mainly called elections and announced the results. OK, so the Consul convenes the Comitia. That's a start; but does it really take two people to do that? What would they do between votes? --Our first few Consuls also used to make public addresses. We got one on the SVR's first birthday, and another at the end of their term--sort of a "State of the Society" address. That was nice; but it doesn't take two people to do that either, and in any case it's not mandatory unless we write it into the job description.

OK, so why not give the Consuls some of those Tribune duties? ...Now, see, that's where I start getting queasy. The Consuls, to me, represent the Establishment. The Tribunes represent everybody else. This becomes important when those Senate reports are in question. I hate to break it to you, but...we really need some transparency in the Senate. I gained access to the Curia by virtue of being the Board admin as much as by being a Curator, and I read through some of the discussions...Dude, they were growing some serious ganja in there.

I don't see a Consul treating such outrages as outrages. A Tribune, privy to Senate debates while not a member of said body himself, makes a much better whistle-blower.

Censores:

Yes, Censores should be members of the Senate. And judging by the workload, two are better than one; but again, we don't have a bumper-crop of candidates, so our single Censor can just appoint as much support staff as he needs. I agree that the term should be at least two years; and, turnover on the 'Net being what it is, the Census itself should be a yearly event, and the Concilium was nuts for making it only biennial.

Senate:

I love your ideas about Consuls in the Senate! The way we get (effectively) seven Senatores for the price of five. But I wonder if it is necessary to have a Senator actually resign if he wants to run for Consul? One, we don't want resignations flying all over the place. Two, if elected, the new Consul is coming right back to the Senate anyway, probably before his seat has a chance to cool. But Three, what about defeated candidates? Have they lost their Senate seats too? Or, if we do provide for their readmission, the whole resign-then-readmit cycle becomes a lot of extra work for the Censor, who is already busy with the member-wannabees, and has Mari on his back as it is. >({|;-]

So maybe we should just have the candidates' Senate membership 'suspended' somehow... Maybe even have the Senate adjourn before election season, so there wouldn't be any quibbles about who has the right to vote therein--the candidates could concentrate on being candidates, and not get into an awkward position in the Curia. Does that make any sense...?

Still deciding how I feel about requiring Senators to have been Consuls. On the one paw, knowing what a Consul's job entails can be a useful thing...but so would learning the Aedile's ropes, and we've already figured out that that ain't a-gonna happen. On the other, maybe a non-Consular, a fresh face with a fresh perspective, can do us a whole different world of good. (Remember, you're talking to the former owner of the [Catilinarians] List.) We shouldn't automatically exclude someone from the Senate just because he either has or hasn't held a particular position.

On the annual recertification, we could just hold it concurrently with the Census.

Participation:

You left out the Aldus Marius behind-the-scenes types. Say a Sodalis doesn't make it to events very often, but has a killer list of other Roman groups with whom he stays in touch? Or helps the Magistrates in some way, or furthers Romanitas in his local community without getting too tied up with the Board and such? That ought to be worth something; indeed, such coordinators may make better Magistrates than the ones who just write a lot.

We might tweak the definition to say "including but not limited to..." the mentioned forms of participation. Creative people will, I'm sure, come up with yet other avenues.

...There. Anything I haven't covered that you'd like me to? (Anything you wish I'd said less on? <g>) -- MariPere' 23:13, 23 February 2007 (EST)