Questions, Documents ...

I have been taking Ulrikas advice and actually reading all the documents that relate to the Neualtenburg Projekt and although I have found versions of most of them, I am not sure if I have the current ones. In particular, these documents seem to exist only on the forum postings, and at least one of them has been edited after it was posted, but not noted as such, and with the edits not indicated in the document. Also I can find no link to the "bill of rights" that is referred to.

If these docs exist in up to date, (hopefully PDF) versions, or at least versions not existing merely as text files on the forum, could someone please post a link to them here or put them up as PDF attachments? I am having a devil of a time finding them.

I must say I am very surprised at what I have found written in these documents so far, and I would like to inititate a discussion once I have digested the material a bit more.

That will teach me to sign something without reading it!

Hehe Dianne.

The definitive versions of the Constitution, the ToS, and the restrictive covenants attached to each deed, to my understanding, are the versions attached as stickies to the top of this forum. To my knowledge, there is no Bill of Rights, tho there has been much talk about one.

I too feel that these documents should be finalized and made into pdf's, or some other readily accessible format.

If I'm not mistaken, the links on the website point to the forum threads.


Sudane

The documents are all in the forum, which serves as a pseudo-Wiki to hold the documents as they evolve. All edits in the document are highlighted in light blue so you can see the changes. The reason they exist in the forums is that they are dynamic, ever-changing documents and keeping them in wiki format is the most convenient. However, I'd be more than happy to generate PDF versions of the existing document if you'd like. I'm quite an amazing professional typesetter and I'd be up to the challenge of making the documents look nobel (as opposed to a high-school paper outline). (In fact I think it might be my job.)

Today I corrected an error in Section 8 that used to say:and corrected it to say:
When I condensed our forum discussions into a constitution over a 24-hour marathon session last Christmas break, I created several of the sections for the Artisanal branch and then copied those sections for the other two branches. To this day I'm still finding references to the Artisanal branch in the wrong sections. I found this error when I was poring over the documents in anticipation of a challenge to the existing constitution.

I also just added a phrase saying that all recent changes in the document are highlighted in blue to help new citizens. "Recent" in this case means everything that has changed in the last seven months.

Excellent!

There is nothing I like more than to discuss politics (I've become quite adept at comparing and contrasting governmental systems from around the world and comparing their qualities to our city's). Please feel free to ask whatever questions you'd like, although as a learning tool, I'd request the questions stay in the forum so everyone can see the discussions.

Damn straight.

We're all bound ethically to adhere to the constitution and the laws of the city and to seek change through these predefined governmental organizations. I've even heard someone suggest that because this is a real-world cooperative, that we are legally bound in RL to adhere to these as well, meaning that we are all legally answerable to each other and violators could be sued! And to think there was a day when folks actually said that governments couldn't have teeth in SL!

Finally, we do have a bill of rights. It is none other than the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights itself, which is mentioned by name in the Constitution. (I just edited the document to make the link to the UDHR active.) We adopt everything which makes sense to adopt in the virtual world and exclude everything else. It's that simple. It's this bill of rights which grants Neualtenburgers the right to not belong to a party (Article 20(2))!

I'm thrilled that folks are looking over this stuff! I didn't realize folks didn't know about the bill of rights.

~Ulrika~

This is great Ulrika!

The reason to have PDF versions though is more along the lines of legality and the ability to enforce the rules as stated. The web-based documents have no doubt been handy up til now, but good luck suing anyone (if it ever came to that), based on an agreement subect to instntaneous and undetectable change at any time.
The argeement I signed for instance, already does not exist.

It does say in the Nburg TOS (Section 1.2 changes to terms), that the agreement can be altered at any time and becomes *instantly* enforceable in it's new state, but this statement is itself un-enforceable.

It's nice to say that, but I think this would be tossed out of any contract law court I have ever heard of. Especially because of the draconian nature of some of the Nburg TOS agreement clauses, because of the "instantaneous re-writeability" of the agreement, and especially because there is no mention of who can change it or under what process it can be changed, it is unlikely that it is truly enforceable as a contract.

Excellent! This will help a lot.

My asking for the bill of rights was based on this statement at the top of the Constitution:

"... and to uphold the Bill of Rights (which is based on the Universal Declaration of Human rights), ...."

I can see that this was never written now and that we are just using the Universal one, which makes sense to me but the wording should be changed to reflect that if you have not already done that. Otherwise it's not enforceable.

Overall, I feel that what is really missing from the Constitution and the NBurg TOS is (that very typical) section in the preamble of similar documents where reference is made to the makeup of the document itself and the conditions under which it can be altered.

Without this, I think it is again unenforceable as a legal document. We should change this ASAP in my view.

I am going to be posting two more threads in the next hour or so about my detailed examination of the Constitution! I dont know how to do the link thing right so i will say they are titled "Powers of the SC" and "The Function of the Guild System." Coming soon to a forum near you!

As a caveat I will reveal that I am not a lawyer in RL but I do contract work and have seen a lot of contracts. What I intend here is an analysis of the legal status and implications of our founding documents, not an attack on any person or group.

Everythign is pretty rosy right now, but I intend to make these documents truly reflect the status and makeup of the Neualtenburg government which I dont feel they do currently. These documents need to be iron clad in my view to protect us from future possible problems.

Wow... after saying something like that, consider it a challenge

Actually, the medium on which contracts are kept does not affect their legality. Digital signatures are binding. However, I'm all for creating archived electronic versions and hard copies as well.

Tell that to Linden Lab.

Our ToS is almost an exact copy of theirs including that phrase you quoted. I agree it doesn't make much sense, however, I imagine it's in there to protect LL in the event they make some radical changes.

