RenDezvous Rules and Regulations

[Scotsman]

All:

1. You will get to vote

2. Your vote will count, fear not

3. We have plenty of time to work the issues

Passions are high ... and that is a good thing!

Just be patient, we will get this sorted out.
*move along, nothing to see here ... 

[Aaroncois]

You already know my opinion on the 25 post rule, especially for members that have been on the boards since the crash.   Maybe we should make it so you need 100 votes or 500 and then only those really active members can vote or you can only vote if you have an R/F pin.  Oh wait, we can come up with a better voting law, lets see, we live in a country that has already worked out most of the bugs.  If your registered before the voting day....you should be allowed to vote.

The problem with this is that voter fraud is 100x easier on the internet than it is in a public government election. I could easily (not that I would) create dozens or hundreds of new email addresses, register on the forum, and vote. And I don't have any special Internet super-powers that average joes would lack. If the goal is that actual forum members each get a maximum of one vote, then requiring them to demonstrate that they're actual forum participants (by having a minimum post count) is a pretty common way of doing that. The low post count is enough to deter fraud, but few enough not to be a deterrent to a genuine member who really wants to vote. I believe I subscribed to the forum about a week before the voting started, and had to make a minimal (but real) effort to reach my 25 posts. It might be an inconvenience to dedicated lurkers who really really really don't want to post anything, but unless some sort of measure is put into place, rampant vote fraud is a very real alternative.

My $.02 anyway. No passions running high here, as it's unlikely that I'll ever attend a rendezvous. But an exercise in democracy such as this can easily turn from something fun into something that angers and alienates people if it's not perceived to be fair.

[Welsh Wench]

I think it is great that we all get ONE vote.
I'd hate to have it hand-picked for me and told 'THIS is where we are having it.'

As in all things, MAJORITY RULES.

[Tygrkat]

   One idea for criteria for voting eligibility could be to look at a minimum post count, OR length of (post crash) forum membership, whichever is greater, for individuals who want to participate in the voting.
   If I am understanding correctly, the reason for having voter eligibility rules is so that active members, who would be more likely to participate in said event, make the decision as to where the event will be held. So, I think saying one needs X number of posts (to include newer members who are really excited and enthusiastic), OR to have been a member for X amount of time ( to include members who are enthusiastic participants, but may have limited Internet access, may prefer to just read the forum but love going to Faire, or may just be super busy or kinda shy). 

   I think hashing out which Faires are eligible & how often may prove to be a stickier matter, but which members and how the votes are cast (openly, in a voting thread, opened and lockable for tallying by the RenDezvous Mods seems fair to me) SHOULD be relatively straigtforward...

Wenchie, I agree ~ it's good to get to be a part of the process, especially when it's done fairly and respectfully

[Lupa]

I would be hesitant on only letting people vote because of X number of posts.  Since this site does not include the old sites posting numbers, that could be unfair.  Would be better to go by member for X number of time but only if that carried over from the old site.

I honestly do not get on here and post as often as I would like, but I have been a member over 2 years...

Just my 2 cents

[Yrose]

I really don't think 25 post is too many. I don't have alot of time to get on here and don't post often, but even I have that many. It would help to keep from some fraudulent voting

[Lady_Glorianna]

At the time, the discussion regarding time interval between faires centered on the fact that the purpose of the gathering is to get as many people as possible to the rendezvous. We had settled on at least 8 to 10 mo between gathering to give people the opprtunity to recover financially and save up from one Rendezvous to the other. The thought again was that most people were not in a position to go to Rendezvous in N. Dakota and 3 or 4 mo later turn around and go to rendezvous in S. Carolina (locations are for argument's sake)

[Lady Renee Buchanan]

I do agree with the 25 posts requirement.  RenDezvous is a time for forum members to get together, meet each other, and generally have a good time.  I think it's fair (no pun intended) for members who are continually active and supporting this forum to be the ones who choose where they want to gather the next time round. 

After all, if we are the ones putting the time and effort into reading the threads and posting into them, then why should someone who doesn't make the same effort (and really, 25 posts isn't hard) be able to help decide where the group will meet in the future?

My two cents.....

[Gauwyn of Bracknell]

I do agree with the 25 posts requirement.  RenDezvous is a time for forum members to get together, meet each other, and generally have a good time.  I think it's fair (no pun intended) for members who are continually active and supporting this forum to be the ones who choose where they want to gather the next time round. 

