Structure

[Leipziger]

Still waking up, Phil. Amended.

[speedingbullet]

The Charter and the elected Committee should go hand in hand i.e. the Charter would set out how Team England operates including the remit for the Captain and the remit for the Committee.

The Charter should allow the Committee to make all the normal decisions required by Team England (except those reserved by the Charter for the Captain). However, the Charter should not allow the Committee to change the Charter. Instead the Committee should be allowed to propose new versions of the Charter for acceptance or rejection by community vote.

The way forward could be to vote for the Committee members on the understanding that the first job for the Committee would be to write a new Charter that the community would then vote to accept or reject. The Committee could (and should) choose to consult the community on a draft of the new Charter prior to putting it to the vote.

[Pipey]

My concern is that a committee elected with a fixed brief of "2009 base, 67% community vote required to change" would be entrenching the status quo even further rather than responding to calls for change.

Electing a committee with freedom to decide how best to proceed based on all the available information (not bound by any specific rules), that I can get behind.

The way forward could be to vote for the Committee members on the understanding that the first job for the Committee would be to write a new Charter that the community would then vote to accept or reject. The Committee could (and should) choose to consult the community on a draft of the new Charter prior to putting it to the vote.

This sort of thing makes sense. I imagine committee candidates would engage in a Q&A process allowing them to give their ideas on a way forward.

[Joemanji]

How is it more 'democratic' to throw out the charter that every single person has implicitly agreed to for almost a decade just because one person feels like it?

[lunchmoney]

How is it more 'democratic' to throw out the charter that every single person has implicitly agreed to for almost a decade just because one person feels like it?

Brexit?

[mubo]

I think it would be helpful to think of this as two distinct things, (as Phil clearly pointed out in the first line of this thread.)

Charter:
- describes _structure_ of TE and creates framework for community engagement. (This is the main point of thread).

Selection doc:
- describes who is eligible for captaincy
- describes who is eligible to play for TE
- describes how team is selected

A committee wouldn't be able to change a charter- but should be able to change the selection document.

[speedingbullet]

How is it more 'democratic' to throw out the charter that every single person has implicitly agreed to for almost a decade just because one person feels like it?

The ideas we're talking about have lots of democracy built into them i.e. the community votes on who is on the committee, then the committee drafts (with consultation) a new Charter. The old Charter would only be superseded if the community then votes to accept the new Charter. So there are two democratic stages to getting from where we are now to a new Charter.

In addition, there seems to be lots of support for the core of the existing Charter. So the new Charter could well be an evolution of the existing document rather than something completely different.

In terms of how selection for Team England is carried out, for me this should be a fundamental part of the new Charter.

[Purplegoo]

Indeed (@Nick, ninja'd above. Not indeed there, probably. See above above. ).

While I am warming to the committee idea as a structure, I'm probably at something approaching a northern spring day (so not blisteringly hot, yet). I don't actually think they would have that much to do, so electing four while we're in a fallow year next year then having a rolling two in / two out system every two years is probably a reasonable effort to return ratio, where a captain makes five.

campmark made a few good points regarding the make-up of the thing. I think it's worth considering if we would be happy with a committee made up of the usual suspects. Perhaps it's worth artificially ensuring diversity in committee membership, rather than leaving it as a free-for-all election. Perhaps it would simply be democracy in action and we'd all have to promise to lump it for two years.

The great strength of the idea (although this is hopefully true of whatever structure is ultimately settled on) is that we'd have a body just making infrequent, sensible decisions without arduous, infinite forum wrangling. I'm personally super fatigued of fighting 'the good fight' on TE matters - I remember the three votes last year particularly unkindly. It took forever to decide what to vote on, how to vote on it and some people are clearly unsatisfied with how it ended up anyway. As per the OP, I've found the last two months uncomfortable and perhaps this proposed structure solves all that too. Perhaps I'll upgrade to a Wigan heatwave, thinking about all of that.

[campmark]

From what I can gather there are two seperate issues, the committee (if that is the way forward) and what they then do. I think for a committee to be effective they need to be in the postition for a number of years, 4 always seems to be a workable number. Maybe have it that the same person can only run two terms then they must step back for a term. Stop any shenanigans akin to FIFA.

