Super Mario Bros. X Forums

To be honest I agree; if people are but hurt maybe they're butthurt for a REASON?

It was an accident and GhostHawk already apologized for it.

EDIT: Who locked that topic?

I agree the topic shouldn't have been locked and hidden from the members. There were some great posts there.

Namyrr moved it to archives. I locked it because I saw some whining from several users.
However, I will propose this. If you guys want to discuss about how future elections should be handled in a proper and intelligent manner, you may do so here.

So was deleting these forums back in January, but moving along...

I actually think that Knux is right in this situation; that topic never should've been locked. There really was intelligent discussion going on there.

Anyways, an election might work if you used an IP-based poll site instead of the prophpBB poll format, since it's way too easy to create socks to vote for a specific candidate this way. The fact that the poll was reset like three times didn't exactly make it fair either...

Posting this again...

Raster wrote:Hi guys.

I decided to make a post about why the poll system is terrible and shouldn't be used in the future. I want the staff to read this and probably post their thoughts about this as well.

First, I'd like to say that polls aren't a good mechanic for such thing generally. Polls can be rigged, and while nobody can directly prove this, rigging a poll is as easy as making a dupe account. As far as I'm aware every member can vote. Also, the poll was reset over three times the first time, and that ruined many people's chances of entering the top 10. Secondly, members don't have to post why they voted, which is actually pretty bad. I don't think this community is mature enough for this type of elections. While I can't strengthen this argument much, we all know some members are just going to vote their friends or their favorite designer. Is that a bad thing? Partially not, because it's great to have a staff member whom everybody likes, but it raises a question: is the voting process really efficient? In Nien's case, people voted for him because "it would be fun to see him trying to be serious about this". This affected the validity of the poll in my opinion. Here's how the election should have been run:

Get rid of the poll entirely and ask users who they want to be a moderator and why. It's great to have user input and it's even better when they actually have a good reason for their vote. It would be interesting to debate whether someone would be a capable moderator or not. The staff can chime in as well and get more involved with the election. After the election is over, the staff would read the thread and promote the person who is most capable whilst taking into consideration the users' opinions.

Raster is absolutely right in many people's opinions, as people's responses to the original topic show. The poll was not run properly, and polls don't work very well for this kind of election in general. Something needs to change next time.

I looked at Raster's suggestion and brought it up with the other admins. I'll get back to everyone as to their thoughts. But from my standpoint, I do approve of having an interview-type scheme for electing future moderators.

Pseudo-dino wrote:The fact that the poll was reset like three times didn't exactly make it fair either...

The first reset of the poll was due to reghrhre deciding not to be interested as a global moderator (correct me if I'm wrong). The next two resets I'm not so sure about. I only was involved with the admin voting to decide the new mods.

Biased poll was biased. It was all up to the admins in the end, regardless of the poll which was utter shit, too.

I'm still annoyed that I put so much effort into it only for every admin to just reject me completely. Why bother if you're going to promote the people who have been in the community for years as is the norm here anyway?

Pseudo-dino wrote:I actually think that Knux is right in this situation; that topic never should've been locked. There really was intelligent discussion going on there.

Anyways, an election might work if you used an IP-based poll site instead of the prophpBB poll format, since it's way too easy to create socks to vote for a specific candidate this way. The fact that the poll was reset like three times didn't exactly make it fair either...

That would not work because there are proxy sites capable of bypassing IP bans and such.

Raster's idea sounds pretty good, however I think community involvement at all in the decision will cause issues. There might be a better way of going about it though to avoid bias, such as having some degree of anonymity for example. Just a thought.

Raster wrote:

Pseudo-dino wrote:I actually think that Knux is right in this situation; that topic never should've been locked. There really was intelligent discussion going on there.

Anyways, an election might work if you used an IP-based poll site instead of the prophpBB poll format, since it's way too easy to create socks to vote for a specific candidate this way. The fact that the poll was reset like three times didn't exactly make it fair either...

That would not work because there are proxy sites capable of bypassing IP bans and such.

It might not work perfectly but it'd require a hell of a lot more work to falsify than the forum polls. On the forums, all it would take is creating a realistic-sounding sock or two.

Im not going to necessarily go into a big post here, but a few points need to be stated.

