Council of Setons EXPOSED - Part 1
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Hey lads,
I'm new enough here, play a bit but have never really contributed on the forums etc until I started reading some of the stuff from this week.
From an outsiders perspective, (and the perspective of a slightly older than average outsider who's ran a business before), a lot of the back and forth seems to boil down to some more general confusion about how board and management relationships function usually.
I'm not going to launch into a big patronizing Wikipedia style post about it, more so I think maybe somebody with experience as a company secretary could write a formal explainer, this might be something that some of the funds that are there could be used for. Some sort of outside arbitration or structural advice at the beginning of this transition would more than repay itself imho, and quite possibly quell some of the trust issues that are clearly disrupting the process at the moment.
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Yes axel, you are getting to my whole point about there needing to be an understanding between Council and Board about how to approach objectives for FAF. Having the Council pledge to "obey objectives" from the Board is entirely stupid. Councillors "pledge it" and then they just don't implement garbage ideas. Yeah, great point of that pledge.
I'd also like to hear a more in depth explanation of how Danish law works because as far as I know a pledge would only hold relevance in any sort of court as a contract. A contract is by definition civil law. This means the only restitution you are going to get is financial restitution. The intent of financial restitution in the situation of a contract breach is to bring the aggrieved party back to the original state they would be if the contract were not breached.
This is a nonprofit organization. I'm providing volunteer work. There is no exchange of value or productive labor. In what world would any sort of pledge where Board and Council agree to work together hold any legal scrutiny and not just be immediately thrown out. Does Denmark operate on case law? Is there some precedent for this?
If this is truly such a terrifying prospect, then don't make the Board pledge it. The Council will simply pledge to work on mutually agreed upon objectives and an implicit understanding to cooperate with it will exist among the Board.
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Done that a thousand times. We had documents explaining it. Conferences explaining it
we have the rules of the association which are public 
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It is like a sports club dude. It is not that complicated. We all vote a head/board he decides. But in reality he gives most of his power away. But such things are not found in the rules because that makes it inflexible.
Alternative is a private person own everything and he decides(right now the case).
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Ftx,
Just because work is voluntary doesn't mean whoever is providing it isn't bound by the terms of whatever contract, written or just assumed/statutory, just as there is statutory obligations on the side of the organization to the volunteer.
If I were to give my actual opinion on all this stuff going on, I think you're doing a fine job running the show from what I can tell. You're definitely in more of a management role than a player representative role however. I'd imagine, (speaking more in the abstract), the usual way to structure things would be to have a board, as well as a company treasurer, with whom you and the council (essentially the management team) would meet monthly. The council/you would present your plan for the medium to long term, as well as how much cash you need etc, the board would then approve it, and any aurora range issues would be up to you. This is the usual way things work. Only big picture things would really require board intervention. However the board would retain the right to intervene if they, as a majority, felt it was warranted.
There seems to be a lot of basic confusion about "who would be in charge" etc, not nessasarily from you, just around this whole election/this thread.
I'll leave you guys to it, some sort of outside binding arbitration might really do some good though.
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He would like to manage ppl yes you got that right. But that usually ends up with ppl getting upset
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That's fine. All I'm asking is for the acknowledgement that the Council needs to be involved in these "faf planning" decisions because they are the applicators of said decisions and are doing so as volunteers not paid employees. What you outlined is what I have been arguing for over the last few months.
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@ftxcommando said in Council of Setons EXPOSED - Part 1:
"No aurora shooting distance will ever come up here"
Wrong. You cannot guarantee that whatsoever. The only restriction on Board activity is gross and deliberate negligence.
So, hypothetically, because somebody could bring up aurora firing distance in a board meeting; you're going to halt this entire process that I've been working on for the whole year.
Lead me to believe for one second this has nothing to do with your personal motives once again.
What you mean is "I will try to the best of my ability as President to stop these things from happening"
Yeah that's what I mean.
I also mean I did my best to write the statutes to prevent that kind of hypothetical evil from happening in the future.
Your suggestion is still, as far as I understand, to keep the "powers" with me because somehow I'm permanently AFK and therefore that's OK.
Do you have a better suggestion outside of the board and the association binding themselves to responding to your personal wishes?
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My better suggestion was combining Council and Board into a singular authority so that the people handling the day-to-day administration and connected to the contributive teams of FAF are also responsible for the long-term direction of the project.
No, this doesn't mean you need to define anything about the Council in the statutes.
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How about we add this little
"The board will when able work with community members to better facilitate community events, interactions and otherwise within the general management of the FAF community"
Properly could be better legalese writing. To avoid issue of legalness discussed in todays meeting.
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This story is soooon old. Well it is the decision of the owner of the LLC which wants to get rid of his liabilities connected to the LLC. And this thing is way older than your involvement in FAF.
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Stop talking down to me, axel. You're in a thread about my toxicity and have now tried your best to inflame me in two separate posts in sequence.
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A large part of the role of the board would usually be to replace the management if they felt there was grounds, either through underperformce or disciplinary issues, (including around issues of company image etc).
The whole point is that the people coming up with and implementing the ideas are not the same ones responsible for evaluating them. This is really the key point.
Also, the idea that the head of the council should be elected, rather than appointed, is a little strange, but whatever.
Honestly, you guys don't need to keep trying to reinvent the wheel on a forum, these structures are pretty tried and tested, for good reason
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Like I said you all seem very passionate and capable though, the mistrust is something that unfortunately has been allowed to develop, I think some perspective on how much you've all achieved working together may be helpful
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I was not at the preliminary(no time at the date) meeting of the association but there members voted on the rules. It was publically announced and everybody was invited.
