Modinations

[Satya]

I'd rather wait to say who's been nominated until people have accepted their nomination (if someone else has nominated them). I have one person pending at the moment.
I don't really see how it makes a difference to know at this point, rather then at the week's end. It doesn't hurt to have people nominated more then once and I am not going to look down on anyone for nominating themselves.

Fair enough. I was just curious.

I'd been here 8 years

Really? I think I lumped you in with the group of people who were here way longer than me. You've only got 3 months! Crazy.

It's a conservative estimation (1/2/3 seemed appropriate enough). I can't remember really for sure. Wayback has been a dud and I can't access any of my old accounts. It was around my Junior year is all I know for sure.

It doesn't hurt to have people nominated more then once

On the flip side, someone might not get nominated at all because people may assume they were nominated.

Oh, yeah.

This I guess.

[Luet]

I'd rather wait to say who's been nominated until people have accepted their nomination (if someone else has nominated them). I have one person pending at the moment.
I don't really see how it makes a difference to know at this point, rather then at the week's end. It doesn't hurt to have people nominated more then once and I am not going to look down on anyone for nominating themselves.

If you don't see how it makes a difference but there are at least a few of us that DO have a preference, would you mind doing us the favor of listing the nominations as they are confirmed (accepted, etc.)? Thanks, I'd appreciate it.

Also, thanks Syphon for the explanation. I did understand it once Chris outlined the options. How can we come to a consensus of how to run the vote? A poll?

[steph]

The only thing I would add is a member has to be here for at least a year, as well. That covers every single oldie who has been here and that cares enough to ever want to vote on anything and it would prevent newbies who may play a lot in the game room from getting to vote within a week of showing up.

I feel comfortable with that.

[Gravity Defier]

Also, this speculation about 8 people to vote for, 100 people to vote for is all just funny when there are two nominations so far.

The point I was making was that we should have a procedure that doesn't need to be fixed every single time just to address the current situation of nominees. A system that works whether we have one nominee or a hundred nominees. Personally, I think trying to figure out if a proposal has any unintended consequences is good and it's worth our time. Maybe it won't matter in the short-term. But it might someday. So that's why I proposed that we try to figure it out now, while we're discussing everything else that comes along with getting access to make real changes to our community.

Yes.

So, with my support there, I also would like to support a poll to allow us to choose a manner of voting to be used not just now, but in the future as well. This is what I meant about laying a solid foundation. Make the "hard" decisions now so that we can operate smoothly later, when things are already established in every other way. We can have this in an unofficial (or official) set of bylaws, the same way we have it written down how we handle bannings and warnings.

A poll to choose this so that it's quick, painless, allows for a clean-cut, straight forward result and is available to all who want to voice their opinions (and do so without being made to feel any which way by others knowing where their vote lies). Chris laid out some beautiful options. why not just make those the poll?

[Jayelle]

I hope that, someday in the future, you all have an opportunity to have every single suggestion you make dissected, debated and disagreed with to no end, just so you have a sense of how incredibly frustrating it is.

I wash my hands of this. You guys decide how we're going to vote and let me know when you're ready. Then, I'll give you the list of nominees.

[Gravity Defier]

I hope that, someday in the future, you all have an opportunity to have every single suggestion you make dissected, debated and disagreed with to no end, just so you have a sense of how incredibly frustrating it is.

Not that we need any more drama (and I may be a kettle here calling the pot black) but I don't see why this has to be the case; I don't understand why you see this as going against you instead of it being a conversation that you are a part of.

Because, I have to say, I wish you and everyone else knew what it was like to have every single suggestion you make not dissected, debated, disagreed or agreed with. After spending the better part of a year trying to get input, I think it is a beautiful thing that people finally want to be part of the conversation.

I wish you saw that instead of seeing it as some sort of challenge or threat.

[Satya]

I hope that, someday in the future, you all have an opportunity to have every single suggestion you make dissected, debated and disagreed with to no end, just so you have a sense of how incredibly frustrating it is.

I think many people know what that feels like, from one life experience or another.

[Syphon the Sun]

when I tried to think of it as a simultaneous process, number 3, my brain asploded.

An instant runoff system is used to select Hugo winners.

The quick rundown of the Hugo method:

You rank nominations in order of preference. (If you feel one or more nominees are not suitable, they are not ranked. Instead, you put "No Award." Or in this case, I guess, "no mod.")

There are then a series of voting "rounds." First round is just count everyone's first preference. If someone gets 50%+ of the votes, he or she wins. If not, you move to round two.

Round two begins by taking the last vote-getter's votes and putting their second choices in their respective piles. New totals. If someone gets 50%+, they win. If not, move to round three.