-You cannot remove subjectivity in its entirety when it comes to elections, no matter what and how you go about deciding things.
-Poll wasn't necessarily bad for the election, as it is an outlet for public opinion to decide who should be elected though the problem you guys are having with the poll is that you all know and believe majority rules in a popular vote must apply and decide the election when in politics, its not always the case. The problem really isn't the system of decision here, but the common beliefs and perceptions the public has on polls, and I find the outcome more of a breaking of that commonly held belief and perception.
-Those who say that they improve themselves even if legitimate progress is made, they do not get to decide if the public should consider if they have improved or not.

-You cannot remove subjectivity in its entirety when it comes to elections, no matter what and how you go about deciding things.

Nobody asked for that though. We only think the poll should be removed because it's a bad mechanic generally.

Raster wrote:

-You cannot remove subjectivity in its entirety when it comes to elections, no matter what and how you go about deciding things.

Nobody asked for that though. We only think the poll should be removed because it's a bad mechanic generally.

Then why was I reading posts of people complaining that the whole election is biased? (poll notwithstanding) If anything, it is a sign that those people are missing the point about elections should be objective, but in reality, they are grounded in being subjective (people bring their perspectives, experiences, feelings, beliefs, desires, and/or power into the decision-making process as who, what, and why they want anyone they support elected)

I think this whole poll idea was the shittiest idea Joey managed to pull out of his ass in quite a while, and to me it honestly seemed like a last minute resort. "Oh lord, I can't decide who to make a moderator, I wonder what I should do? I know! I'll create a poll that will generate a large amount of bias! This will surely make my community so much better!"

Joey, first you went and said that the votes are for only one moderator, you went and chose two moderators. The point of the voting was just to get people to the top five, wherein you and the other administrators chose which person you liked more. The administrator voting came to a 3 to 2, you should have had the highest vote, being Kley, get moderator position, not hire two moderators because of it. That's not how votes work.

Also, Blueoak did spend a lot of time trying to get to moderator. He prepared a campaign-like thing, he delayed himself revising for his exams, he readied himself, he made a promise. The majority of the voters voted for both him and Natsu, that's what everyone wanted, that's what should have happened, not what we have now. You have let down the people that had voted for them. Please don't pull your "people voted for their friends" bullshit on me again, because that's not the truth.

You came to a tie on the polls, you decided to take GhostHawk over Magician. Up comes the administration votes, there are only four administrators in total. GhostHawk has two votes, one of them I know is from you. Kley has three votes. Where did the extra vote come from? I thought the administrators were going into a serious discussion, not a smaller-scale vote. If there was just going to be a vote, why not let the community decide? From the top ten, Natsu should have gotten the moderator position in the first place, based on votes. If you were going to add two moderators (I still have no clue how you came to that decision after telling everybody the votes were for a single moderator), Natsu and Blueoak should have gotten the positions in the first place, based on votes.

I honestly don't think this whole "vote for a new staff member" was really all that smart of an idea. The community voted for who they wanted, and in the end, Blueoak and Natsu prevailed, they managed to scrounge up, in total, around 45 votes, that's pretty much double the size of GhostHawk (or Magician) and Kley's votes combined. Instead of going with what the majority of the community wanted, you chose the lowest-voted people.

Here's what I would have done in a situation like this. If you thought that having a vote for the new moderator was a good idea, at least go with the highest-voted person on that list, because that would be logical. An even more logical approach to this would to have not done a poll in the first place, because regardless of who was on it, there would always be bias, and people would bitch and complain about who moved on and who didn't. The administrators should have privately discussed the need for a new moderator, they should have laid out a list of participants they could have picked and chose, why they should have been chosen, etc., because that's the administration's job. Pick and choose a new staff member.

Oh, and yeah. This only proves my point farther that the poll was a bad idea, because you even came to the conclusion that people would bitch about certain users not moving on in the voting.

In the end, this poll just turned into "okay admins pick and choose your favorite out of these five people". It's hilarious and stupid. You did a good job on choosing new staff.

feedback/suggestion: never have another community poll again over something like this. it's hilarious how much shit it could spiral into so quickly

We still didn't get a straight answer as to why two moderators were promoted instead of one, because we were told that there would be only ONE moderator.