M&M Councillor and Map Vault Cleanse

[Cuddles]

voting doesn't work here. 0.0047% of the community votes.

[Brutus5000]

Democracy only works, if the voters are somehow involved. Many FAF players just enjoy the game and that's it. And it's ok. What we would need to make it working democracy would be to restrict the players who actually can vote. However we have no working system for that right now.

The council system on the other hand doesn't seem to be the best system choice either. We have no forced rotation, so we don't know whether somebody else could do a better job. You can't apply for someones position without him stepping down on his own. And the council won't vote to restaff an occupied position, as there is no guarantee whether things could get better (and also discouraging the existing councilor). In the end the council is a cemtended structur which does not really embrace change.

Of course the council is all about power. Does speed2 need the official affirmation as a councilor to get the mandate to clean up the vault? No. And in the end this can be applied to all positions.

[Franck83]

The council system on the other hand doesn't seem to be the best system choice either.

Right, a perfect system only exists with perfect people. And humans are not perfect by far. Community members are not either.

As Ozonex said and you told for speed2, there are no rules and prohibitives for selfless help and initiative.

And a Jedi concil system only secures FAF stability and balance. So there is no reason community members should be affected by this state of things.

[Petricpwnz]

Community vote is very bad but I didn't mean it when I said "election". As brutus already said current system is really bad too because of no reelection process hence no competition and incentive to actually do work since nobody controls/directly judges you. I could go into a few direct examples and raise drama but let's just say the least that should be done is news post and an official thread where anyone feeling interested in the position can throw their application after which council can read it, discuss and only after that think of picking their guy.
Also as brutus said speed is already cleaning the vault among many other things so I don't actually see why he needs this councillor position, I would rather see some fresh person who can just concentrate on just being councillor.

[IceDreamer]

"Also as brutus said speed is already cleaning the vault among many other things so I don't actually see why he needs this councillor position, I would rather see some fresh person who can just concentrate on just being councillor."

The reason it needs to have a councillor at the head is because it's a position where judgement calls must be made, and that means someone has to be given 'proper' go-ahead to make them. If it were just the duty of the moderation team (Which is the closest alternative in our structure, and the vault cleaning is certainly a sort of moderation) the one with final authority would be Voodoo, who is both uninterested in this issue and already has his time stretched to the limit.

The solution is a dedicated position for the top of the decision and responsibility tree, and able to give others (probably moderators, but not necessarily) the go-ahead to help out. In the event of dispute, the final decision lies with the councillor, not the helpers. Policy decisions are up to the councillor, not the helpers, etc etc.

For the sake of transparency, I don't think Speed2 will mind me saying he kind of caught us by surprise with this :p It's been on the back burner for so long, and he noticed the opportunity what with the new tools coming together, and applied. That is why there hasn't been the usual official front page post, official forum topic for discussion etc, because moving into an application/election process wasn't planned. That being said, Speed2 did the right thing: He didn't wait, he applied, made it public, and then we have this thread

[moonbearonmeth]

What we would need to make it working democracy would be to restrict the players who actually can vote. However we have no working system for that right now.

We could go back to the good old days where the voting requirements were men over the age of 30 who owned land. Pretty sure that would limit the number on FAF that could vote.

Spoiler: show

/sarcasm

[Brutus5000]

You can save your sarcasm for yourself. There are working democracies of the kind I mentioned i.e. in the Debian community. Not every Debian user is allowed to vote, but every contributor is allowed. And it seems to work for more than 20 years.

[This_Guy]

I have no real care about this position, nor who gets it to be honest. People have and will continue to do these things on their own, having someone as counsilier may or may not improve it. I'm just a regular player with no technical ability to help myself.

However, I would like to bring up the fact that biass is regularly bullied when he tries to throw his hat into the ring for many different positions over the years. I know many people dislike him or don't think he is mature enough for the job or whatever the reason is. However he has never been given the opertunity to prove himself. Everyone discards him straight away for how he MAY act. IMO if he is seen as someone worthy of the position why not just give him a trial period to prove his worth or something. I'm not saying he is best for this position or any otheR. But I have seen him work hard in his mapping and I'm sure if given the responsibility he would excel.

Again, I'm not saying he should get the job or not, other people should determain that that have a better knowledge. But dismissing an applicant due to personal reasons seems dumb. Biass has done a fair bit to assist faf in the past with little achknoledgment and should be rewarded for this, not punished due to his personality.

But that's just my 2 cents. Hopefully whoever gets this positions helps to improve this game for the rest of the community.

[biass]

You can save your sarcasm for yourself.

Come on dude, it was just a light hearted joke.

There are working democracies of the kind I mentioned i.e. in the Debian community. Not every Debian user is allowed to vote, but every contributor is allowed. And it seems to work for more than 20 years.

It sounds good to us on the discussion table because we all fall under this "contributor" buzzword, but what we do here ultimately affects the players and thus we should be providing a better experience towards the end user and letting them speak their minds instead of creating a better entry for our programming resume.

Especially with the amazingly poor player retention currently. not only with new accounts but with the motivations and hope for veteran players.
Players are starting to feel that choices are not being made in the right direction, and if you consider that right or wrong, they still do, because we haven't told them why it's the correct path properly.

That's very sweet of you to say, This_Guy.

[PhilipJFry]

It's amazing how many posts it takes from -> let's give this person a chance to prove himself to -> said user insulting the guy who codes the tool he will need to curate the map vault

If you want to help biass there are some things that need some work on the website like the password reset page. Brutus already did the work in the back so all there is to do is some javascript and html stuff i assume. For details you could pm him on slack. But please try to not insult him by suggesting that he does stuff on faf for his own personal gain maybe.
edit: got stuff the wrong way - carry on