Annual Faction Elections

[Ellie Mors]

On an unrelated note, that suggestion that Staff is concerned about losing their spots because of getting voted out? The flip side of that coin makes me wonder which faction you're in that's doing so poorly that you would want to see this rule implemented.

Funny you ask, I'm suggesting this because I simply want to prevent such a scenario from happening, as a result of having been on this forum for the better part of 4 & 1/2 years and seeing it happen both right now (in a number of stagnating factions) and in the past.

I'm not suggesting this rule for the purposes of using it myself, it's there for the entire website to use as necessary. It's a way to say "we do not agree with the way you have been moving the faction, we want something else". The vote existing forces a major faction to keep their membership engaged and to work towards things they want, not to get hooked on the idea that what they want, themselves, is the best thing for the faction in the long term. [member="Darth Metus"] actually argued my point for me when he offered up the example of basing a faction on a canon group, that the original ownership would want to stay the owner to push the agenda that they want, implying through admission that it is irrelevant as to whether it is actually good for the faction and its ability to retain members.

 

[Lok Xiangu]

[member="Judah Lesan"]

I was there for that election. Wouldn’t call it rigged as no one begged for my vote nor was there an influx of new members to cast down their votes in favor of a certain candidate.

My opinion of course. Maybe things went differently for you. I remember the winner won by a strong majority if I’m recalling it correctly.

 

[Ellie Mors]

ORC did this last year in a way... a faction owner was appointed without election... challenged and then both nominees went through their contacts begging for votes and counting who had what before the election went down

Odd that this wasn't an issue brought up to staff.

I can only wonder why.

 

[Natasi Fortan]

Let's see if I can trick Lisbot's algorithms into seeing some logic here:

Assume for this problem that there is a rule that every Major Faction Owner must be re-elected annually.

Mr. X is the Faction Owner. He thinks he's got the goods and should keep doing his job. A group of faction members disagrees and over the last several months has become disillusioned in Mr. X's leadership and consequently, their activity in the faction has declined; they don't really write there much anymore, if at all. However, they know that there is an opportunity to eject Mr. X in the upcoming staff-mandated faction election. They nominate one of their own number, Mr. Y, for the upcoming election. Mr. X sees that an influx of old, inactive members appear to be rallying around Mr. Y's candidacy.

By the logic described by [member="Mother"] above in response to claims that this system is susceptible to abuse, Mr. X would be well within his rights to ban these members from the faction in order to hold on to ownership. It's arguable whether disillusioned members who are no longer active because of issues with the current leadership, returning to take part in the next election, constitutes abuse. I would argue that allowing a current owner to self-select an electorate by banning people on ambiguously legitimate grounds opens the door to abuse from the other side, too. Inevitably it will become a staff problem when people complain -- and they will -- and it can't be resolved internally.

Do they have time for that? Do they have the inclination? I would guess no, in both situations, and when it comes to leading major factions, I don't think it's really any of their business when there hasn't been a violation of site rules -- especially without clear, pre-written rules for their involvement to prevent shady dealings.

 

[Zark San Tekka]

Yeah that's gonna be another no from me, sorry. As others have said, I think the problem you are trying to solve is for a good cause, even if as this thread goes on I am beginning to question some of the underlying motivations. I just don't think the ideal way to handle transitions of power like that is through popularity contests. The current vote system for replacing retired owners isn't even ideal, but it works okay because at least a lot of the time the previous owner can point to someone and say, that is my heir apparent please vote for them.

Being able to get people to vote for you isn't a great indicator of whether you would actually be a better choice to run a faction. People are dumb. Take it from someone who was elected to lead a major faction in that way himself. Honestly, the best way of proving that a writer would make a good owner candidate is for them to successfully start a major faction. A lot of people are worried about potential for abuse, I agree that probably wouldn't be very common. I just don't think, even working at its best, that a rule like this would have the kind of positive effect on the community you'd want it to.

 

[Ellie Mors]

By the logic described by Mother above in response to claims that this system is susceptible to abuse, Mr. X would be well within his rights to ban these members from the faction in order to hold on to ownership. It's arguable whether disillusioned members who are no longer active because of issues with the current leadership, returning to take part in the next election, constitutes abuse. I would argue that allowing a current owner to self-select an electorate by banning people on ambiguously legitimate grounds opens the door to abuse from the other side, too. Inevitably it will become a staff problem when people complain -- and they will -- and it can't be resolved internally.

I was being wholly sarcastic when I said that a faction owner should ban opposition in elections. I was not being sarcastic when I said that people from outside of the faction jumping in can be kicked out (and with good reason).

The awesome thing about looking at this from the outside looking in is that even if you try to float this by as a reason, it's obvious to anyone from looking at this from unbiased eyes that it's just a cheap attempt at holding onto their position of authority. The very reason I made the sarcastic remark, I might add, is to give a very clear example of how one would remove abusive owners that try to make use of their ability to ban people to fix elections.

 

[Adron Malvern]

I was not being sarcastic when I said that people from outside of the faction jumping in can be kicked out (and with good reason).

So what if there is a middle ground. A group of people who jump from one faction to another just to take advantage of election time. They get one of their own elected just so they can take over the faction and do whatever they want to it.

 

[Ellie Mors]

So what if there is a middle ground. A group of people who jump from one faction to another just to take advantage of election time. They get one of their own elected just so they can take over the faction and do whatever they want to it.