I will make this change tonight! Excellent advice.

The information on how to alter the constitution is in the constitution itself. It requires a 2/3 vote from the RA and agreement from the SC.

Additionally, I should also point out that our constitution has the same approximate outline, feel, and level of detail as the U.S. Constitution. I think we are legally bound to that document.

~Ulrika~

That said, has there been any thought to actually wikifying or otherwise publishing on the web the central documents of Neualtenburg? If webspace is a problem, Satchmo mentioned his own, and I also have a fair chunk I use primarily to keep pictures and sounds to post on forums; actually putting content on there would be kinda novel.

Not a huge deal, but I did want to mention that I'll be using one of the homes I hold deed on, to create an information center about Neualt. I want to bring our information, details, documents, and history (and anything else interesting to visitors and potential citizens) *in world*. I will explain more of this project of mine later next week (including talking to the guild and RA and parties about it).

PS: Home computer shutting down now. Moving day is tomorrow!! MY FIRST HOUSE!! YAY!!! *cough* hehe.. going to miss you all! Will talk on the forums and email as I can. And be in world after the 15th sometime! Have fun and be well!!

Sounds like a great project! I can't wait to hear more about it.

I meant to tell you good luck with your move. I remember how torturous my last move was. It was during a period where I couldn't pull myself away from the forums.

Congratulations on your new home and good luck with your move. I know you won't see this until you're back but better late than never.

~Ulrika~

There are a couple of reasons why I haven't gone to an online wiki for the Neualtenburg documentation (there are a couple of SL wikis out there right now that we are free to use for our city). The primary reason is that most of the documents should not be publicly editable. This includes our Constitution, deeds, and terms of service. Additionally, the documents should only be edited by a small subset of folks in the city who have permission to edit the files.

Finally, I am concerned about spreading the city documentation across too many websites. This was the main reason I purchased the www.neualtenburg.org website, to take all the city information that was originally under at www.ulrikasheim.org and posted here in the forum and collect it in a central location.

With that said, it seems like the best thing to do would be to create spots on the www.neualtenburg.org website for the constitution. Of course, because this involves city infrastructure it is a matter for the guild. I'll bring it up at a future meeting.

~Ulrika~

That's a mere technical matter, though. I believe it's trivial to set up a wiki that can only be edited by a subset of people.

Or, of course, just do it the old fashioned way and have a regular old webpage.



That would seem to be the best (and most logical) way to go about it; I know I was very confused by the lack of those documents on the website when I first joined up.

Excellent! I'll take your advice and start with HTML versions on the group website, with PDF versions to follow at a later date.

I'll also look into the possibility of setting up a wiki for the RA's use. I imagine as soon as we start adding laws, they'll need one to keep track of them.

~Ulrika~

All excellent suggestions - I'm glad we "get back to basics" again, I admit it was great fun last year

BTW, I couldn't find a reference to the "Founding Philosophy" mentioned in the Constitution's preamble. I'm assuming this is basically the text of contest held last year for "the preservation of a snow sim" which led to the Neualtenburg Projekt to exist...?

Actually, in my mind, it is all the text contained within the forum itself that was generated when we were writing the constitution, such as Talen's concern about the balance of power and the prevention of abuse, my desire for multiple branches, your concerns about one person one vote. There's even some new stuff I wrote on the philosophy of the constitution in this thread.

We could either leave it there or we could extract pieces of it as needed and place it in a separate document, if you'd like. My only hesitation with doing that is that it takes a lot of the information out of context, then again, if the Linden's ever purge the forum, we could be in trouble.

~Ulrika~

Ah, I understand, Ulrika!

Well, it doesn't make much sense to me to repost it all again, or capture it in a single, very long document. I'd prefer something like your own summary of how the Government works or something similar. Wading through year-old posts on forums to use an obscure point as arguments against or for a "constitutional" issue seems a bit dangerous as a precedent (we would be arguing if that point is part of the "founding philosophy" or not).

Indeed. While wading through it is very educational (I've been slowing working my way through) it is a bit much to ask any random person wishing to join, or a citizen wishing to discuss, to go through it all looking for the "applicable" nuggets.

So, help me articulate exactly what we're looking for.

Currently we have a constitution and a rough overview on the website. It seems like we're looking for an expanded version of the overview that states what's in the constitution and why we chose it. Is this correct? What else would you like to see in there?

~Ulrika~

That's about right. Perhaps even an more expanded history of the Neualtenburg project to date - way back when I first joined SL, I attended a handful of Thinkers' meetings in Anzere, but I never really got the feel of how well the city "functioned" at that time.

Basically, "what this is supposed to mean", "why it's there", and "where we came from".

Ah, Ulrika, I'm not that "demanding" myself. Actually, I think that what we have on the website right now works well as a "founding philosophy". Or your scattered posts, here and there, which explain the overall thinking behind the actual Government. These should be more than enough as a "founding philosophy"...

Your posts too!

The constitution wouldn't have happened without the amazing work done by you, Talen, Pendari, Kendra, and the rest. It was one of the greatest intellectual group projects I've ever been a part of.

~Ulrika~

Actually, I had in mind a certain document, its latest form being on the Neualtenburg Website. It has been rewritten several times, but the overall philosophy behind it has been the same.

What I meant is that we should use that particular document as the "founding philosophy"

Yes, people have added things here and there, some of them very good, but I also think it was a previous incarnation of that document that made the whole Constitution discussion start. You wrote a "framework" and "guidelines" for how the Constitution and the Government should look like - and that's what I meant for including that "framework" as a "founding philosophy"...