Might as well get in on the Assembly coming out of hibernation, so I propose the following bill, which:
Could these be considered as discretionary edits? I feel like the Chair should exercise their discretionary powers for the second amendment you proposed. Switching our laws to concur with Discourse nomenclature shouldn’t need a whole vote on it. Instead, it should only have the normal three-day period of discussion.
They can, but I figured it’d be best to just tack it on as a rider rather than have the Chair make a whole new post.
You’re getting rid of archiving… yet you just archived dozens of threads??
After this Chair policy was introduced, debate topics were still not closed, both under myself and Cryo as Chair, and for that I apologise. After this debate topic was made, I went through and locked/closed debate topics for passed bills to bring the relevant Assembly topics into compliance with this legislation. Even if adopted, this bill proposal doesn’t automatically remove archiving from Assembly topics, just the legislative requirement.
I don’t see why we would need this change. If threads will eventually get archived anyway, might as well leave it.
Unless, that is, you Chairs were not going to archive in general and simply let the thread sink naturally.
Have I been Chair this whole time and no one’s told me?? You guys…
The intent of the bill is that the Chair shouldn’t close a topic unless it’s necessary. The topic will eventually just sink out of view, plus we don’t have a problem with gravedigging, so it ends up just being pointless to close it.
I think this is a good change. There are a few different ways we can ‘archive’ topics but I don’t think any of them confer any meaningful benefit.
I would personally prefer archiving threads for passed legislation (debate and voting topics), in order to ensure that it is preserved in the same state it was when approved by the Assembly. However for some reason I was under the impression that debate threads were left unlocked (don’t ask me why🫣). If adopted I can see this giving more freedom to future Chair’s in deciding how they want to handle archiving for Assembly topics. But at the moment I am likely to keep the policy for handling topic archival the same.
I generally agree with BlockBuster. I am fine with the removal of 1(6) for the reasons Cryo has outlined. And the nomenclature changes are, of course, fine. But it strikes me as a good idea to archive (or close, or whatever it is technically called on Discourse) voting and debate threads for legislation that is enacted. That preserves the legislative history exactly as it was at the time of enactment, which seems to align with 2(7)'s requirement that “legislative history of each law will be recorded by the Chair. Legislative history will include reference to debate threads, voting results, and amendment history.”
Honestly, I don’t see the benefit behind closing the debate and voting topics other than pedantry, but it’s not a deal breaker.
The Chair can choose whether or not to go down that route in their discretion, but I’d still prefer if inactive topics were left open so legitimate material can still be brought to the table and we all don’t have to be notified about it being closed (ironically bumping the topic).
I’m fully in support of leaving general debate topics open, along with debate topics for legislation which has failed a vote. But if one wants to restart discussion, which has taken place within the debate topic of a piece of passed legislation. I’d be inclined to encourage that individual to create an all new debate topic and then reference, or maybe provide a link, which takes people to the original debate topic. That way, we don’t experience discussion threads for previously passed legislation suddenly re-emerging with new conversation that may not entirely be associated with the legislation that was adopted.
That’s fair. Regardless, I still think it should be left to the Chair rather than making it a requirement.
I tend to agree with Cryo here but will spare everyone my usual “you’re using Discourse wrong” rant.
I will say that if the goal is to freeze topics in place and prevent further changes, archiving them (as in the Discourse feature by that name, not the literal sense of the word) might be better for that goal. It comes with its own trade-offs though as it’s more restrictive than closing a topic.
Having read the descriptions of both, I agree that archiving is better for preservation purposes than closing (and, perhaps unintentionally, is what the statute currently says we are supposed to be doing). What do you see as the downsides? Is it that archived topics only “remain visible when browsing specific categories”? I’m not totally sure what “specific categories” means, but limiting the visibility of legislative history would be somewhat counter-productive.
Just wanted to point out, this is part of the description for General Archives :
And having to go to a separate category to view archived Assembly debates is an nonintuitive hassle for most people.
So I agree with that, but could they not still be linked from the law archive as they are now? So no one would actually have to go to the General Archives, they would just be redirected there after looking for legislative history in an intuitive place.
I think the search bar should be an intuitive place to look for legislative history. It’s a lot more intuitive if I can look for Assembly threads in the Assembly category.
And can a thread not be set to the “archived” status without being put in “General Archives”?
I’ll make a topic to test, I’m pretty sure it does though.