Zedling Council Meeting 2019-10-19

Attendance

Council Members Present

Zedwick
LadyBountiful
Dax23333
AlyCatMeow
SweetEvil39
Purpledolphin224 (Host)
SneakySkeleton
Dave5400
Spectatre (Scribe)
Memery
ABParadigm
KhasOrn
Zero0hm

Apologies

SooprJ
Forseth
Aravero (bulk apology)

No Apologies

Palvair

Visitors

jiame42
MasterBoy269

Your fabulous host and scribes were double-surprised. Some members were under the impression purple had volunteered to host (An impression not shared by purple, as they hosted last meeting). After some friendly confusion they decided to host again anyhow, inviting us to their sprawling Rainbow Castle.
I, thinking that the meeting would be relatively straightforward, volunteered to scribe. Silly me.

Topics

Topic 1: Rock the Vote (Third time is not the charm) - ABParadigm

Council has been playing keepie-up with this topic for several meetings now - it gets brought up, discussed at length, kicked to the forums, not discussed much at all, then kicked to the forums, ready for this meeting...rinse and repeat. We rinsed, and repeated, until the 30 minute limit came into force and it was once again put to the forums. Practise makes perfect...? ;D
Much discussion was had, I've tried rejuggling the conversations into two distinct piles, in the hopes that looks slightly more coherent than it did at the time

Rock 1: Nominations

or, "How does a potential new member get put to a vote?"

Current system: At the end of a meeting, host asks council members for Zedling nominees. They are send to the host via private message (PM). If a player gets two nominations, the host then PMs the nominee, asking them if they consent to being voted on. If they agree, they pass to a vote.

Proposed revision from previous meeting(s): Zedling nominates another Zedling to join (having checked they'd be interested in joining). Host double-checks they would be interested. They then pass to a vote.

Thoughts from the meeting:

The current system is overly complicated, several suggestions of doing away with nominations entirely
Expectation that if you're nominating someone, you've checked they're interested in being nominated before doing so.
Expectation that if you're nominating someone, you've concluded they'd be a good addition/'fit' to the council (server activity/meeting attendance being brought up as an example)
Nominations could probably return to being public, especially if they don't need 'seconded'
Maybe Zedlings can go to council members directly, asking to be put up for nomination? (While wanting to avoid the situation of players loudly 'fishing' for nominations from council members)
If Zedlings can nominate Zedlings to council, why not allow a Zedling to nominate 'themselves' to the council? (There was concern that this could lead to multiple nominations, with a counter that that may not be such a bad thing?)
After we talked about this and rock 2 (see below) for 30 minutes, there were suggestions that maybe the old way isn't so bad after all.

Rock 2: Voting

or; "Once a player is put to the vote, how do they get voted in?"

Current system: Host announces in public the player(s) that are up for a vote. Council members send votes via PM (private message). The nominee with the highest votes (minimum of three) is elected onto the council. If there is a tie, tiebreaker is the highest attendance in previous four meetings (additional tiebreakers decided by the host, if required). Only one member can be voted in at a meeting.

Proposed revision from previous meeting(s): Host announces in public the player(s) that are up for a vote. Any Zedlings present can vote via PM. Nominee requires 5 votes to be elected onto the council, two being council members. More than one member can be voted in at a meeting.

Thoughts from the meeting:

What 'minimum' and 'majority' should mean. Anything discussion that starts from a connotative angle, you know is gonna be a doozy. What's a minimum? What's a majority? Are numb3rs ju5t 4 concept keeping us from 0ur tru3 s3lves? This was the first query raised, precipitating the 30 minute circular discussion. I retroactively justify the spanner I throw in the next topic as revenge for Zed doing as devilish a thing as asking for clarity.
Majority. If you need the most votes to win, there should still be a minimum number of votes required, so as to avoid players getting in with a single vote. What should that minimum be? It's currently 3, should it be 5? Generally thought five votes should be fairly achievable, especially with voting open to Zedlings
Minimum. If it's 5, is that in terms of 'total votes cast', or 'votes cast for that Zedling'? What if there's two nominees, and the vote is split between them, causing neither to get in? Generally thought that in the case of more than one nominee, they should be voted on separately (Vote on Zedling 1, then vote on Zedling 2), as opposed to simultaneously (Vote for Zedling 1 OR Zedling 2)
Generally agreed that opening the votes to zedlings seemed democratic - some discussion on whether there needed to be a minimum council member participation in the voting as well as zedling votes
Generally agreed removing the 'one member per meeting voted in' limit seemed sensible, with the caveat that we are close to the member limit as currently stands. There have been prior occasions where there have been 2-4 nominees in a single meeting, so feasibly could have that many new members.

For how close we got to agreeing on things, there was equal parts crosstalk, kerfuffle and confusion. It was kicked to the forums, for discussion, again.
If you have taken the time to read these notes, please consider you probably care enough to post some thoughts in the pre-agenda so that next meeting, when this comes up again, 4th time running, we'll get somewhere with it. If we're going to change a system because it's complicated, it's kind of required that the new system be less complicated. See you there? Love ya lots. :D
That was topic 1 of 6.

Topic 2: Oh good, more voting - Zedwick

Another star of the pre-agenda! that was barely discussed at the pre-agenda. whoopsy.

Proposal: That all topics that need to be voted on should be posted on the pre-agenda, discussed and voted on at the following meeting so that no big changes happen while people are absent.

