I propose that a test should be made mandatory to evaluate whether or not you're qualified to vote, and that answers such as "we've been good friends for a long time", "I like them" and "I think they deserve it" should be discounted. If you have any interest in who should be promoted, then you shouldn't have any trouble passing the test. If you're not even willing to bother researching the candidates and take the test to validate your input, then you don't need to vote. Aside from that, votes should probably be submitted to the global inbox and the current standings concealed until after the election. While I agree with Eirinn about it leaving room for conspiracy theorists to say that the higher ups are cooking the books, these people are almost always fueled my personal bias and wont be satisfied until things go exactly the way they want it to. They're not looking for a compromise, they're demanding submission. I also think that, if the above suggestions were implemented, it would counter enough of the uneducated vote to allow longer campaigns that allow candidates and their supporters to promote their campaign thread in their post signatures. For a first round though, it went pretty smoothly.

I appreciated the idea of this. Giving the users a say in the matter of who gets to be mod. But people then endlessly complained about who is more popular, and so on.

I think that next time we should have applications, but also, maybe just have Staff+ Vote for the candidates? That way we don't have uneducated votes, and there will be a lot less hurtful comments thrown around.

I think this was alright, but it sure needs improvements.

I don't know a lot about how and why there were chosen 15 users (and that became 13 because two of them didn't make any threads), so there's not much to say about that, although I like Bara's idea of doing 10 users max.

I felt like the threads where users could tell about themselves and why they should be picked was a really good thing, but especially since people asked great questions. I think that my choice might have been different if there weren't asked any questions. It's important to see how the users who want to be mods would tackle difficult situations and what their opinion is on something strange, it shows how they think, who they are and how they could be as a mod later on. 

The voting process is something that should be changed. Not everyone replied about that they voted for someone, because persons didn't read it, forgot it or didn't want to post, maybe because persons voted who never made a post before so why would they do so know? I don't think it was much of a popularity contest, sure, not everyone got votes, but even though the three users in the round 2 were some of the more well known members they are also well known since they helped out a lot on this site. But I wanted the voting rounds to be longer, I was reading the candidates' threads and wasn't finished yet when round 1 was stopped really early. Round 2 had less candidates so it was a good thing that one didn't stay open for so long, but I really wanted round 1 to be longer.

I'd hate to say it, but I'd think the best decision is to let only Elite+ Members vote for the Local, being that they know what their doing. Because Elites are mostly former staff, and some of them have been locals, even globals.
So they know what they are talking about in this regard.


And have the votes sent by PM, so it's not so cluttered up.


I'd also like to question the user. You know make the user explain why they're going with whom they choose for Local(If that makes any sense)


I agree with others, the thing should be limited.   I'd like to see more Experienced people over just anyone who claims they've modded elsewhere.

Singelli :

That's not what I'm saying, though. Not bribery or flattery, but just people acting out of character. And I wasn't saying these candidates did (while I did see some more gracious behavior from a few of the originals in the race). Think of the future too, where as the site gets bigger, more and more people want to be mod. Niceness gets you higher up there. You know what I mean? I don't mean to argue, but it's more than what you thought I was saying.

I liked it but I would prefer if there was a thing where we did applications then the next time a spot is open an election and back and forth... I think it would manage the whole thing about the popularity thing everyone is talking about.

The staff picks the mods - "they're picking the people they like"

Members pick the mods - "they're picking the people they like"

So basically the "popularity" argument is garbage to me cause it seems like no matter what it is used against the people being picked.

geeogree : That's the way I feel to a tee.

geeogree :  Obviously there is some amount of bias regardless of who picks them, that much is unavoidable. However I'd trust the bias of those most experienced and are forced to put a lot of thought into it over those who may not spend much time thinking about it and don't know much about what being a local mod is like thereby possibly not knowing what traits are good to have. 

And right now over 50% of the people who voted are against the election format, even if they may not mirror the opinion of all of vizzed, it would seem kind of pointless to keep using it when most people voting don't want it to be that way since the whole reason this is being tried out in the first place the way I understand it is because people wanted mod selection to be more of a democratic process when in reality that doesn't seem to entirely be the case.

Zlinqx : I agree with you on your last point. There are people who voted for Bara that also say they dislike this system of picking mods so I don't think there is going to be any sort of win for this system.


However, I might bring it back if we need 1 mod picked with some major tweaks to who can participate and how the voting is handled. I don't think this system will ever be better than having the global+ pick mods but I think it can be made good enough to do on rare occasions. If you take out the "bias/popularity" complaints there are actually very few major complaints about the system that I can see.

Eirinn : "If someone does not post to say who they voted for, their vote is not valid."

This is a great idea but let's keep the anonymity and say if someone does not make a post stating that they have voted, then their vote is not valid. This implement would essentially "fix the system" and I'm really surprised that no one figured this out during the second poll.

I'm assuming that in the first poll there were no unclaimed votes at all out of the 102 total votes since no one posted that there were any in the end and Singelli was leading by 10 - 14 votes ( maybe less? ). However, geeogree becomes "worried" at the end of the second poll because there were a total of 15 unclaimed votes out of the 57 total and Barathemos suddenly leads by 4 - 7 votes. How could you count those unclaimed votes? If those 15 unclaimed votes were voided, then we may have a different Local Mod now. So, overall, I was disappointed in this election and I can guarantee that the next election would be SOO much better if this fix was implemented.

And stop all of this popularity nonsense, it is very childish

Kruzer : well, the first round was more about figuring out who the top candidates were. I wasn't as worried about unclaimed votes that time because the top 3 were extremely obvious even with some unclaimed votes.