After all, if we are the ones putting the time and effort into reading the threads and posting into them, then why should someone who doesn't make the same effort (and really, 25 posts isn't hard) be able to help decide where the group will meet in the future?

My two cents.....

maybe it should be your 25 cents    <-- note smiley

[angusmacinnes]

I have to agree with Lady Renee also.   

[Cobaltblu]

I think the 25 vote rule is fine.

If you want voter anonymity make a requirement where all votes have to be renmailed to a Moderator and they count the votes.  That way everyone could vote any way they want without anyone looking over their shoulder and would eliminate any politics like "Why didn't you vote for this faire or that faire???" because everyone would have plausible deniability and could say "I did vote for this faire".

Of course the voters couldn't independently count the vote but we couldn't do that with the previous poll either, but I trust the integrity of the Moderators.  Perhaps require all votes to be simultaneously mailed to two different Moderators.

The combination of a vote count requirement and mailing all votes to a Moderator would be the closest thing to how actual elections are done in real life.  Of course no one should be able to appeal the results to the supreme court on here.   

Regards,

CB

[LadyJessica]

OK too k me a while to write this as I had to jog my memory a bit but...

Quote Lairde Guardn MCrack

If memory serves me correctly, the run offs happened during the 1st and 2nd Rendevous.  Although I might be a bit hazy as to the reasoning behind it at the time, but it may have been because of the numbers of faires or that no faire garnered a 50% or more vote for the event.  But there were run-offs in the past.   I do seem to remember the arguement went on about no faire having the 50% or more but I don't think that happened the last two years.

With that said, there was also suppose to be a discussion and (I thought) a vote on the rules for future rendevous at one time.  I am guessing the discussion and vote got caught up in the change when the old board crashed and expected it to come around again, and it just was overlooked.  Then as we prepared for this year a set of rules just appeared, which I believe was one version that was to be discussed and was never in stone, and if you can tell from my post, I personally do not think the current rules are fair and a larger problem having them dictated to me and changed at will, but at least they are a set of rules. 

There was a discussion, several in fact, on the topic of how the voting should be run.  The topic was over with before the old site crashed though.  The rules did not just appear, they were in place before the '08 vote.   If you look at the very first line of the rules you'll see where I thank Escarlata for finding the rules for me as my hard drive had crashed just before the site so I had lost them completely.   I read every single one of the rules discussion posts, including the threads that got removed because the discussion got out of hand, and created the rules that are now in place.  I posted it to the mods and had them talk about it and tweak them before I ever posted them for the members to see.  When I posted the rules in the old site, by and large, most people had no issues with them.  Right now they have not been changed since they were in place on the old site, the mods are talking over if and what rules need to be changed right now.

Having been active in every Rendevous vote since the first, and very active in many of the rules discussions in the past, I would have enjoyed the debate and the voting of the "official rules"...and trying to keep them faire for everyone.

I know that at one time some of the proposed rules were

"that once an area of the country had a rendevous, that area would not be eligible until all other areas had one or failed to propose a faire in another area, then an area that already had one could apply"   That would make the 2010 Rendevous having to have a faire out of the Northeast, Northwest or West, and since there were two faires eligible with hosts for those regions, a region that already had the faire would not have been eligible.

This idea would have worked if we knew that there'd be people willing to host the event.  We didn't want to get it down to one section and have no one willing to host any of the faires in that section.  If we use the four year rotation then there will always be four sections to chose from, if you are willing to host a faire that's 1,000 miles away from you then you can do that, most people will host a faire close to them.  I would love to see a faire in California or Washington get a RenDezvous but we'd have to have people willing to host them. 

4 Yr rotation
2006 – abcdefg   2007 – abcdef   2008 – abcde   2009 – abcd   2010 – gabc   2011 – fgab

Yes we know that some sections will inevitability continue to get the vote but unless there's someone from that section willing to host I don't see why we have to open it for those sections only, then if no one comes forward, open it up a second time.

"There was also a proposed rule that a state could not have one again for a period of time"  But this one just vanished  (this rule was put in so that the dominating states would have to support another faire in their region outside of their home state if that region was put up again). 
I would like to know where the 4 year rule was pulled out of........

I do not recall there ever being a discussion about the state not having a RenDezvous again; there was a discussion however about the FAIRE not having the RenDezvous again.   Many people thought that that wasn't fair so we did not keep that.

I would also like to know what happened to the rule that there would be at least 8 to 10 months between each rendevous.....and that if you did not fall in that time frame you were ineligible......

