The reasons:
1) Behavior
2) Previous Bans
3) Tone
Before we get into the analysis of these reasons, let's first start off with something less controversial. Mainly, the very basic information we have available to us about the Player Councillor and his responsibilities to the community.
The first thing I'm going to talk about is the very first line you are given on the FAF Wiki about the PC role. As you can quite evidently see, the line informs the community that it is THE COMMUNITY that decides on who represents them. Now, I'm not an idiot and neither is anyone reading this. We can all see the danger that comes from allowing the community total access to the voting procedure with zero oversight. What you get is the possibility of streamers/casters exploiting their huge influence in the community to swing the vote one way or another. This is why the Council, with really zero complaints, implemented a policy for a primary and secondary voting system. This way, if someone was given the most votes due to an egregious manipulation of the community, that person can be passed up on for another individual.
But the Council has gone a step and beyond. They did not retroactively decide what to do after the community voiced their opinion on who should have the position. Instead, the Council took the burden of deciding what is in the community's best interests proactively and curtailed the applicant pool to match their own personal views. Keep in mind what my reasons for being excluded are: behavior, tone, and past bans. These are not criteria that affect my ability to perform in these duties:
- Communicate with people to represent their ideas? I wrote 6000 words on the PC applicant thread, people can vote for whether they think an asshole like me can represent them adequately or not.
- Organize community projects? Not relevant
- Organize TDs? Not relevant
- Gather feedback? Not relevant
- Present info to the Council? Not relevant
Someone explain to me why exactly I have been excluded from the PC process for reasons like "attitude" and "bans" while incompetence is clearly being implied as acceptable under the rulings of the Council? They have already shown they have no respect for the democratic process and cut the candidate list like a Syrian dictator, so why are they simply cutting me but not the incompetent? Could it possibly be because they view individuals that conform and don't rock the ivory tower they like to put themselves in as preferable to someone that might actually gather community information?
Here is one example:
Look at the amount of work that Picoo was willing to put into the application process. He wrote less than Morax in that thread, and Morax was simply there to ask questions about the election process and candidate positions. Is this not grounds for removal due to incompetence?
How about this:
"it all needs a good update expecial with the new t3 reball commingout at some point"
"To correct you ive actulay leand from heavan's videos, Pointers from AchivedJaguar8 on where i can imporve and also a few other higher rated player that are in ONI have told me better ways. i jsut play with brnk to have fun i never learnd how to play the game from him i use other means. How would i chose the ladder pool i will have hosted just under 10 1v1 torunaments in amonth and ive never had any bad feebcak on the maps that were slecetd for them so i would take that as my map choice for 1v1 games was accspetable."
All three of these are quotes from Rowey in the PC application thread. I don't exactly know about you guys, but I view having a firm grasp on the English language as being a pretty good litmus test on the competence of a PC Candidate. How can I expect this person to write polls? How can I expect him to collect data about major issues in an accurate manner? I even doubt if he can properly follow a train of thought considering his inability to follow a conversation on the forums in the PC thread. Yet this level of incompetence is not seen as grounds for removal to the Council?
The democratic process of the PC election is meant to showcase WHO the community feels represents their interests properly. That is the entire reason the position is even open to a democratic process while other positions are not. It is clear that the authority of the position is derived from the election. The Council has overstepped their authority here completely and have put their own personal values on an individual above the community. This is not a coding issue. This is not a financial issue. This is a community representation issue.
The PC is here to present the community's desires to the Council. The Council is now indirectly telling all of FAF that they, as (mostly) players that rarely get out of their insulated coding and administrative bubble, know who can properly tell them what the community's interests are.
The real reason the Council did what they did is because they either know or subconsciously know that their personal values mean nothing. You see, in a fair and just system, the Council would have voiced their concern and been willing to release logs and records of individuals so that the democratic process could have more information. As we all know, information is the bloodline of democracy and so the community could utilize my ban history or my "attitude" problem and determine whether that proves I am not right for the position.
Instead, the Council fears that they are not respected enough to sway any opinion. Either the information does not matter (which means the reason for excluding me is even more egregious) or they feel that people do not properly weigh "my ban history" against my ideas and so they must properly tip the scales by excluding me proactively.
I would like to hear a response from the Council. Did they overstep the bounds of their offices? Or is the entire concept of the election a sham? How can the Council have the right to both (and doing both) proactively and retroactively decide the true result of the election? This is a tension that cannot be logically resolved, it is one or the other.
If anyone else is upset about this breach of Council authority; I recommend you vote for biass as your primary choice and ignore the secondary choice option.
