by Pi Fisher
Hello, Realms,
The EHC is coming up in just over a week. We haven't had any in-person events with the 2020 Omnibus, so we don't have any proposals aimed at gameplay changes. However, we do have a whole lot of proposals aimed at changing how the Arbitration Committee does things, including one that completely replaces it with a new group. Even though you won't have to make any changes to how you play, you still might be curious about how the rules might change after the EHC this year.
Some of the AC-related proposals are very small in what they do. Every year, the AC is supposed to present a report of cases to the EHC and then put it on RealmsNet. Some of the proposals seek to require that the report be written, how soon it needs to be published, and how long it needs to remain available for. There's also a couple proposals to clarify who gets to set AC policies and what those are, such as how long after an incident a victim has to report it, what to do when several AC members recuse themselves, and how much to communicate with EHs when cases take a long time. There's a few more AC proposals, but most of them are short enough that I can't really make my summary shorter than the proposals.
The big proposal this year is the one to replace the Arbitration Committee with a Complaint Review Board (CRB). The idea here is that the AC puts some difficult decisions into the hands of just a few people. Not only does the AC need to figure out what happened, but they also need to decide what, if anything, should be done about it. The CRB would be in charge of the first part of the process, but the rest would be put into the hands of all EHs. If someone has a complaint, they tell the CRB, who then investigate what happened, including by talking with people involved and witnesses. After they've finished their investigation, they contact the EH list with a description of what happened, and it's up to the EHs to decide how to proceed. If the EHs want to deal with it quickly, they can call for an Emergency EH Meeting. If they think it can wait, they can put it off until the EHC. At that meeting, the EHs will discuss whether and how to punish anyone based on this. The proposal is very long, mostly because it's very specific about how this process should be handled.
The next proposals I want to talk about deal with Emergency EH Meetings. This past year, we had our very first Emergency EH Meeting, and it was to discuss Covid restrictions. We noticed from this that the Omnibus really doesn't say a whole lot about how they should be run, so one of the proposals adds more structure to them, both in the topics they can cover and in the way to call for one. Another proposal seeks to make explicit that it's acceptable for Emergency EH Meetings to be handled remotely. There wasn't anything saying this couldn't be the case, but sometimes it's worth being extra clear with things that are allowed.
Sort of on the topic of EEHMs, and sort of on the topic of Covid restrictions, I have a pair of proposals to create a framework for Standing Policies. EEHMs are not able to change the Omnibus, but sometimes it's important to be able to make temporary rules. For example, we wouldn't want anything in the Omnibus saying "no more events", but we probably do want a temporary rule that bans events until it's safe to have them again. We sort of did this at the EEHM where the EHs resolved to not have any in-person events for a while, but my proposals would codify a way to do that in the future, including for any other types of temporary rules people thought were important to have.
The last proposal I want to talk about is about how to handle when an EH decides they need to ban a player from their events. If the proposal passes, EHs who want to ban a player from their events will be responsible for notifying the EH mailing list and also the Realms Announcements mailing list of this. Further, depending on which option passes, there will be a way that they are allowed to include names of banned players in their event announcements. The reason for sharing the information with the entire Realms community, rather than just with the EH list and the banned player(s), is so that players can make informed decisions about which events to attend. If a player has been victimized by someone in the past and doesn't feel safe attending events with that person, that player should be able to find out whether the person will be allowed at events without needing to reach out to every EH and talk about why they're asking for the information.
Finally, something that's not a proposal. At the Emergency EH Meeting in September, we agreed that we would discuss Covid restrictions again at the EHC. If my proposals for Standing Policies pass, I expect the discussion will be a short one: "we like this thing we passed? yes? okay, good." If it fails, I expect we'll discuss other options. But no matter what happens, we'll definitely be discussing it, as our current covid restrictions end at the EHC. If you have strong opinions about how we should handle this, I encourage you to bring it up with this year's Players' Representative, Crystal Welch. (I'd appreciate it if you first read my relevant proposals. 🙂 )
That's all for now. I'll probably write another article after the EHC, but I'll hopefully keep it shorter than this one, so that I don't wind up repeating myself.
-- Pi Fisher