The Thaecian SenateBoard

Aye

Aye

Nay

Aye

Results - L.R. 012 Thaecia Government Petition System Repeal Bill

L.R. 012 Thaecia Government Petition System Repeal Bill
Author: Islonia
Sponsor: Islonia

Ayes (5) - Andusre, Brototh, Islonia, Marvinville, Pap sculgief
Nays (1) - Dendrobium
Abstentions (1) - World Trade

This bill has now passed the Senate and will move to the House for further action.

Opening Debate - RMB Moderation Standards Act

RMB Moderation Standards Act
Authors: Dizgovzy, Xernon, United cascadian peoples, Korsinia
Sponsors: Dizgovzy, Indian genius, Pap sculgief, Prussian sail nation

We have now begun debating this bill, which has previously passed the House. All of the authors have permission to participate in this debate.

I don't really see why we need it, but it doesn't exactly do any harm. Will just say UCP doesn't have the permission to participate in this debate, but whatever

These rules have been in place for ages now anyway, this just formalises them

The problem I have though is the phrase 'Ib) If a post is suppressed for any non-moderatorial purpose then the post is to be unsuppressed immediately.'
The rest of the bill only details 'site rules' as being a possible reason for suppression
What if the post violates the law of the region, or is just generally in bad taste? What if we go into another moratorium? Seems very restrictive to me to be honest

Of course, the full power still remains with the High Court as Article II Section Ia states.

I would like to mention that we already have some sort of law on RMB rules that does kinda relate to this bill. It is L.R. 017

Marvinville wrote:

I would like to mention that we already have some sort of law on RMB rules that does kinda relate to this bill. It is L.R. 017

Sadly after reading this law I am now going to vote nay. This bill accomplishes nothing. LR 017 already lays out that site rules are valid for suppression, as well as regional laws. This bill has literally no effect on the region, don't know why it was proposed if another bill has already done the exact same thing. Hopefully an author can change my mind or show me why this bill does something different, but from looking at LR 017 I realise that the bills are practically identical

Brototh wrote:

Sadly after reading this law I am now going to vote nay. This bill accomplishes nothing. LR 017 already lays out that site rules are valid for suppression, as well as regional laws. This bill has literally no effect on the region, don't know why it was proposed if another bill has already done the exact same thing. Hopefully an author can change my mind or show me why this bill does something different, but from looking at LR 017 I realise that the bills are practically identical

I agree with you. I will vote Nay on this bill and I hope the rest of the Senate follows

Brototh wrote:

Sadly after reading this law I am now going to vote nay. This bill accomplishes nothing. LR 017 already lays out that site rules are valid for suppression, as well as regional laws. This bill has literally no effect on the region, don't know why it was proposed if another bill has already done the exact same thing. Hopefully an author can change my mind or show me why this bill does something different, but from looking at LR 017 I realise that the bills are practically identical

Well, this bill is all about formalisation. It is good to make clear who has final say in the event of a disagreement (President/Court) and also lines out that quotes of a suppressed post need to be censored. I will need to check LR 017 but I still think it is good to have a formal declaration provided it is not contradictory.

Dizgovzy wrote:

Well, this bill is all about formalisation. It is good to make clear who has final say in the event of a disagreement (President/Court) and also lines out that quotes of a suppressed post need to be censored. I will need to check LR 017 but I still think it is good to have a formal declaration provided it is not contradictory.

I would much rather support a bill that would replace LR 017, or amend it. I don't agree with the President having the power to choose what ban stays or not in the first place. The Court also obviously has the power to overturn a suppression, a simple court case will suffice by saying the party that suppressed the plaintiff violated the rules set out in LR 017 and the Constitution. While yes, this bill does formalise the process of going to the High Court, it also gives the President non-existent emergency powers (Because the Court can overturn it anyway, so pointless to be honest) over a matter that is already settled in older laws.

The way I see it is that this Act is indeed a formalization but also an upgrade from L.R. 017. The already existing bill leaves a lot of subjects mentioned here open or untouched and while, yes, the Court can overturn a decission made by the President, and technically with that also the rest of the RMB management team, I see this only as the right thing, because in the end it is the Court that (should) decide over the breaking of rules and or laws in Thaecia when decissions by the mods/officers are questioned.
This Act will not only protect Thaecia and the Thaecian RMB from toxicity and doxxing, but it will also protect people unrightfully accused of such. I will be voting Aye and urge my fellow Senators to do the same for an RMB that is welcoming to all and fairly moderated.
Lastly, if someone finds that this Act would "accomplish nothing L.R. 017 doesn't" or "is identical to L.R. 017" then I kindly ask you to re-read both and compare the two. Both bills are similar but it is clear which one does the job better in dealing with the procedures and practical execution of the RMB management, without any offense to authors of older bills intended.

Alright, I have two amendments to propose to the Senate.