However, the 2nd round was actually about picking a mod and I watched that round more closely and early on there were very few unclaimed votes (and Bara had a 10-12 vote lead) and as the round wore on there were more unclaimed votes and Bara's lead got smaller and smaller. That is why I was worried.

I didn't want to say anything because I didn't want to sound petty and knew it how it would sound... but I felt the exact same way Kruzer did.

And geeogree, I want to be VERY clear that I would be feeling the same way even if roles were completely reversed and I had won.

I think one thing that bothered me was that you specifically said that votes unaccounted for would void the election... then changed your mind.

Only to implement that rule in the second round.

And the fact that the lead was closing is ... well.. pretty normal in an election. More people were getting the time to make choices and vote. Barathemos got nearly ALL his votes in the first few hours, whereas mine started slowly trickling in. Since you said you were going to run the election for a longer time, many people thought they had more time to vote.. only to be cut off over the worry of unclaimed votes.  Thus, both the promised timing, and the rules on unclaimed votes were very inconsistent....

In my opinion, that renders the election very unfair.

(And again... PLEASE, PLEASE do not assume I'm just being a sore loser.  I would be saying the same thing if I won, and I actually probably would have pm'd you sooner than I'm posting this.)

I understand that you didn't want to out-shine David's announcement, but the fact that the election wasn't announced also made a huge difference. I still have a few people pm'ing me to wish me good luck because they have no idea it's even over.  Much less that they could have voted.  I think it would have been better to let the election run as promised, and maybe announce it on the second day.... or to even let it run three days and announce it on the third day.  The voice that went towards this poll was very small, and doesn't do the member base much justice.

I'm going to round, here, but basically, the numbers went sort of like this:
Round 1:  a 40% (10-15 votes) lead was had by one member (13 candidates), and there were around 100 votes. This was deemed as not enough of a lead and a second round was needed.

Round 2: 1 40% (SEVEN votes) lead was had by one member (3 candidates), and there were around 50 votes.  This was deemed as lead enough to claim a winner..... because of unclaimed votes.

(And maybe to add some perspective, in the first poll, second place held 24% of the votes (a 16% difference), whereas the second place of the second poll held 33% of the votes (a 7% difference).)

It's only natural that with fewer candidates, the lead would be smaller. Thus, I think it was too early to get worried and close the voting due to the lead closing.

And once more, because I know some people don't read... I'd be saying the same thing if I had won and Barathemos had placed second.

Also, please know geeogree that I am not trying to insult you / complain / make you look bad.  It was a first try and tough decisions had to be made. There were some confusing kinks that were unexpected.

But you wanted to know how to make the next election better, should we have one. And I think if these things were addressed (along with the method of voting by pm) would make everything much more fair.

I agree with Singelli.

I was one of the people who didn't even realize that a second round had started ( along with half of the other voters who participated in the first poll ) and by the time I saw that a second poll was created it was already too late. The system that you came up with really isn't broken at all but it just needs a little tweaking.

Kruzer : and part of the reason why people didn't know was because of David's announcement regarding the financial situation of Vizzed. Otherwise I would have made a 2nd announcement.

And the voting was definitely done wrong. A public poll that didn't require (or somehow provide) proof of who did the voting doesn't work. I totally agree that a private voting to the global+ mods would work best.

I think that only Trusted and up should be allowed to vote in the second round. By all means let everyone vote for their candidate to get them considered, but when push comes to shove, the people who know the workings of the site should be the ones selecting who works the site.

It seems that we've just about settled on how things would be best done should we try this again, but I'll chime in once more just to say a few things.

I think the system as a whole worked well. Yes, there were some issues like people not claiming votes and thus forcing an early end (I for one missed the vote as I was trying to decide between two of the candidates so I wanted to wait until the next day so that I could consider who I felt was the best option).

Next, the popularity contest argument is just silly. EVERY selection process is based in popularity, even if we try to be as unbiased as possible. I mean if some barely known member applies alongside someone who has been here for years, who do you think will be picked? I guarantee you that the same person would be picked regardless of whether all members voted or if Global+ picked them. We can't help but be biased toward the ones that we know of because we know what to expect from them. It isn't partiality, it's common sense.

And yes, there could be a lot of little changes to make it better, but that happens anytime you try something new. Much like you get better at a sport each time you play it, or you get closer to beating a game each time you turn it on, etc. A new system/idea has to be tried several times before the optimal results are achieved. Give it time and this (if we keep using it) will work out to a much smoother process.


geeogree - If I may say, I hope you consider doing this at least once more. The process was good beneath the first run issues we had with it. Whether we go to PM votes, Trusted+/Elite+/Staff+/Local+ or whatever voting only or not, this thing could be good with a little more work on it. And while I don't think this one turned out so great (not saying Bara shouldn't have won by any means at all, just that the process had some hiccups and I think we can all agree on that), I do think that it went as well as we should have expected for a first time event. Whether this is the best method or not, I don't know, I just hate to give up on it before we can say we gave it enough of a chance to work out.

I'm really not surprised about the outcome. It really comes down to the fact that people complain no matter what, Especially if THEY themselves didn't get selected, or the candidate they are backing.

I find it strange that people would say "Narrow it down to only people "qualified" to vote...whatever that means. I mean how will we really be able to in any fair way, decide whom should be able to vote and whom shouldn't?

Voting/elections/etc are ALWAYS popularity contests, but that doesn't mean that the most popular is the best candidate, nor does that mean that this best candidate is the most popular. It's UP TO THE COMMUNITY to inform themselves and select the person they honestly feel is right for the job. This goes for REAL LIFE as well as online elctions.

Honestly if we were going to do something like that, we might as well go back to having people whom are interested apply and have the Mods vote. Which is probably the best way to do it anyways.