I was trying to answer this before, and I discussed this at length with [member="Darth Tacitus"] in discord;

We have a report system, we have site staff, if you have an issue where someone is flooding your faction with "new members" (I'm putting this in quotes because it would require quite a lot of members to outvote the "real" members of the faction, to the point that it would require the existing members to vote them out, too) then you should be directing this issue to the site staff and having them intervene. This is why we have votes on the board, and why board admins confirm and verify votes during faction owner transfer requests. We have all of the necessary steps and systems involved to solve this issue.

In fact, it would be easier to abuse voting when a faction owner steps down, especially by the logic provided in the thread so far, because it would mean that the faction is, according to a number of posts, already at the low point in activity and membership, and is likely at their lowest numbers - surely faction elections must be fixed on a regular basis, right [member="Natasi Fortan"]?

I mean, do we have no trust in the rest of our members to have the basic decency to respect a faction vote? No? Do we at least trust ourselves to recognize something is going on and to report it when it happens?

Maybe if we can't trust ourselves, or the rest of our site's members, this suggestion really shouldn't have seen the light of day.

 

[Judah Lesan]

[member="Mother"]

Because good a faction member base self regulates well, and they mitigated the issue on their own.

 

[Ellie Mors]

Because good a faction member base self regulates well, and they mitigated the issue on their own.

So you don't trust a faction member base to mitigate these issues before they actually become a problem? Or site staff to intercept these issues in the slim chance they actually manifest?

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

I can think of zero solid reasons this should be a site-wide rule.

Perfectly fine if a faction wants to enforce some sort of election process internally, obviously.

 

[Matt the Radar Tech]

Seems like a suggestion to be used by factions that wish to, rather than a forced ruling to be applied to all factions.

I support that optional compromise, but not the full application to all factions.

Optional use gives the best of both worlds.

 

[sabrina]

I think if there was a minimum activity clause, so people who are voting, have been active in the faction, rather just turned up to vote. This would be a good thing, as they can't just ship at voting time, they can't have a dormant character just to vote.

 

[Natasi Fortan]

Right. Sarcasm.

 

[Judah Lesan]

So you don't trust a faction member base to mitigate these issues before they actually become a problem? Or site staff to intercept these issues in the slim chance they actually manifest?

In the case I described... the member base did challenge the appointment. What I mean is that I trust the memberbase so much in these matters that a required annual election is unnecessary and superfluous.

Do I trust staff to intercept those issues? The staff on many occasions have said they don’t police Discord servers, and certainly not DM’s on Discord, and unless it directly violates a site rule, how is it the staff’s problem to begin with?

All in all, I just think your rule suggestion is just one extra thing that could potentially have a more negative impact than one you are trying to solve.

 

[Fiolette Fortan]

Again there's already a process for members to do this. Not to mention it's been outlined a few times that there is indeed room for OOC abuse, [member="Natasi Fortan"] outlined it, [member="Darth Tacitus"] even outlined it in discord as well. We don't need to mandate something that's already there, especially when all we need is for it to simply be added in written form. A vote of no confidence, it's not something that's used due to the sheer amount of salt it generates. (Unless it's absolutely something the faction is willing to risk.) It is still however an option for members to use if they feel that their faction owner (should be changed to leader) isn't working for their faction. All election mandates does is provide another source of salt on this board. We really don't need it, again, if a faction wants to hold elections every year, every six months then cool. Knock yourselves out, have fun. I get where you're coming from. Trust me, I do, I get it and yeah I can see in maybe one or two instances where this could be useful but those one or two instances do not outweigh all of the other negative effects that could happen.

Changing force user ranks, the release of dev threads or the turning of the factory into the wild west doesn't quite compare to the jarring results of faction leader changes. Again, at this point in time, there's nothing stopping a faction from calling a vote of no confidence and nominating people they feel would better serve their faction.

You're right the faction belongs to the faction members, and believe me, Chaos is good at reminding their faction staff of this. Whether it's dragging that staff through the mud in the faction's forums, calling them out in discord while providing the receipts or simply going in private and being like, you need to step down. So at the end of the day, nah - we don't need to mandate this at all. What we do need to see is the writing of the, 'vote of no confidence,' and maybe changing the wording from faction owner to faction leader as [member="Khonsu Amon"] pointed out.

 

[Kei Amadis]

Well it has probably been covered, my 2 cents anyway.

If someone wanted that in their faction, they could just set the rule up. Then have at it.

No need for every faction to function the same.

 

[Hansen]

No. Stop trying to force your ideas for Major Faction policy onto the whole site via rules, you do what works for you, we'll do what works for us thanks.

Kind Regards,

Big Kirchie

 

[The Major]

No thank you.

Chaos is already charged enough with site politics and the like.

There is nothing that stops a major faction from doing internal, annual voting without laying that policy upon every other faction. If you feel it's a good idea, go and implement in your own faction.

As for the "No Confidence" angle: there's no need for a set rule. Any writer is free to leave a faction they don't want to write in. If the faction admins are that bad their major will die off anyway or if another site rule is broken (harassment, bullying, etc) there are already policies in place. Why give site admins more reports and processes to monitor? They aren't paid to moderate disagreements. Nor is any writer obligated to get along with another. It would be nice, but it's not necessary.

 

[Fiolette Fortan]

[member="The Major"]

It's already in part of the 'unwritten' rules. It's how the Mandalorians were able to shake out one of their FO's who were inactive at the time. So written or, no, as it is it's still here - not something most factions do since it's a rare occurrence but no one would stop it from happening either. It's just another option for faction members, so usually it's not just 'one member' who has an issue at that point it's usually the faction at large. So yeah you're right, any writer is free to leave so what usually happens now is that writer will take their friends and they form up a new faction. I'm pretty sure that's how a few factions got started on this board anyway, but still all the options are there whether it's like or not.