It seems like the old Charter could be considered outdated, but from reading between the lines does still hold some valid points. Somebody made a brexit reference earlier. Maybe we can use the idea of adopting and adapting old European laws into British laws in this case. Make the old charter more suitable for the current way of things.

It is clear to me that the first thing that needs resolving is who is going to be responsible for any changes being made. If there isn't any person or group in charge now how can anything be done?

[Leipziger]

@campmark agreed re: resolving who would guide the process.

Geoff (@podfrey) outlined three choices for this:

1) Annually elected individual (possibly the TE Captain)
2) A 3 or 5 person elected committee
3) All decisions to be voted on via TFF votes.

Geoff also favoured these individuals being governed by a new charter (unless I’ve misread that, Geoff). Amending the charter (if that’s required/desired) before choosing who is going to guide process going forwards seems to me to be the wrong way around.

So, should we put the above options to the vote? Perhaps allow another week for people to add in any further options/amendments if they feel anything has been missed, and then get a voting thread sorted.

[CircusBear]

Some interesting discussion being generated here (yes I have been bored an lunchtime and read the full thread )

I think the 3 points regarding the way forward that Podfrey collated (and highlighted by Leipziger above) seem to be a fairly sensible next step now that the first step of getting the discussions going has been made.

I am a little apprehensive about the idea of committee control, as I think it could end up being accused of similar issues that have been levelled at the current captain selection process, although I think this is me looking at this from a (slightly) pessimistic perspective, so I will temper my concern right now. I think there would definitely need to be a discussion around length of term on any committee/selection of members, if that was decided as the way forward, but that is a discussion for a future thread I feel.

I think whichever way forward is decided, I personally believe a key is allowing anyone (active) within the community to table an amendment (or at least highlight a clause/section which they would like to be held up for review). I think this can be enabled on forums, use of a specific thread which states the clause that someone would like reviewed (including their proposal on new wording/concept?) this would need a set number of replies of 'support' (perhaps within a set time period) a mod could then lock the thread and collate these into a stickied post of 'current proposed modifications'. Which could then be voted on, more work for mods I know but I wouldn't have thought it would be that much extra.

Anyway that's just some brief thoughts of mine, so I will slink back to lurking again

[Purplegoo]

Good plan I think, Alex. However, for the sake of clarity, I think the options will likely need a bit more detail included when we come to vote; there have been a bunch of ideas in the thread. As an example, I’m personally not interested in the slightest in an annually elected committee that is there to decide what we as a community vote on, but a four year term body who make decisions for us? That I’m warming up to. I think we should make that jump in one step, rather than vote in (e.g.) option one and then decide what the captain is there to do later - set up votes or make decisions alone.

On victory conditions (sorry...), while I favour the 67 % supermajority system for adding to or changing things as a community, here we are moving from anarchy to a structure, and that may be too stringent a requirement for anything to happen in one, three option vote. Similarly, a simple majority isn’t really appropriate; a winning option with 40 % of the vote satisfies no one. I might suggest that, if the winner receives x % of the vote, it wins. If not, we eliminate the bottom option and have a straight runoff?

Stop lurking, CB. Less of that, more thoughtful posting.

[TheDoc]

Hi everyone,

I’m not sure about the 4 year committee. Doesn’t that have the same issue of a minority leading the decisions on TE etc? I suspect it comes down to who is on it the committee.

I like CBs suggestion of active members recommending a change and if it gets enough backing to go to the governing body or community.

When will be putting something forward to vote on?

[nazgob]

A couple of suggestions. The committee is a good idea, but I think it may benefit from some clearly defined roles. e.g

1 experienced tournament organise, 1 inexperienced coach (less than 12 NAF ranked tournaments), 1 online representative, etc.

Then, have a reasonable turnaround of 2 years to stop people getting entrenched. Long service will see everyone in the same mind set. Then, if you can staggerthe elections, you have (near) constant change and good influx of fresh ideas and new blood.

Finally, term limits will be important, e.g no FDR style rule, but a simple limit of 2 terms.

[Pipey]

Are we going to vote to decide whether we need a committee? Or is there enough consensus there already to proceed?