Here comes the big boy. This gigantic amendment, to which I will happily make modifications if the Senate agrees on one, essentially merges LR017 and this bill into something more accurate to today's standards. The biggest and most controversial part, however, is certainly Article III - Section b).

I heavily oppose Amendment C, because it overlooks many things stated in LR 017, creates some bizarre moderation council that then tries to force the private discord staff into doing something for the site government, creates “voluntary” spam as an offence that is punished when typically someone double posting or more isn’t even for malicious intent, and is either a new player or even an older more experienced government official (such as myself, and especially Titanne).

You also said OOC suppressions earlier in the Bill, but never later stated what an OOC suppression was. Posts suppressed according to your rules would be for moderation, correct? So what’s the “for OOC offences” doing?

This moderation council also appears to give permission to veto changes to this law or add new rules themselves. This is frankly absurd, the Culture Ministry tried this for the Regional Holidays et all bill, which the House quickly decided was most likely unconstitutional as a non-Congressperson cannot change a pre-existing law (yes; that means the Judges too. They follow the Constitution as well.), and certainly someone who is not the Prime Minister cannot veto a change to this law, especially considering the PM can only veto bills that did not receive 2/3 support.

Personally though, I love that the Hon. Senator Islonia is trying to fix this bill, but I personally don’t believe it can be salvaged in this state. I invite the Hon. Senator to join me and the House Speaker in our first draft of rectifying the bill.

Brototh my bad for the OOC suppressions, it came from a first draft of the amendment and I forgot to remove it later on.

As for the spam, I wanted to differentiate when you spam to annoy someone and when you spam because of a bog, because I didn't feel like it was the same thing at all. (Involuntary spam still having to be suppressed while not being an offense in itself). This can obviously be removed as I said in after the amendment.

As for the Moderation Council, I got TMS to help me write this and we found out it was the best idea out here. We first thought about the members of the OT, but then thought the President could nominate OT people for his advantage. Since the discord staff is the one already moderating the discord, we thought it would be logical for them to help RMB Moderation.

Also, I don't get where you find all that stuff in your 3rd paragraph. The list on which the law will be relying is not in the law itself. It will be the name as NS Site Rules, which also are off-bill.

Islonia wrote:

Brototh my bad for the OOC suppressions, it came from a first draft of the amendment and I forgot to remove it later on.

As for the spam, I wanted to differentiate when you spam to annoy someone and when you spam because of a bog, because I didn't feel like it was the same thing at all. (Involuntary spam still having to be suppressed while not being an offense in itself). This can obviously be removed as I said in after the amendment.

As for the Moderation Council, I got TMS to help me write this and we found out it was the best idea out here. We first thought about the members of the OT, but then thought the President could nominate OT people for his advantage. Since the discord staff is the one already moderating the discord, we thought it would be logical for them to help RMB Moderation.

Also, I don't get where you find all that stuff in your 3rd paragraph. The list on which the law will be relying is not in the law itself. It will be the name as NS Site Rules, which also are off-bill.

Starting from the top of your quote, as it's shorter, "We will call this body the "Moderation Council". In order to add or remove an offense to the said list, an absolute majority vote must be achieved." Clearly the moderation council has the permission to add or remove an offence from the bill, or certainly veto Congress from doing so. You say "relying on NS Site Rules", yet you provide a list of offences such as spam, advertisement, etc.

I heavily oppose roping the discord staff into the regional message board, first of all because they are two different things--the discord staff are trusted friends of the other staff and Andusre. The RMB moderators are members of the Cabinet. Members of the Discord staff are less active on the NS RMB, such as Lemonadia and most notably Bahnhof. It would make very little sense for these two to be involved in your moderation group.

Re-reading your amendment C, I heavily, heavily oppose "As we cannot predict every justification for such suppression, this law delegates the task of listing those offenses in an off-law body that will be made of several entities". The moderation council can now not only suppress whatever they want, with the poor excuse "Bad for the regional climate"-- sounds a lot like corruption waiting to happen to me--but they also have the ability to list these 'offences' in an OFF-LAW body? You will give these people the off-law right to suppress whatever they want, and there's nothing this bill can do about it? Please help me to understand, Honourable Senator, because as it stands it appears as if the Moderation Council can pick and choose what they like and add it to their own fantasy off-law body.

Just because the discord staff do a good job moderating the multiple category discord, does not mean they would do a good job moderating the singular RMB. They operate on very different rules and guidelines, for example we say things that are much more mature on the discord with a healthy hint of a lot of swearing, compared to the NS climate this is practically the opposite.

I see you write 'involuntary spam still having to be suppressed while not being an offense in itself'. I don't understand what that means all too well, however you do define it as separate offences:
- Voluntary Spam
- Involuntary Spam
It is very hard to define what voluntary spam is, if it's just people genuinely posting random nonsense, or if it's double posting. The only interpretation I can make is that it is double posting, because you write in 'Involuntary Spam' that said offence is when a bug happens/poor connection and you end up posting more than once, so 'Involuntary', the opposite of that would be Voluntary, meaning when some purposefully posts more than once?

