Proposal - EN World downtime does not count towards 48 h proposal deadlines

Dunamin · Jul 20, 2009

As most of you probably noticed, EN World crashed and was down for more than a day and a half. Before it crashed, a proposal was in line to pass unless another vote would be cast against it. By the time EN World was back up, the 48 hour period in which the outcome could be swayed ran out.

Based on JoeNotCharles’ suggestion, I’d like to make an addition to the charter to ensure that proposals are not resolved by “well-timed” site crashes.

L4W Facilitator said:
When that condition has been met for 48 hours, the proposal passes and becomes part of the official rules. If a proposal receives at least 3 NO votes, and NO votes outnumber YES votes by at least two for a period of 48 hours, the proposal fails and the matter is closed.

To the above paragraph, I propose the following addition:

“In case of a site crash or similar long-term inaccessibility to L4W, the 48 hour period is reset upon access being restored.”

elecgraystone · Jul 20, 2009

I don't know if I like a total reset. Say a proposal is 46 out of the 48 hours it need to pass, then enworld is out for a day and a half THEN the poor guy that wants to see his proposal waits another 48 hours? So it's a 5 1/2 day wait?

I think I'd be more in favor of a grace period of 24 hour after the boards come back up would work better IMO.

Kalidrev · Jul 20, 2009

I don't think it should be a hard-limit of time. I think if the site goes down, you should simply have the remainder of whatever time was left. I.e. If 36 hours passes after the last vote and En world goes down, you should have the remaining 12 hours to continue voting. Having only 24 hours after Enworld crashing immediately after the last vote is cast wouldn't necessarily be fair, nor would resetting the 48 hours if it was only 8 hours left in the voting time.

elecgraystone · Jul 20, 2009

Ok, I see I read the word 'reset' wrong. Not counting time the server is down would be ok. We'll need something/someone that tells us around when the server goes off/comes back on though. I know I can't tell you that info from the last outage.

JoeNotCharles · Jul 21, 2009

The only problem in extending the deadline by the length of the outage is figuring out exactly how long the outage is. Did it go out when there were 6 hours left or only 4? I favour just extending it by 24 hours. Or maybe, "For every 24 hours or fraction thereof that enworld is inaccessible due to server outages, the deadline is extended by 24 hours." Or 12 hours. I think 6 hours is too fine-grained, though.

Another option is to allow judges to vote by mailing the judges lists, with the understanding that when the boards come back up someone will publish all the votes that happened on the list. Actually, I think this is a good idea anyway, so that judges can vote if they personally can't get to the boards even if the boards are up. (For instance, I was just on a train with cell service but no wireless for 10 hours, so before I left I wrote down all the Dragon proposals so I could read the magazines while I was travelling. If voting on the mailing list was allowed, I could have voted with my Blackberry, if I had a Blackberry.)

Anyway,
YES on restting the deadline.
YES on extending the deadline by 24 hours in case of a server crash.
YES on extending the deadline by the duration of the crash.
YES on "For every 24 hours or fraction thereof that enworld is inaccessible due to server outages, the deadline is extended by 24 hours."
YES on "For every 12 hours or fraction thereof that enworld is inaccessible due to server outages, the deadline is extended by 12 hours."
YES on allowing the judges to vote on proposals by emailing l4w.judges when the server is inaccessible.
YES on allowing the judges to vote on proposals by emailing l4w.judges, even if the server is accessible.

Don't know when I'll have time to post again, want to be sure I've covered all the bases.

covaithe · Jul 21, 2009

elecgraystone said:
Ok, I see I read the word 'reset' wrong. Not counting time the server is down would be ok. We'll need something/someone that tells us around when the server goes off/comes back on though. I know I can't tell you that info from the last outage.

I don't know how to answer this question, either, and it's an important one.

I'd rather err on the side of letting the judges get their say and passing things a bit more slowly, rather than rushing the process because players are eager to use things. This is PbP after all; a day or two here and there is small potatoes.

Dunamin · Jul 21, 2009

covaithe said:
I'd rather err on the side of letting the judges get their say and passing things a bit more slowly, rather than rushing the process because players are eager to use things. This is PbP after all; a day or two here and there is small potatoes.

I agree.

From the moment a new source of character options is published, it takes more than 90 days before it is open for proposal on L4W. Even with discussion throughout those 3 months, all proposals so far have still taken longer to resolve. In effect, 48 hours essentially always constitute less than 2% of the total time it takes for new content to get through.

Its not a big deal: A little patience is a small price to pay to get things right.

The first and last 2 suggestions by Joe are also ok by me, however. I'm not too hot on extending time based on server downtime, though - if EN World is down for 2 weeks, it does seem excessive to wait 2 weeks for a proposal to pass.

JoeNotCharles · Jul 21, 2009

Never thought about that - guess I was too hasty. Revised votes:

YES on restting the deadline.
YES on extending the deadline by 24 hours in case of a server crash.
NO on extending the deadline by the duration of the crash.
NO on "For every 24 hours or fraction thereof that enworld is inaccessible due to server outages, the deadline is extended by 24 hours."
NO on "For every 12 hours or fraction thereof that enworld is inaccessible due to server outages, the deadline is extended by 12 hours."
YES on allowing the judges to vote on proposals by emailing l4w.judges when the server is inaccessible.
YES on allowing the judges to vote on proposals by emailing l4w.judges, even if the server is accessible.

elecgraystone · Jul 21, 2009

How about we combine #1 and #2 then? Have it default to to 24 hours and if any judges think a full 48 hours is needed, all they have to do is post that and it gets extended to 48 hours.

That way we can move things along if the votes are already in or the debate is over but if things aren't resolved yet we can have the extra time. Sound fair?