Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Gentlemen Officers of the NWC:

The members of the NWC Cabinet have been working tirelessly for the last few months drafting, discussing, reviewing, and voting on a set of Revised Club Rules that we could present to you for your discussion and vote. I am very pleased to say that we have finally completed our work. The guiding purpose of our work was to compose a document that would allow the members to have more of a voice in selecting the leadership of their club. Our existing Club Rules only provided for the annual election of the Club President. The Revised Club Rules provide for the election of all Cabinet members as well as the Army Commanders and the Army Commanders in Chief. The goal of these elections is to allow the membership to actually choose their leaders, rather than having their leaders appointed over them by others as is our current club practice. We believe that leaders who are accountable to the members will be more motivated in the reliable performance of their duties, and that this motivation will work for the positive benefit of our club and its members.

The basic concept of the Revised Club Rules that we have drafted is to provide our club with a viable means to ensure that:

• Army Webpages are always kept up to date
• Army members are always held accountable for being “Active” in accordance with the Club Rules
• Army leaders are held accountable to the Cabinet for the their performance
• Cabinet members are held accountable to the Membership for their performance
• No individual member can be singled out and persecuted by any individual leader of our club
• Every member will have the right of due process to present their grievances to the Cabinet
• The Cabinet has the authority to settle all grievances by its impartial, majority vote.

What we believe we have crafted here is a club structure that has the redundancy to ensure that it is always well operated, that its leadership is directly accountable for their actions, and in which every individual member will always receive fair and just treatment. It is our hope that these new rules will meet with your approval.

I have posted the Revised Club Rules as drafted by our Cabinet in a separate thread in this forum. This is necessary as all forum posts have a maximum number of allowable characters, and our draft of the revised rules pushes this limit on its own. I have locked the thread so that it cannot be altered.

Please take the time to review these Revised Club Rules and offer any comments you may have in subsequent posts to this thread. We are going to allow two weeks for the membership to publically discuss them, after which we will call for a vote by the general membership. This discussion will therefore continue until midnight, Eastern Standard Time, on January 28th. As is always the case, we welcome any and all comments, but do expect that all comments be made in a professional, and respectful, manner.

For any of you who wish further insight into the discussions and votes that took place in our Cabinet during our work on the Revised Club Rules, we would invite you to visit the Cabinet Minutes Forum. In what I believe is an unprecedented act of disclosure, the Cabinet members have agreed to provide links to the Cabinet threads for the discussion and vote pertaining to each of the seven sections of the Revised Club Rules. We believe that the NWC is your club, that you each have a voice, and that your voices should be heard and respected. We work for you, and welcome your input into our future together.

Some interesting ideas and fixes to some longstanding issues. Good job to the Cabinet for working so hard at this, it isn't an easy matter.

I'm not going to comment on every particular detail, but I will mention two thoughts.

1.) I think that the Cabinet needs to extend the period for more than 2 weeks, this is the first time, that I know of, that there has been a comprehensive overhaul of the rules. I leave it to the Cabinet, but I suggest, if discussion is still going on as the two week deadlines approaches, that they extend it to allow the discussion to continue. If it is not, then two weeks is good enough. I also think adequate time to vote is needed too. Though the details are not listed yet, as we are not at that point yet.

2.) There are a lot of cool and neat ideas involved, but I think it is an overly complicated system that will eventually lead to sustainability issues of the Club. Not bad in form, not at all, but I think it'll be a bit difficult, as membership drops off, recruitment dries up and volunteers fall off to maintain a system in the long run. I do like that it gives a voice to the members and a choice, so hats off to the Cabinet for that. In 2004 this might of been a good to implement, but then again I would of never stepped up to help out if that was the case. I think the choices made are very well thought through and the Cabinet is genuine in their thoughts towards bettering the Club, hands down. These men poured a lot of time and effort into this for many months, which produced a really great document. I just worry as time goes by, as people come and go as they always do, we will have to revisit this issue later on. The KISS acronym comes to mind, Keep It Simple Sir......I think that should be kept in mind. Our gaming genre is drawing to a close with new games from HPS/JTS, the 200th Anniversaries will be behind us in two short years, exposure and coverage to the Wars will drop. Wargamers of our style are a very small group with a lot of games choices, PBEM gamers are a small part of wargaming, membership in a Club like ours is the smallest part. The ability to tap new members will slow as we have already seen, which leads to sustainability issues. But it is hard to predict the future, which makes choices like this difficult.

Just some thoughts on that.