There was a discussion about that and after the second or third RenDezvous we felt that that wasn't a good thing to have as it may leave us with faires that no one was willing to host or with small faires in the middle of the hottest/coldest times of the year.  Or that would mean having two RenDezvous in the same year.  We felt that having one a year was best.

(This rule I know was enforced because it was enforced against my proposed faire, when all the work I had done for NCRF to host a rendevous was cast aside in the vote in 2008 when it did not fall in the "time frame" as we were to early in the year, also CRF could not run because it ran to late in the year and so the only faire from the region eligible to run that had volunteers was Tennessee.  Then NCRF or CRF could not run in 2009 although NCRF would have been in the right time frame, our region won in 2008.......).  Now it seems the time frame does not matter at all, but who made that decision and when and why it was made still eludes me. 

The decision was made by the mods and members as a whole some time after the 2nd or 3rd RenDezvous.  For the why please see my previous statement.

I know at the original discussions that it had already been determined that two states dominate the "active" membership of the boards......and with the rules as they are now, we will wind up going to the same two states every 4 years.  Which means all other areas of the country or the other 48 states will get to fight over the other two years in between.

Just because those two sections can be in the running again does not mean that they'll be picked repeatedly.

You already know my opinion on the 25 post rule, especially for members that have been on the boards since the crash.   Maybe we should make it so you need 100 votes or 500 and then only those really active members can vote or you can only vote if you have an R/F pin.  Oh wait, we can come up with a better voting law, lets see, we live in a country that has already worked out most of the bugs.  If your registered before the voting day....you should be allowed to vote.


{{Climbs down off the soap box and heads back to having FUN}}
End Quote

(Takes the soapbox and hides it.  )

[Lairde Guardn]

The new post will be the color green....the black is the original post, the red is the answer from the mod to my post.   And although I found the answer a little disturbing, I am not going to press the issue any more after this post unless there is an open discussion and a membership vote brought up on the Rules for Rendevous.

With that said, there was also suppose to be a discussion and (I thought) a vote on the rules for future rendevous at one time.  I am guessing the discussion and vote got caught up in the change when the old board crashed and expected it to come around again, and it just was overlooked.  Then as we prepared for this year a set of rules just appeared, which I believe was one version that was to be discussed and was never in stone, and if you can tell from my post, I personally do not think the current rules are fair and a larger problem having them dictated to me and changed at will, but at least they are a set of rules. 

There was a discussion, several in fact, on the topic of how the voting should be run.  The topic was over with before the old site crashed though.  The rules did not just appear, they were in place before the '08 vote.   If you look at the very first line of the rules you'll see where I thank Escarlata for finding the rules for me as my hard drive had crashed just before the site so I had lost them completely.   I read every single one of the rules discussion posts, including the threads that got removed because the discussion got out of hand, and created the rules that are now in place.  I posted it to the mods and had them talk about it and tweak them before I ever posted them for the members to see.  When I posted the rules in the old site, by and large, most people had no issues with them.  Right now they have not been changed since they were in place on the old site, the mods are talking over if and what rules need to be changed right now.

Yes I agree that there were discussions on how voting would be run, but there was never a vote on the rules themselfs.  The decision was made by you and the mods which rules would be in place without the vote of the membership.  The discusions were leading to a vote which never happened.

Having been active in every Rendevous vote since the first, and very active in many of the rules discussions in the past, I would have enjoyed the debate and the voting of the "official rules"...and trying to keep them faire for everyone.

I know that at one time some of the proposed rules were

"that once an area of the country had a rendevous, that area would not be eligible until all other areas had one or failed to propose a faire in another area, then an area that already had one could apply"   That would make the 2010 Rendevous having to have a faire out of the Northeast, Northwest or West, and since there were two faires eligible with hosts for those regions, a region that already had the faire would not have been eligible.

This idea would have worked if we knew that there'd be people willing to host the event.  We didn't want to get it down to one section and have no one willing to host any of the faires in that section.  If we use the four year rotation then there will always be four sections to chose from, if you are willing to host a faire that's 1,000 miles away from you then you can do that, most people will host a faire close to them.  I would love to see a faire in California or Washington get a RenDezvous but we'd have to have people willing to host them. 

4 Yr rotation
2006 – abcdefg   2007 – abcdef   2008 – abcde   2009 – abcd   2010 – gabc   2011 – fgab

Yes we know that some sections will inevitability continue to get the vote but unless there's someone from that section willing to host I don't see why we have to open it for those sections only, then if no one comes forward, open it up a second time.

