Document Standardization

Article 1 - Version Standardization

Section I

All legislation, referred to throughout as documents, proposed to and passed by the April Knights will be subject to the standards set in the Document Standardization Act.

Every document passed by the April Knights, both before and after this act was created, will receive a versioning number appended to their title (e.g. “April Knights Act” becomes “April Knights Act v.Major.Minor”).

Section III

The method to be used to identify bills moving forward will follow what has been used previously. This will utilize a two item identifier, “X-TYY.” “X” is the number of the current Grandmaster. As it pertains to this bill, “X” will only change when a Grandmaster is not re-elected and the position shifts to a new individual.“T” is the term number of the Grandmaster, and “YY” is the bill number assigned to it. E.g. The first bill during Grandmaster 7’s first term would be 7-101 and the first bill during their second term would be 7-201. If “Y” is a single digit, it will have a zero (0) placed in front of it, in order to maintain a 3 digit system. Upon the end of term for any Grandmaster, “YY” will reset down to one, written as 01, with any subsequent bill adding one (1) to “YY,” for the duration of the Grandmaster’s term. This is not to be confused with the version of the document.

Section IV

The numbers for each version are defined according to the template “vMajor.Minor” where ‘v’ simply indicates that the proceeding numbers refer to the version number.

Major: Major refers to the amount of ‘major’ changes made to the document. This number starts at zero (0) and remains there until passed by the April Knights. At this point the Major number will upgrade to one (1). Incrementing this number afterwards will be extremely subjective, but the aim is to change it whenever the intentions of the document change or when the document will become unrecognizable from its previous state.
Minor: Minor indicates the amount of ‘minor’ changes made to the document that have occurred since the last ‘Major’ version was incremented. Again, this will be extremely subjective, but the aim is to change it wherever grammar, spelling, minor formatting, or small rewording changes have been made. This number resets to zero (0) whenever the ‘Major’ version number has changed.

Section V

The version number for each document will only be incremented when the April Knights pass changes to a document. The document author can suggest a version number when proposing the document, but ultimately the Grandmaster and First Ranger are responsible for ensuring the new version number is given to the document.

Section VI

For documents that were not versioned prior to the passing of this act the Grandmaster and/or First Ranger will determine values to be approved by the Lower Council by a simple majority vote.

Article 2 - Maintenance Standardization

Section I

For the sake of preservation of April Knights history, the First Herald will appoint any officer ranked Captain or higher, other than the Grand Inquisitor, with the charge of maintaining April Knights documents. This Knight will be known as the Scribe. The First Herald may choose themselves, and the Scribe duties outlined would fall on them during periods in which the Scribe position is unfilled. The Scribe position is not an Upper Council position.

Section II

The scribe is responsible for ensuring every version of every document is stored securely in an accessible location. The documents should be stored in such a manner that it is easily verifiable that the documents have not been altered. The Grandmaster is responsible for ensuring this is the case.

Article 3 - Implementation

Section I

This act shall take effect as soon as voted and approved by both Councils, and confirmed by the Grandmaster.