This was quickly, enthusiastically agreed to by multiple people, but there was a spanner from topic 1 to be thrown in the words - if a council member sees a topic is up for a vote in a pre-agenda, and know they are not going to be present at the meeting the vote takes place in, can they register their vote in the pre-agenda? ...well, probably, yeah? But if they're absentee-voting on a thing, what if discussion at the meeting causes people to change their mind on what is being voted on? ....well, then it'd probably have to go back to the forum? What if things get stuck in a loop? A topic going to the forum multiple times would be totally uncharted territory for the council, after all.

In the spirit of this proposed process, we tried to agree on wording to be posted in the pre-agenda of the next meeting, for discussion. The wording was revised slightly to the following:

If a vote is called during a meeting, the wording of the vote must be clarified and noted by scribe to be posted on the pre-agenda to be voted on during the following meeting.
If a vote is posted on the pre-agenda, council members may post their vote on the forum to be tallied in their absence in the meeting.
If a vote is called from the pre-agenda, and through debate the wording of that vote is changed, in the case where members have posted their vote via the forum then the vote must be sent back to the forums to allow absent members to alter their vote.

Some members thought it was a bit too wordy, there was some kerfuffle Dax diplomatically suggested could be resolved with some post-meeting murdergames. Wording was then revised again to the below:

If a topic needs to be voted on, council agree the wording of the vote with the scribe, who posts it in the pre-agenda for the next meeting. Any members who will be absent at that meeting may register their vote on the pre-agenda.
If the wording of a vote is changed during the meeting from how it is written on the pre-agenda, and an absent council member has submitted their vote on the pre-agenda, then the new wording for the vote must be submitted to the next pre-agenda, to be voted on in the following meeting.

This will be submitted on the pre-agenda for discussion, to be voted on at the next meeting. Whew!

Later, it was suggested a simpler idea would be doing pass/fail votes. It goes through, or it doesn't. This seemed a little too black and white for councils general preference for finessing a thing to within an inch of its life.

Topic 3: Good ol' Pet, not a voting topic - Pettmol

Pett had a question on client-side mods - one he was looking at shows images of what's inside your shulkerbox, instead of the normal text.
Zed's response: 'we do not allow mods which provide you an in-game advantage...so cosmetic mods (shares, etc.), yes. Minimaps, inventory sorting, etc., no." Optifine is an exception, though he frowns upon the use of dynamic lighting/zoom. Pett's particular example (showing images in your shulker instead of text) would not be allowed on the server, so Pett isn't gonna download it. GG Pett. Later Zed also clarified that having Forge is okay; it makes no gameplay changes without forge mods installed
On behalf of us not-so-tech-savvy, Dave thankfully asked what a client-side mod was. It's a mod installed on your computer that doesn't require any modification on the server to run.

If you're not sure if a mod is okay to use, check with Zed!

Topic 4: Tasty treats, birthday bash - AlyCatMeow

Aly took the floor, handed everyone multiple cookies, and announced the LVS birthday party! Our server is turning a big ol' six years old on October 25th, so she's throwing a party. She's gonna post a forum thread with the details and also there'll be a notification in-game. Woo party time!
If you have cake-making materials, let her know - there's a lot of cake about the place! Forum thread is here: [Clicky]

Topic 5: Llama llama bamboo cactus - Dax23333

Dax has been busy with his redstone magics, and made a cactus/bamboo-powered XP farm, he thinks there's a chance it could be an xp-farm alternative to the ender ender (vegan-friendly xp)! Concerns were raised on lag potential of a farm like this - the lag would depend on size, but he would have it set up so that there wasn't a whole bunch of items/moving parts existing in the world.
What he needs is our help, to work out whether this farm could compete with the ender farm, and how big it would need to be to do it.
If you're using the enderfarm, please make a note of how fast the farm is producing XP, and send it over to dax, so he can rattle his abacus!
It was also mentioned the BoneYard was broken again. PSA: If you use the boneyard, pleaaaase don't leave until the sweepers are safely docked. If you leave early, they get stuck and don't reset until someone manually rebuilds them. It's a right pain for them. Be a dear, wait until the coast is clear.
People also kept mentioning a llama in chat. If it was salient to the topic, it passed me by completely. Much like that llama, probably.

Topic 6: Zed teases a potential thing - Zedwick

Leading the question with a warning not to take it as indication it'd happen, Zed asked whether there'd be interest in having a creative-mode server space available to work on collaborative designs and suchlike. Several people enthusiastically registered their interest. WorldEdit was brought up as a suggestion, which was taken on board, with caveats that there may need to be restrictions so people don't accidentally type the wrong command and wipe out something else on the map.
He then asked whether we'd want to explore snapshots together - a snapshot server that resets constantly, not really intended for serious playing, but more exploration. This was also met with much enthusiasm.

He reiterated these wouldn't be things that could be offered in the new future, but he can now ponder on it some more

Announcementz

LVS Birthday Bash - 25th October, forum thread [Clicky] has further details
Casual Buildathon - 27th of October. Start 4PM-9PM GMT. Note GMT, not BST - the UK clocks go back in the wee hour of Sunday 27th, so it'll be an hour earlier than players across the pond will be expecting. Beware!
No Halloween event, as of yet, but watch this space - ABP is plotting something. *oooooooo*

Nominations/Next Meeting

No nominations, Dave5400 volunteered to host the next meeting, see you theeen!