No Mixing Politics and Staff Act

[TheArtemis_]

CONGRESS OF THE
COMMONWEALTH OF REDMONT
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A BILL TO

Amend the Rules




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The people of the Commonwealth of Redmont, through their elected Representatives in the Congress and the force of law ordained to that Congress by the people through the constitution, do hereby enact the following provisions into law:


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PART I — PRELIMINARIES

1. Short Title and Enactment

(1) This Act may be cited as the ‘No Mixing Politics and Staff Act’

(2) This Act shall be enacted immediately upon its signage.

(3) This Act has been authored by juniperfig

(4) This Act has been co-sponsored by Representative Plura72.

(5) This Act amends the following:

(a) Rules

2. Reasons and Intent

(1) Players cannot mix staff and politics. This rule should be applied to staff as well, who are instead held to internal staff policy when they use their staff position for personal/political gain.

(2) The rule as it stands does not allow for rightful criticism of abuse of staff power for political or personal gain.

(3) Breaches of staff policy are not being properly handled within the Staff Team.

(4) The Staff Disciplinary System does not function when applied to server owners.

PART II — PROPOSED SERVER RULE AMENDMENTS

3. Amendments

(1) The Rules shall be amended as follows:
"
[...]

Our Staff members are players who, in their own time, volunteer to help. Politicizing staff actions, for the sake of roleplay or otherwise, is strictly prohibited. There must be an undeniable separation between staffing and state and this is heavily policed
‎
Our Staff members are players who, in their own time, volunteer to help. Politicizing staff actions consistent with staff policy, for the sake of roleplay or otherwise, is not allowed. Using staff permissions for personal or political gain is not allowed. There must be an undeniable separation between staffing and state.

Criticizing Staff who are breaching staff policy for political or personal gain is acceptable under the following circumstances:

(a) You have opened a staff ticket to formally report a breach of staff policy;

(b) That ticket was closed without resolution of the breach of staff policy;

(c) You are able to provide specific example(s) of the breach of staff policy;

(d) You do not speculate regarding other rumoured or theoretical breaches of staff policy;

(e) The breach of staff policy occurred within the last 60 calendar days.

[...]
"

 

[Stanley582]

- Absolutely necessary, as described by Juniper in this post on Gnomestack.

 

[juniperfig]

- I wrote it, I agree with it

 

[Technofied]

Veto

The President withholds assent from this Bill, and it is hereby vetoed.

Reason: This was ultimately a very hard decision to make, noting I have a conflict of interest as Owner (Staff) as well. That said, I still chose to veto this Bill based on my personal beliefs as an individual, about what this amendment means to the server rules.

Personal beliefs
Staff have routinely been subject to Staff policy, and disciplined where they have fallen out of line. The only exception to this has been within the ownership team. In light of recent events, this Bill was put forward to my best understanding that the community did not feel they could hold ownership accountable for their actions.

However, two days after this bill was proposed, it was agreed to by the Staff team unanimously a new ownership partnership agreement and a voluntary withdrawal from day-to-day operations. Additionally, both Owners have committed to adhering to Staff policy wholly, inclusive of Conflict of Interest policy, even before this new agreement. It has only been a few days, but it's evident there has been changes made that the server has otherwise not seen.

It's my personal belief we should allow the Staff team to demonstrate they are able to operate based on their word and be able to rebuild trust. If the Staff team isn't able to demonstrate it is an institution to be trusted, and needs this form of social regulation, there will be eroded confidence in the ability for Staff to run this server day to day. This Bill would also affect any Staff member, both junior and senior. It's my belief this could have the effect of discouraging newer Staff members or making them fearful about making mistakes (and we all make them!).

Additionally, I do not believe we should be weaponising mistakes regardless for personal gain, as explicitly stated in the Bill. There's a difference between legitimate discourse and conversation about perceived wrongs, and using information to harass and intimidate. As a society, we should not be weaponising mistakes as a form of resolution to the wrongdoing, over aiming to correct the wrongdoing first. What's also considered correcting the wrongdoing is subjective as well, see the next section.

Technicalities
Staff policy is broad, and this Bill could include genuine accidental errors and omissions made by Staff members. It is unclear what a "resolution" would be in the context of a ticket, and cause further infighting about what is resolved versus unresolved.

This likely was unintentional, but by modifying the Rules to read "Politicizing staff actions consistent with staff policies [...] is not allowed" in plain language means it only bans politicising Staff actions that comply with policy. This combined with the carveout of reporting to Staff a breach etc makes the carveout effectively redundant, as it would mean Staff actions that breach policy never broke the rules to begin with.

I urge Congress to monitor how the Staff team and ownership operate and give them a chance to demonstrate their commitment to reforms through actions.

Technofied