Repeat process until someone gets 50%+.

As the Hugo Award people say:

In ordinary governmental elections it is possible for the winner to be someone that 40% of the people like and 60% of the people hate, because that 60% could not agree amongst themselves on a candidate. The Hugo voting system is designed to avoid results like that.

[mr_thebrain]

i hate to say it, but i kinda agree with jayelle here. i can see both sides. but seriously. given the current state of pweb, i don't see that this particular vote is going to be any real trouble. and i get that you guys want to make the rules for future mod choices now. but we rarely go through this and by the time we need another mod, the situation here will probably be different.

and not to add fuel to the fire, if i were in her position, i would be a bit frustrated too.

[Luet]

We care about these things because we care about pweb. The only way we could have avoided hurting her feelings (which I'm sorry has happened), is to have not had any opinions or to have not voiced them.

[Satya]

i hate to say it, but i kinda agree with jayelle here. i can see both sides. but seriously. given the current state of pweb, i don't see that this particular vote is going to be any real trouble. and i get that you guys want to make the rules for future mod choices now. but we rarely go through this and by the time we need another mod, the situation here will probably be different.

and not to add fuel to the fire, if i were in her position, i would be a bit frustrated too.

Said as much myself earlier..

To be honest, I feel like it will have little impact on the outcome, and only marginally change the relative simplicity/complexity of doing it.

I think to just sleep on it and errbody just step back for a bit might be the course to take. It's not an urgent issue.

Is it?

[Gravity Defier]

No, it's not an urgent matter. I don't disagree with a breather being taken (so long as it isn't swept under the rug).

But brain, here is what I'm struggling with. I feel like she is frustrated, not because our points don't have merit, not because they are unnecessary or unwise (they might be but I don't think they are, obviously), but simply because we're discussing it at all. If that's not the case, I wish she would articulate where the frustration is coming from, so I can stop frustrating her unintentionally. Otherwise, it looks like that is all there is to it: we want to talk things over, she doesn't.

That makes it look like our opinions don't matter. I can't see it any other way. She keeps asking why it has to be so complicated but I'm asking the same thing. It most certainly does not need to be rushed, we have time to talk about it, why not just talk about it? No one is being uncivil. No one is trying to say her suggestions don't count for anything at all. We're saying we hear them, we disagree, can she look at ours and think them over?

I do not understand how her being "in charge" has to mean conversations don't happen and I don't get how it has to mean we have to agree with all her decisions or else we're being difficult/giving her a hard time. Being in charge, as far as I'm concerned, should be: This is the end goal, this is what we want. You all give me your opinions on how to get there, I will add mine to the mix, we will think over what is best as a group and we will move forward.

I've said before that we don't need to be in a hurry, we had a s*** board for 5 years, why rush now. I don't see why we have to start cutting corners. I don't see why we have to agree with everything or keep our mouths shut when we don't in order to move things forward.

I am frustrated, too. As I said a few posts up, I would have killed for this sort of discussion last year.

[Luet]

I agree with most of the above except I don't think the board was crappy for the last 5 years. I just think that things were not discussed very openly and this led to some resentment.

[Gravity Defier]

Oh, I meant the forum software was s***** and we had no room to make changes technologically-s*****, not the people or their posts or anything like that at all, even including bad communication.

[Oliver Dale]

I have no business interjecting anything here, but since this is the internet I feel compelled and empowered to do so anyway.

I vote for no votes. JL is a benevolent leader, and unless the goal is to spark lively conversation about voting, I'm not sure that any of this is going to accomplish anything. I mean, if this is the sort of place susceptible to unrestrained tyranny, it doesn't seem worth spending time here anyway.

Also, hello!

[Ela]

Hiya, Ollie!

[starlooker]

I have no business interjecting anything here, but since this is the internet I feel compelled and empowered to do so anyway.

I vote for no votes. JL is a benevolent leader, and unless the goal is to spark lively conversation about voting, I'm not sure that any of this is going to accomplish anything. I mean, if this is the sort of place susceptible to unrestrained tyranny, it doesn't seem worth spending time here anyway.

Also, hello!

Hello.

