Election Reform

[Matthew]

Type: General


Change Petitioned For: Instead of staff deciding when an election should be held internally, then those elected individuals becoming staff forever until they "step down" i propose all staff's roles expire after 2 years then we have a biennial election and if they want to remain staff they must be re-elected. Staff could decide how many mod / admin positions will be available internally the same way they decide currently, then for the election have a public vote.

Reasons for change: 

• Current management is not representing the wants of the user base.
  
• Higher quality of life for users with proper representation.
  
• Removes inactive / non-representative staff lessening the deadlock preventing decisions on various items by staff.
  
• Creates incentive for those in power to not be inactive.
  

Reasons for no change: 

• The current size of the community is small, there may not be many individuals campaigning.
  
• Public could vote in a non serious individual who has "questionable" qualifications / motives.
  

[Nickster258]

How would Mod/Staff be distinguished with this election system?

[Matthew]

How would Mod/Staff be distinguished with this election system?

Have a template with input for mod votes and another input for admin votes or smth.  You could require x years of activity to run for mod and y years for admin, or possibly require a term as mod to run for admin.

[konsumlamm]

Current management is not representing the wants of the user base.

How do you know that? Have you done a representative survey? What wants are they not representing? Or do they just not represent your wants?

Have a template with input for mod votes and another input for admin votes or smth.

Are you suggesting that admins should be elected through a public election as well?

[Matthew]

Current management is not representing the wants of the user base.

How do you know that? Have you done a representative survey? What wants are they not representing? Or do they just not represent your wants?

Have a template with input for mod votes and another input for admin votes or smth.

Are you suggesting that admins should be elected through a public election as well?

1. I have not done a survey, that may be something that should be done. I've come to this conclusion through the following reasoning and my own experience. The majority of admins spend little to no time in game or doing redstone, at least half of the admin team i never see anywhere in any chat. Due to the lack of presence i doubt their ability to understand the wants of the present users. Anything is possible, they may be doing fine, my experience / observations has convinced that is not the case though.
   
2. Yes.
   

[PabloDons]

There's a few things wrong with this, but I think you're on the right track. Imo staff should be renewed regularly but here's my issues with this:

Currently the reason we haven't held an election in so long is because there isn't enough need. There are simply not enough members on ORE to call for this and frankly I think the current staff is very good. When it comes to admin activity ingame, I think it really doesn't matter. Admins are doing quite a bit of work behind the scenes considering we're volunteers. Anyway I really don't understand the need to see admins online at all. You probably wouldn't bat an eye if a random member stopped coming as often. We're actually more popular simply because of our rank and I think that's wrong.

Public vote almost always boils down to popularity vote. A community can't possibly tell how suitable someone is to administrate the currently very intricate system that is ORE. We have tried to do our best to battle this through the short personal statement anyone who is elected is required to write, but ultimately it is so much safer to keep the vote to staff.

I also want to use this opportunity to discuss how to solve the issues you put forward. I think there is in fact a problem, but this isn't the right solution.

#1 representation of members needs: You got it backwards if you expect staff to just figure out what people need or want. You guys actually have to tell us. We've been working on a better system to do this and that's how petitions and feedback stuff came to be. Communication among staff is something we actually do pretty well, so it's enough to tell any one staff member or send pm. Though we do need to be much better at communicating back with the community.

#2 preventing decision deadlock: this is frankly not an issue with inactive staff. If someone doesn't participate in decision making, they are simply excluded from the vote. Deadlocks happen internally because we don't have a system for tracking decisions and implementing changes. Having a lengthy discussion is easy and also fun at times, but actually coming to a conclusion and then acting on that conclusion can be much much harder than anyone could have guessed. Take any group of 5 or more and it can take hours to decide whether free coffee for everyone should be a thing. Then you have the dreaded question once that group decides: who's gonna go it?

#3 removing inactive staff: I'll try not to rant too much about this. It's a real issue and we've spent oh so much time trying solution after solution. The hardest part about this is tracking activity, because it can take many forms. I'm doing this school project thing and have very little free time beyond that to get ingame and do redstone. Should I be removed for this? Also electing new people takes a lot of work. There's just so much you have to learn before you can be a fully effective staff member. It's easier to just scream at the occasional inactive member to git gud, rather than remove and replace. I understand that this isn't the most effective solution, but there's a limit to how much work staff can do before they just can't be bothered anymore.

So to loop back to my first statement, yes I think staff should be regularly replaced. The benefits of this are immense. New people tend to be a lot more motivated and engage in so much more work and effort. Members who have been involved with staff in the past are much more knowledgeable about the internal structure than we can ever hope to just show in a forum post. Also new faces with new ideas is valuable. Best part imo is blurring the hierarchy line between staff and members. It kind of dials down the popularity because rank thing and it makes for a much better and inclusive environment.

Now FINALLY what about the actual preposition? Just to summarize, I think your petition isn't really going to solve the problems you have put forward. But what will it do? Firstly like this, yes you're going to incentivise activity ingame, but for the wrong reason. Like I said, it will become a popularity vote. I am guilty of this, even on the last election, because I simply couldn't tell how good they would fare and had nothing to base my decision on except how well I knew each one. The personal statement helped a ton, but even then it gets biased towards those who are skilled in literature. Anyway, once they are elected, people will be more focused on staying popular so they get reelected next time. This makes for a worse staff team imo