The proposed rule that no area can have it again would have worked if it was kept, since even now, we have two faires (one from the east and one from the west) that offered to host.  So why are we offering it to areas that have already had a rendevous?  I still say the rule should be if your area has already had one, you can not run again until we are out of areas or no one in a area that has not had one does not have a host, then you can open it up to all areas again.  Again this should have been voted on by the membership.

"There was also a proposed rule that a state could not have one again for a period of time"  But this one just vanished  (this rule was put in so that the dominating states would have to support another faire in their region outside of their home state if that region was put up again). 
I would like to know where the 4 year rule was pulled out of........

I do not recall there ever being a discussion about the state not having a RenDezvous again; there was a discussion however about the FAIRE not having the RenDezvous again.   Many people thought that that wasn't fair so we did not keep that.

There was a discussion on the states as I was involved in it as well, it was to ensure that other states in an area (lets use the example of Texas.....Texas has already had a rendevous, if the area is up to run again, then it should have to come from one of the states in the area that have not already hosted one, like LA, or OK but at least one of the other 5 states in that area...The original idea of the Rendevous was to try to get to many different faires in many different states...with the voting block that is currently in place, we could very possibly be in Texas every 4th year.....But again the rule was never voted on, just tossed out.

I would also like to know what happened to the rule that there would be at least 8 to 10 months between each rendevous.....and that if you did not fall in that time frame you were ineligible......

There was a discussion about that and after the second or third RenDezvous we felt that that wasn't a good thing to have as it may leave us with faires that no one was willing to host or with small faires in the middle of the hottest/coldest times of the year.  Or that would mean having two RenDezvous in the same year.  We felt that having one a year was best.

Well I guess I know what happened there when NCRF wanted to run but it was a small faire offering April in North Carolina....I did not know until your response that small faires were not welcome to the rendevous process......

(This rule I know was enforced because it was enforced against my proposed faire, when all the work I had done for NCRF to host a rendevous was cast aside in the vote in 2008 when it did not fall in the "time frame" as we were to early in the year, also CRF could not run because it ran to late in the year and so the only faire from the region eligible to run that had volunteers was Tennessee.  Then NCRF or CRF could not run in 2009 although NCRF would have been in the right time frame, our region won in 2008.......).  Now it seems the time frame does not matter at all, but who made that decision and when and why it was made still eludes me. 

The decision was made by the mods and members as a whole some time after the 2nd or 3rd RenDezvous.  For the why please see my previous statement.

The members did not vote on the rules...although it was kept long enough to keep that small faire from running

I know at the original discussions that it had already been determined that two states dominate the "active" membership of the boards......and with the rules as they are now, we will wind up going to the same two states every 4 years.  Which means all other areas of the country or the other 48 states will get to fight over the other two years in between.

Just because those two sections can be in the running again does not mean that they'll be picked repeatedly.

You already know my opinion on the 25 post rule, especially for members that have been on the boards since the crash.   Maybe we should make it so you need 100 votes or 500 and then only those really active members can vote or you can only vote if you have an R/F pin.  Oh wait, we can come up with a better voting law, lets see, we live in a country that has already worked out most of the bugs.  If your registered before the voting day....you should be allowed to vote.

I guess the following two statements repeated from above said all I needed to know.  With the voting block that these two sections have and the mods being mainly from those sections and the ones that selected what rules we have.....I guess its OK

I read every single one of the rules discussion posts, including the threads that got removed because the discussion got out of hand, and created the rules that are now in place.  I posted it to the mods and had them talk about it and tweak them before I ever posted them for the members to see.

Yes we know that some sections will inevitability continue to get the vote but unless there's someone from that section willing to host I don't see why we have to open it for those sections only, then if no one comes forward, open it up a second time.

Yes, I know that a vote by the membership may very well select the same rules we already have, but it still should have a discussion and each rule voted on.

[LadyJessica]

Please see:

http://www.renaissancefestival.com/forums/index.php?topic=7523.0

[Carl Heinz]

As a fairly new member, I'd find it to be very beneficial if there were a listing of the locations of previous RenDevous.

Reference the comment about problems with hosting at California events, I've worked fairly closely as a volunteer with the marketing folks at RPFS and, I suspect, they would be very interested.  They have a relationship with one of the local hotels (Doubletree) which provides a van service to the Faire.

I suspect this last bit really isn't appropriate for this particular thread so please email me if you'd like me to explore further.