Also, I quite agree with you not having any business interjecting anything here (said with love, I swear). Damn, though, but I'd like that to change. Anyhow, since you are here and interjecting, stick around, drink some limeaid, catch us up on things, why dontcha?

~~~

I have a lot that I'm thinking about and want to say about the rest of this thread, but I'm going to wait till my thoughts are less jumbled. I guess the one thing that pops out at me is that I am seeing rather forcefully where Jan is coming from. (Much as I hope she has not entirely washed her hands of this process.) It doesn't seem to me to be that much of a reach that this particular sequence of events has been frustrating, discouraging, and disheartening. And I am not particularly enjoying the dialogue because it does seem to me that people are refusing to give the person in the position of leadership any sort of leeway, actual power, or validation. (And I love me some Oxford commas.)

As the non-mod who mainly spoke up for no-votes in the other thread, I am fine with votes, I withdraw my position, can we please not have to figure out if we're voting on voting? In my head, this has all become terribly overcomplicated, anyhow, without that.

And I love you all as much as I did before all this, please do not take any of this too personally, it is not a referendum on anyone's character, morals, right to speak up, or love-of-pweb, and I am going to bed. Eventually. After Donny comes back with some Eucerin for my back.

[Mich]

...can we please not have to figure out if we're voting on voting? In my head, this has all become terribly overcomplicated, anyhow, without that.

And I love you all as much as I did before all this, please do not take any of this too personally, it is not a referendum on anyone's character, morals, right to speak up, or love-of-pweb, and I am going to bed.

These two thoughts are the first thing I feel the need to speak up on in this thread in support of. The idea of anyone on this board getting upset about anything board-related is making me extremely upset, and I'm not even active in any of these debates. I won't say something foolish like "I've felt like an outside on this board for the past 8 years," because everyone feels/has felt that at some point, but I generally am not inclined to get involved in board-related debates and similar as I never feel experienced enough to state my opinion without it being obviously uninformed. However, board politics is something that we've all grown sillily experienced in in the past couple weeks, and I'm tired of it.

There's obviously no solution to this problem (which I find a rather silly thing to be upset about) that won't annoy and, apparently, deeply insult someone. So I feel like even voicing an opinion on a direction to take this is pointless, as I don't feel particularly strongly toward any direction unless it clearly makes people happy. But I just want to point out that I've never heard of a single forum that doesn't have all mods be mod-appointed. I'm not implying that the fact we've decided to do that is stupid, nor that it makes us better than usual: merely that it's unusual. I love our mods, place my trust in them as friends and as governors of this space we call our internet home. I also don't know what the dozens of other posters who haven't posted in this thread think, but feel that this place has become just as hostile as other growing-pains related threads, and it'll be a relief for all of us when we're finally done with this, new mod, two new mods, or no new mods. I just don't want us to have argument after argument about the sixty voting processes we need just to appoint yet another person that will probably be trustworthy and unbiased.

That rambled and didn't really go anywhere but man, I'm sick of feeling like I'm being apathetic when I'm the opposite.

Also: Ollie!

[Gravity Defier]

I officially withdraw any opinions, comments, quibbles, questions, concerns, judgments, and reservations I had.

I wish you the best, Jan.

[Jayelle]

To be clear: I am not washing my hands of being a mod or leaving in a huff or anything like that. I am simply stepping back from this whole "how we vote" process. No matter what I choose or no matter what gets chosen someone is going to be upset. So, if you guys want to figure out how that's going to work, I'm fine with it.

I'm not against discussion, but I am against discussion that goes nowhere. And I couldn't sleep I was so frustrated last night, so I washed my hands of it and was able to sleep.


ETA: I have no idea how this became (or if this became) is about more then just choosing a new mod, but it seems like it is. There are other decisions to be made (re: the main site, etc), but if we can just make this one decision first about a mod (or two), then we can move on to thinking and discussing a main site. I don't think that forum mods are connected with that. To me, this is about someone to give me an active hand in running the forum.

[Luet]

The few people that were interested in the voting details continued the discussion off board, so as not to stir up more conflict. We settled on what we hope is a fair but simple option. I ran it by Jan and after getting her okay, here you go:

Everyone will vote for their top choice for mod among all nominees. If one candidate gets at least 51% of the vote, they win. If no candidate gets that, then Jan will take the highest two vote getters and hold a second round. We will then vote for our choice between those two candidates. The highest percentage will win.

[Jayelle]

Alright. Taking a couple days off of this has made me more calm. Sorry for hurt feelings and crap. What you guys have said is totally reasonable.

Okay. So the nominees so far are:

Dr. Mobius
Mr. The Brain
Luet
GS
Noodle
Satya
Mich



Nominations close on Saturday, Nominees need to get back to me by Monday. Voting will start on either Monday or Tuesday.

