[IBL] idea for a new protest process

[Noel Steere]

Taking each of Sean's points individually:

1) Agreed.  Trigger a protest with X owners underwriting it (half the league, maybe?).  That way if people don't want to be bothered, they don't have to be.

2) The current language in the Constitution says "trade imbalance", which has clearly been interpreted in too restrictive a fashion, in my opinion.  While Sean is correct that any language will be subject to interpretation, it can be more or less likely to invoke more or fewer restrictions on what's acceptable.  I'd prefer less, if you've read this far. :-)

3) While everyone who agrees to sit on the Review Board will have their own opinions, having the opinions of previous Review Boards written down and archived will allow them to consider different viewpoints from their own, which (he says, putting his rose-colored Enlightenment glasses on) should lead towards better decisions.  So I guess I concede that there's no guarantee of precedent being followed, but it can't hurt to have the information available, either.

Sent from my iPhone

> On May 5, 2017, at 4:09 PM, Sean Sweda <sweda at ibl.org> wrote:
> 
> I'm seeing people suggest things that sound good at first thought, but when examined through the lens of years of experience on the rule enforcement side of things appear problematic to me.
> 
> 1) Forcing people who are not interested to participate in the process is not a good idea.  We have plenty of examples where arguments that spilled over into the public have had negative consequences, namely un-interested parties questioning remaining in the League.  Furthermore, requiring a significant number of protesting teams to initiate a protest can achieve the same goal as a league-wide vote (consensus) while remaining opt-in, since every protesting team is obviously a vote to overturn.
> 
> 2) I see words/phrases like "collusion", "protecting new owners", and "best interests of the league" and get concerned because fundamentally these are all subjective terms that mean different things to different people.  You can construct a new set of rules that use these terms and everyone could vote for it thinking their standards will apply, but the shit will still hit the fan once other people's interpretations of these phrases get applied.  Fundamentally you have to make peace with the fact that at the end of this process a subjective ruling about fairness is going to be made, regardless of what words you use to try to limit the scope.
> 
> 3) There needs to be collective agreement as to which is more important, consistent outcomes or distributed decision-making power.  To this point we've operated under the assumption that it is healthier for the League if we constantly rotate membership on the Review Board.  This inevitably leads to inconsistent outcomes.  Legislating how the Review Board is allowed to operate will not solve that problem, ultimately it comes down to a different set of people making a decision based on subjective criteria (see #2) every time.  Asking the Review Board to follow precedent isn't going to solve anything given that 1) protests happen very infrequently, 2) the circumstances are rarely similar, and 3) a large chunk of people disagree with the earlier decisions anyway.
> 
> Sean
>