: Posted by Fleet Captain Wolfe (Chief Wolfe of STF, Ruler of Wolfeania, Lord of the Dark Carrotic Hordes) in Proposal: Strengthening of MIRAGE
: : Posted by Fleet Admiral Jen "Sloth" Herr (President) in Proposal: Strengthening of MIRAGE
: : : Posted by TJ Morgan in Proposal: Strengthening of MIRAGE
: : : Many of you will know where I am going with this post; before you finish reading it. However I would like to suggest, before anyone replies to this post, to put yourself in the shoes of others in the club and consider everything from every angle, and consider this quote:
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: : : “A real friend is one who walks in, when the rest of the world walks out” - Walter Winchell.
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: : : I propose a strengthening of Robinson #27, MOTD Instituted Restrictions And Governance Edict (MIRAGE).
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: : : The reason I would like Robinson #27 to be strengthened is because I believe as a club we have a duty of care to every member, and as such we must ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, that every member can enjoy every part of the club and every MOTD.
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: : : My proposal is simple; to make sure every MOTD is compatible with Screen Readers, and there is a duty of care placed on MOTD designers to make sure their MOTD’s are suitable for the majority of members in the club, so we don’t have any outrageous colour schemes, etc. Further to this I would like a duty of care placed with every Captain in Star-Fleet, to understand the needs of the crew and too make sure their MOTD is suitable for every crew member, or as many as reasonable, and that it doesn’t case any problems for crew members.
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: : : I know this is a tall order; and not very specific but instead is a generalisation. I know look to you, my fellow STFers, to help make this specific and create a manner to achieve this in order to benefit every member of this club.
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: : : TJ Morgan
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: : I must say I am honestly surprised with the number of members who have vision difficulties who have come forward. I had no idea we had so many! Despite this though, I find myself agreeing with the current wording of MIRAGE, and agreeing with the general argument that it would be too hard to strengthen the wording any further without being unfair to some party. As people have said, vision difficulties vary considerably, as do screen readers apparently. I'm not sure how we could word it differently to accommodate all people better than we already do.
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: : With that said, I still believe MIRAGE is more of a policy than a bylaw, and actually the IDept edict explicitly gives the IDept the power to set MOTD rules as policy. After re-reading both edicts, it looks like they're in direct conflict. The easiest and most logical option would be to remove MIRAGE as an edict/bylaw and place it back in the IDept as policy.
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: : For those interested in the paperwork part, where we've already given the IDept the power to enforce MIRAGE without it being an edict, see: http://www.star-fleet.com/library/bookshelf/charters/charter-id.html#d0e... paragraph 3, sentence 2 (setting policy), and the last paragraph of that section (for enforcing policy).
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: : Unless there are any serious objections, I believe we should remove MIRAGE from the bylaws and allow the IDept to re-institute it as policy, as is their right.
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: : Jen
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: /me puts on his Librarian hat
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: MIRAGE defines specifically what an MOTD is in relation to WeBBspace, what types of code are acceptable within MOTD's and the rules governing the IDept's involvement within MOTD's. It also outlines rules concerning malicious code and the exploitation of administrative access for the purposes of destabilising the system or 'hacking' to work around basic display components within the system. The argument at the time was that because of the nature of WeBBspace versus effWeBB, MIRAGE covered elements of responsibility for both the IDir and Coder. It has been repeatedly suggested that both SCSI and CODE need to be rewritten to take into account WeBBspace and the adjusted roles of IDir and Coder now that they are distinctly seperate offices (rather than the IDir also being Coder, as was the case for the last few years of effWeBB when both edicts were written).
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: During the amalgamation of the charters book into the bylaws document, part of the aim is going to be to ensure that all sections dealing with any one specific topic be placed together to ease navigation and flow. One of my goals was going to be to move MIRAGE, CODE and SCSI together (quite how to be determined once I have more sellotape, post-its and ink for my printer).
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: I do agree that it falls (sort of) within the direct control of the IDir, but I don't believe it does so sufficiently to become simply departmental policy. It is dealing specifically with WeBBspace integrity and limitations of access and should remain a bylaw. Part of the IDept/Coder sections of the bylaws certainly, but still a bylaw.
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: Andy
: - Librarian

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Jen