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Last thing, I think it was BRNK who raised it, the issue of unprofessional language/behaviour anywhere near anything even semi official is a pretty basic thing lads.
Doesn't cost anything to speak to each other like it actually is a real company, you'd be amazed how many misunderstandings and slights it might prevent
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What you're trying to do is great though, fair play to everyone involved
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Dear @nine2 , it has been about a day since I asked you about the timing of this post and I havent received an answer yet https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1695/council-of-setons-exposed-part-1/48 (or did I miss it?). In case I did not miss your answer, please consider answering my question or give me an ETA when you will answer it (if you you have to give an ETA, I would like to hear a reason for the delay aswell, if possible, since you still have the ttime to make posts on the forum).
Please keep in mind, that, as long as you fail providing a satisfying answer, I will have provide the answer myself, which means I either have to assume that you are not interested in admittting a misstake on your side, or you are not interested in communicating in general, or (the worst case) your post was not aimed to contribute to the debate in a productive way, adressing the topic of toxidity in general and especially in ftxcommando's conduct, but only to lower his chances in the election as much as possible.
Either of these conclusions does not show professional conduct from your side (to various degrees), to a degree which I do not think to be acceptable for a councillor.I hope you can explain your actions and clean up any possible doubts and missunderstandings. In case it was a mistake on your side, I think it would be helpfull for everyone, if you could explain what consequences you drew from it and how these conclusions will influence your future conduct, to regain the confidence in your ability to manage your role as a councillor with the distance and reasonability it requires.
P.S. From my perspective the issue of you showing inappropriate conduct in your role as councillor keeps getting even more urgent with your conduct in this thread https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1712/curbing-toxicity-in-faf/6 . I wish to stress that no other councillor showed siding towards a single party in the election as clear as this (as far as I remember, please correct me if I am wrong so I can ask them aswell to explain their conduct):
"A dozen very loud angry voices have united recently to take me down about my strong stance on toxicity. But we have ten thousand active players.
If you are done with all the attitude in FAF, show it with your vote on election day."
This statement is not neutral. It lacks any broad reasoning for your position, deliberating why you support the person you are supporting.
I hope you can, in addition to providing reasoning to the timing of your post also provide a reasoning why you think this conduct is justified. If your position on what the the role and conduct of a councillor are supposed to be differ from the position I have (as stated above), I think it would benefit the debate if you could explain your idea of what the conduct of a councillor is supposed to be. -
This post is deleted! -
- I am working on a external game at the moment which two vocal councilors have a severe problem with. The rest of the council are neutral/positive and they are ok with it so far. People try to make this conversation about my game, but that's a distraction. I have been anti-toxicity forever since the old forums. I even tried to get biass banned from election, well before any of this drama. Also: I have not invented a time machine, yet.
But nine, you should sort this out quietly and privately in the council
I agree and have tried many approaches but sadly that type of thing does not work, and I think most of the council would support that statement.But nine, this timing is suspicious
I think it makes absolute sense to talk about an election issue before the vote. Unconsciously, FAF is voting for if they want to reduce or promote nasty attitude, and my duty is to make that a conscious decision. Why is the timing such a big deal? There is a week to discuss it.FtX and Biass seem to get more done than most people, so maybe their way of acting is actually superior.
You have a point there, but why can't we find people who are both nice and effective?
Could it be that nice-effective people stay away due to nasty-effective people?
I know very solid contributors who left like that.What percentage of player retention do you aim to achieve before beginning external promotions? Assuming people mainly leave due to toxicity also seems like a big leap
Good questions - I don't know. There are some very obvious things we should work on. Get it touch if you want to discuss."Nine2 - I want it publicly stated whether the Russian Discord has the same rules applied to it as the official discord. I then want it publicly stated whether a councillor broke the official rules in relation to postings in the discord."
100%. My position has always been that the council should work out what their rules are and then enforce them. It's true - ask an unbiased councilor. The council moves very slowly.Toxicity in faf is actually not that bad by any gaming standards.
That may be true about the players but my issue is that the behavior of FAF leadership is unnacceptable. I doubt the people running Fortnite call people names."Using the FAF vaults in order to gain playtesting for maps, and then planning to remove the maps later to sell exclusively as a part of said game."
I have discussed this AT LENGTH with the council and even biass himself admitted that it's probably fine now that I cleared up the confusion. Good quality maps from my game were offered for FAF use, I was happy to sign any waiver about not removing them later."but nine - you told keyser to get fucked"
I did - in a way that did NOT make FAF look bad, in a PRIVATE chat with just him and me, over an old grudge. Is that my worst offence in my 7ish year history on FAF?"But nine, you don't do any work"
My work is to reduce toxicity and some other issues with onboarding, which is why I got 2 hours sleep after spending 4 hours writing my opening post, before I had to wake up and pack up my house.
I am trying to fix FAF as I see it. The unbiassed councilors would agree that I am very active in council chat, discussing things with them, passionate, trying to create change.
I'm not really going to go back and forth 100 times in this thread (I have had weeks of that in councilor chat already). Just notice for yourself where all the terrible accusations come from and draw your own conclusions. Also notice that I have NOT been fired as I have so far managed to given acceptable answers to the council. If anyone has any hard questions about my "conflict of interest" game feel free to reach out.
Dear community: You have heard different opinions about toxicity, and you have seen attempts to derail from the actual topic. It doesn't really matter what I think. If YOU personally would like to see less attitude in FAF, then I recommend reducing attitude in the council, and voting for Penguin in the election.