The original LR 017 states that double posting should not be done, however, because of its very non 'legal-speak' nature, it only recommends that one does not do so. Which is much better, because sometimes it's not even for malicious intent and people usually do not care that much.

Aight. Consider amendment C scrapped. I just realised we had a way easier thing to do to fix all of this.

Brototh wrote:

I still do not support this, it is wildly better, however, I do not support the fact that this both overlooks what the original LR 017 had in it. I think LR 017 already does the entire job that this bill would do, with or without this amendment it's still pretty useless considering the amendment just copies LR 017, removes bits, and without the repeal it does literally nothing

I again invite you to join me and Diz in rewriting his bill

Instead of rewriting a bill that doesn't need to, you could just help me amend this one.. Like you said it overlooks what LR017 had in it, so we can just add what it lacks from the LR017 copy/paste.

Brototh wrote:

I still do not support this, it is wildly better, however, I do not support the fact that this both overlooks what the original LR 017 had in it. I think LR 017 already does the entire job that this bill would do, with or without this amendment it's still pretty useless considering the amendment just copies LR 017, removes bits, and without the repeal it does literally nothing

I again invite you to join me and Diz in rewriting his bill

Excuse me for asking but did you actually properly lay L.R. 017 and this Amendement/Act next to eachother to compare them? You say "it overlooks what the original LR 017 had in it" but to be clear, it doesn't. In fact it took what L.R. 017 had in it and rifined it in a clear, orderly way while specifying certain bits and excluding unnecessary details or examples. This way it also does not "just copies LR 017 and without the repeal it does literally nothing", but in fact, in Amendement C2, it repeals L.R. 017 so it won't be "useless". Your points on the team that would manage the RMB and the connection with the discord mostly make sense.
Islonia listened to your comments and removed not just those those parts, but also added it so that the aged L.R. 017 will be repealed. I honestly don't see why you are still so heavilly opposing the Amendement unless if you want absolutely no regulation on the RMB or a moderation based on sloppy old bills that could be refined (as this Act/Amendement does). By repeatedly attacking every defending word no-one will get anything done. So I kindly ask you to take a step away from your viewpoint on the Act and Amendement, just for a moment, to look at how you basically got what you asked for, yet are still opposing everything.

Dendrobium wrote:

Excuse me for asking but did you actually properly lay L.R. 017 and this Amendement/Act next to eachother to compare them? You say "it overlooks what the original LR 017 had in it" but to be clear, it doesn't. In fact it took what L.R. 017 had in it and rifined it in a clear, orderly way while specifying certain bits and excluding unnecessary details or examples. This way it also does not "just copies LR 017 and without the repeal it does literally nothing", but in fact, in Amendement C2, it repeals L.R. 017 so it won't be "useless". Your points on the team that would manage the RMB and the connection with the discord mostly make sense.
Islonia listened to your comments and removed not just those those parts, but also added it so that the aged L.R. 017 will be repealed. I honestly don't see why you are still so heavilly opposing the Amendement unless if you want absolutely no regulation on the RMB or a moderation based on sloppy old bills that could be refined (as this Act/Amendement does). By repeatedly attacking every defending word no-one will get anything done. So I kindly ask you to take a step away from your viewpoint on the Act and Amendement, just for a moment, to look at how you basically got what you asked for, yet are still opposing everything.

I kindly ask you to cease being passive aggressive. I oppose this bill, because frankly it does nothing that hasn't already been done, and the amendment removes some other moderations within LR 017 and adds newer, worse ones, such as double posting being a literal crime. You should read what I said in the debate, before you start "I kindly ask you to take a step away from your viewpoint on this Act and Amendment, just for a moment, to look at how you basically got what you asked for". I do not have what I ask for, what I ask for is Islonia to convene with me to rewrite this entire bill, of which his amendment to solves practically nothing and in my opinion creates more problems.

I guess it’s time to introduce my opinions to the chamber, I know, it’s that guy again.

After reading the debate and the bill and LR.017, I feel that LR.017 is a better bill, with or without Islo’s amendments. The amendments I have no problem with, however they still don’t make the bill better.

While I did sponsor the bill for its debate, I did it with a different view on it, so please don’t bring that up. But the reason I won’t vote aye on this bill is because it is kind of too explicit and provides too much for the government to do.

LR.017 while still a little bit vague, has, like the Honourable Senator Brototh said, done it’s job and provided rules and regulations and guidelines for moderation. This bill mentions too much, brings too much into thought and makes moderation harder. Personally I think we are fine with what we have at the moment, or maybe we could just fine-tune what we have at the moment, and so that’s why I plan to vote nay.