Articles of the PPWP

There shall be a board of players consisting of 6 players elected from the community of players. This board shall make all management decisions related to the server including but not limited to the ability to hire and release developers, designers, DMs, and other support staff for the server, listen to and approve quest ideas, script ideas, and area ideas, enact or repeal server wide rules of conduct, and enforce fair punishment on players and board members that do not obey the rules. Business shall be conducted by selecting action items and voting on them where a majority vote passes the action item.

The board of players shall consist of 5 board members and a chairman of the board. The players that takes the position of the chairman is the board member that has had been a board member for the longest continuous time. Previous terms in office are not added to the board member’s time. If there is a tie, the player with the largest number of votes wins the tie. If there is a tie there as well, then the chairman who joined the server at the earliest date and time takes the position of chairman of the board. The position of the chairman is not optional. A player on the board that has seniority shall either take the seat of the chairman or resign from the board completely. The purpose of the chairman of the board is to ensure the objectives of the server are being met, to decide what information shall be held confidential, and to manage how the business of the board meetings is conducted including the ability to decide the order in which action items are considered. The chairman of the board, however, does not get a vote in the determination of action items. The chairman shall decide the order in which action items submitted by the players are considered, have veto power over any and all action items that clearly go against the original proposed objectives and rules of the server or that go against the rules set forth in these articles, and decide when and how business shall be conducted to discuss action items so long as the board is clearly performing its monthly duties and voting on action items at a rate sufficient enough to get the business of the server done.

All board members must attend and be active at every meeting of the board. Meetings can and probably should be held on message boards so that all board members do not need to be present at the same time to conduct business as long as the board members are able to perform their monthly duties and can vote on action items at a rate sufficient enough to get the business of the server done. A board member that does not perform his duties as a member of the board is assumed to have resigned. A board member who has resigned may not run for a seat on the board for a number of election cycles sufficient to ensure board members do not make it a habit of bouncing in and out of office. Finally, a board member can only vote yes or no; he or she may not abstain from voting when the chairman of the board calls for a vote. A member of the board does not, however, have to vote immediately once a call for a vote is announced so long as that board member is not derelict on his or her duties as a member of the board.

So that players can make an educated vote, the proceedings of all board meetings will be made public except for those meetings deemed confidential by the chairman of the board. Meetings are deemed confidential when the exposure of the information in that meeting will damage the gaming experience of the players. Confidential meetings must be kept separate from public meetings so that any and all information that does not need to be confidential is open to the public.

The term of a member of the board shall be 3 months. Elections will not be held at the same time, but rather, staggered so that 2 new elections for a board member seat will be held every month. Every month a series of candidates will declare their interest in running for a board seat. The community of players can then publicly vote on one board member per seat. At the end of the month the votes will be publicly tallied and the N candidates with the most votes will take the seat and hold it for 3 months where N is the number of seats up for election. At the end of the 3 months, that board member can run again.

A player is considered a member of the community of players if they are known to either actively or passively play on the server. However, all player’s votes are not equal. Rather, a player gets one vote for every past election for a board member (not necessarily contiguous) they voted in plus one extra vote to a maximum of 20 votes. A player must apply all their votes to one candidate per seat election, however. When a board member resigns from his seat, a new election is immediately held to elect a new board member. This number of votes is also used in determining which board member will take the seat of the chairman of the board in the event of a tie.

When the server is first created, the original designers select a chairman of the board and the remaining designers make up the board. If there are less than 6 original designers then some seats will be empty until elections ensue. If there are more than 6 original designers then the original designers must choose among them who will be the 6 board members. This board conducts business as usual to construct the server although there will be no elections. Once the server is complete and put online, no elections are held for 3 months. After the three months, all the board members except the chairman of the board draw lots to determine the order in which their seats are held for election. The chairman’s seat is always held for election last. Empty seats are always held for election first. The reason for this is to maintain stability in the design concept when the server is first being formed and to ensure a consensus among the player community as well as a healthy population of voters is established before the server changes leadership.

To amend these articles, a motion to amend the articles of the PPWP must be submitted by any player and then must be voted upon for consideration by all members of the board of players including the chairman of the board. No board member can abstain in this vote and all board members must vote in a timely manner. The amendment is recognized in the same manner as any action item submitted by a player. If 4 or more of the 6 board members vote to allow the amendment to be considered, the players have a month to vote on the amendment. If two thirds or more of the players rounded up vote for the amendment, the articles of the PPWP are amended as indicated in the amendment. Players voting for the amendment may abstain from voting but an abstaining vote is not counted among the votes to pass the amendment.