Positives:

It clearly defines the expectations of everyone, which is nice. I like the proposed Cabinet Medals Mark made some years back, they are really cool and I think people will like them. Elections, though difficult, is nice, no doubt. Nothing was drastically changed to the core gaming part of the Club, which is nice as well. There are others too, but I wanted to share some things I thought stood out...

So that's all I got to say.

If I may expand slightly, the sustainability issues I mention are for those who are involved a lot more in the Club. That's where I foresee the issues. Clubs never have major membership issues, per say, volunteer issues are another thing.....

None the less hats off to you all!

I thank all the members that give their time to maintaining this club. Their/Your efforts are very much appreciated by those of us who are just here for the battles and the banter.

I note I am active if I am actively playing a game - suits me.

_________________

In the reading room, why are are not all sections and discussions posted?

_________________

It took me and hour or two to read everything myself. It is a bit difficult to follow and I wondered if stuff was "possibly" missing as there appeared to be some continuity issues in the flow.

I think ideally, the Cabinet should of gone through the Club memberships vote, section by section, as it is a very difficult process and a lot to ask the members to take in, approve and in such a short period of time....

Also wanted to know the particulars of why the election periods, both campaigning and voting have been reduced to two weeks? I do want to applaud you for having it be made public when someone runs....

I note the two weeks as an issue, as the last time we had elections votes came in over most of the whole month. I also note August & September are also when most of our European members are on holiday.....

Just a thought. Still having overall elections is nice.

There are seven sections in the Revised Club Rules. Each section had a Cabinet post for its discussion, and a second Cabinet post for its vote. All fourteen of these posts were copied into the Reading Room Forum so that the links from Al's Cabinet Minutes would work without requiring a password.

What do you think was missed, John?

Apologies Mark. I clearly did not see all sections in the reading. All is good

_________________

The sections of the Club Rules were discussed and voted on in a chronological sequence. They are best read in the chronological order of Al's post in the NWC Cabinet Minutes Forum. It was for this very reason that Al made that post as he did. I recommend that all members who have an interest in reading the actual Cabinet Procedings relative to the development of the Revised Club Rules access the links provided in Al's post, rather than just going to the Reading Room Forum and potentially reading the events out of order. I am certain that they will be much easier to follow if you do so.

I appreciate the effort to update and overhaul the rules and posting the discussion in the reading room. It will probably take me a while to fully digest it all, and as I read, I find it easiest to do so as I go along given the size/length.

So, how do you want to handle comments?

By section?

As a whole?

Is there a mechanism for requesting changes?

_________________
Marechal Jeff Bardon
Duc de Castiglione et Prince de Wagram
Commandant de la Garde Imperiale

Salute!

Jeff Bardon wrote: Is there a mechanism for requesting changes?

As this thread is entitled "Member Discussion" I would posit that we are the mechanism.

Regards,

This is a two week period for the members to discuss the rules. Following this will be a set period for the membership to vote on these rules. Each member will vote on whether or not he wishes to adopt each of the seven sections of the Revised Club Rules. A member may either vote Yes or No. If the vote is No, the member should include a brief description of why they did not approve of the particular section as drafted. Any section that receives a majority of Yes votes will be adopted into the new Club Rules. Any section that receives a majority of No votes will be looked at again in light of the comments received. Such sections will be modified and presented again to the membership for further discussion and another vote. In the end, the membership will decide how they want their club to operate.

Does that answer your question, Jeff?

A huge undertaking for the cabinet.

And, as such, it is VERY difficult to know what was actually changed/revised. Each member would have to have a copy of the current rules and compare WORD BY WORD to even find the changes.

The new rules posted for comments, probably should be annotated with exactly what was changed.

Do you expect all voting members to do this comparison and take HOURS to filter out the fluff?

In a quick perusal, I did find an notation: "(Table Unchanged from Existing)"

Was that the ONLY place nothing was changed?

_________________
Ernie Sands
1ère Brigade of 2ème Division de Grosse Cavalerie, Réserve de Cavalerie
de la Grande Armée
President, Colonial Campaigns Club

Salute!

This morning (or yesterday I should say ) I read the relevant threads and the Cabinet posts on their discussions and it did not take me hours and hours.

But I fully understand that everyone reads and comprehends at different degrees of speed.

And I certainly have empathy for those among our membership who don't read English all that well...

As for knowing the old rules - they are to be found in the main club page, under the heading Club Rules.

Personally I look at them all of the time.

When I read the Revised Club Rules my goal was to see if they made sense in and of themselves.
I was able to read and understand them quite easily.

I didn't find anything very confusing about them at all.
I find them well written and to the point.

I suspect that it is to the point that will bring some people up short...

Regards,