[Gravity Defier]

Am I allowed to laugh at the new thread title? Because I am. This is why we need the subtitles (thank you, Noodle!).

[Jayelle]

Am I allowed to laugh at the new thread title? Because I am. This is why we need the subtitles (thank you, Noodle!).

I really hope you do.

[Luet]

Everyone will vote for their top choice for mod among all nominees. If one candidate gets at least 51% of the vote, they win. If no candidate gets that, then Jan will take the highest two vote getters and hold a second round. We will then vote for our choice between those two candidates. The highest percentage will win.

I also wanted to add that in the event that Jan decides to add two mods, she could just stop at the first round and take the top two vote getters. I know it's not a perfect voting scenario but I think the majority of us are fine with it.

[VelvetElvis]

I would also be ok with this system.

[Gravity Defier]

Dr. Mobius
Mr. The Brain
Luet
GS
Noodle
Satya
Mich

Crap, how am I supposed to choose one of them? Can't we just have one for each day of the week? Satya Sundays, Mich Mondays, Noodle Tuesdays, etc?

[zeroguy]

Crap, how am I supposed to choose one of them?

This is kinda why I would have supported an approval voting process, had I been around when this was being discussed. Normally in situations like this I advocate for a Condorcet method of voting, but here I really think anything like that or even instant runoff voting to be unnecessarily complex. We're not picking the friggin' pope, here.

Not that I'm suggesting anything change or anything! Any further discussion in that area I recognize as useless at this point, but I've been gone awhile, and dammit, I wanted to say something.

[Jayelle]

Nominations are now closed. Watch this (announcement) space for voting news in the next 24 hours.

[LilBee91]

I can't choose just one. Someone pick for me.

I'll do it, I just don't know who to go for. You're all so awesome! I like Alea's suggestion.

[Dr. Mobius]

Crap, how am I supposed to choose one of them?

The way I see it, there's really only two options. If you thought the idea of me as a mod was a bit strange at first but haven't had any problems with it in practice, vote for me. If, on the other hand, you've enjoyed the recent drama and look forward to doing this every time someone disagrees with a mod decision, vote for someone else. It really doesn't matter who. Except maybe Noodle. I don't have anything against the guy, but I'm a bit curious as to why he's running in the first place since he's already an admin and I don't recall anyone else being forced to offer themselves up as a sacrificial lamb.

[Gravity Defier]

I highly suggest you keep the suggestions to yourself, bud.

I'm a bit curious as to why he's running in the first place since he's already an admin

Noodle is currently a tech mod, not a board mod (behavioral) and the responsibilities of those two positions are very different. I sincerely hope you know and see that difference.

[Dr. Mobius]

I sincerely hope you know and see that difference.

One's blue, the other is orange. The techs know the software, programing and other technical aspects of running a website while the blue mods keep an eye on a community doesn't need much moderation most of the time. That said, the only tangible difference is the color and I'd certainly hope that if the s*** hits the fan while none of the blues are around and a techie is lurking the tech will do a little damage control until the blues show up.

[Gravity Defier]

I'm not going to sit here and point out the difference. I suggested you stop speaking on the matter because I can't see it helping you at all and can certainly see it hurting you.

Even if I agreed with everything you've said, telling people how they should see their votes spent when you're in the running for them is bad form. Seriously. You're on the ballot, let people decide. My initial comment was a joke. That is all.

[Noodle]

For my part, I'm running because I was nominated. I have no idea who nominated me, but I appreciate it very much.

I have little to no expectation of winning anything. Heck, I don't even expect a single vote. I accepted the nomination because I was nominated, and I didn't have a good excuse to say no.

As for the differences between a tech mod and a full on mod? I see that as being a huge difference. I have to log out of the site as Noodle, and log on as TechNoodle. This makes it very obvious to EVERYONE that I'm doing something tech related. If you look in the online users and see TechNoodle listed, it's a safe bet that I'm on the site doing some upgrades, or other technical work. Yesterday I spent several hours working on getting the topic descriptions to work, and cleaning up the smilies page. These are things I look at as my responsibility as a tech mod. However, since I'm not a full mod, I don't go into the Mod Forum, I don't feel like it's my place to warn a user, or even delete spammers. I leave those non-technical decisions to the people who have been granted that responsibility.

If I was on the site, and there was someone repeatedly spamming, or doing significant damage to the site, then yes, I would step up and do something. But if someone was doing something less immediately damaging, swearing, racist comments, or otherwise in need of a Mod Hammer, I'm not sure what I would do. I think I would take it on a case by case basis. I would probably report the behavior to an official mod, first and if it was too out of hand, I'd step in. I use my powers sparingly, as I wasn't granted the full mod hammer.

I hope that clears things up from my perspective.

BTW: I'm not sure who I'm going to vote for. I know I won't be voting for myself. but the others are all qualified. I had a PM created with my vote, but then I second guessed myself and didn't hit send. I take it seriously, and I think all of the nominees are qualified.