Upcoming Elections

[FtXCommando]

Hello everyone,

For those of you that are not aware, The Council has decided to have two positions operate under a yearly election cycle. These two positions are mine (Player Councillor) and the Maps and Mod Councillor.

I’m making this thread to serve as the general announcement that the process of gathering applicants and voting on who will take these spots will be beginning now. However, I’d like to lay some general groundwork about how things will work for the upcoming months in this election process:

- The first month (so ending around the first weekend of May) will be devoted to applicants that desire either position presenting themselves in the appropriate thread for the council position. Similar to other elections, candidates will explain who they are, what they would like to do, what their plans are on reaching those goals, their credentials, and anything else they deem noteworthy in advancing their case for helping the community.

- People will be able to join in the threads and ask candidates questions in order to learn more about them and their plans. As the elections are a democratic process, people are encouraged to be involved through the whole process. However, once the first month is over the election threads will be closed.

- Once we enter early May, a poll similar to the one held for PC Elections last year will be done for both positions. A person will be able to rank their first and second choice for each position and several rounds will be done eliminating the person with the least votes and redistributing the votes as necessary. If you are curious how it was done, you can look back at the documentation of the 2018 PC Election.

- Around early June the results will be announced and FAF can continue under their visions.

In addition, I’d like to remark that this is going to be an interesting election because it’s going to be the first time FAF is going to have one where someone is running for reelection instead of just being replaced. I will be throwing my hat back into the ring for Player Councillor this year.

However, SilentWarrior has expressed to the Council that he no longer wishes to continue with his duties as Maps and Mods Councillor. Due to recent real life obligations he no longer feels he can spend the time he feels is necessary to maintain his sector of FAF and feels it’s time to transfer the position to someone that can build on the infrastructure he laid out. His work is greatly appreicated in consolidating the Mapping and Modding area and I’m eager to see how people plan on using his work to build a better FAF.

On that note, good luck everyone and I hope we see as much participation as possible!

Player Councillor Thread:
/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17393

Maps and Mods Councillor Thread:
/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17394


https://voting.faforever.com/vote

Vote is live

[Morax]

May I inquire as to why only these two annual elections?

I think some other positions deserve to be contested so if anyone in particular may be better suited, or the current councilor needs motivation, there is backing.

[keyser]

which one ?

[Geosearchef]

I thought promo councillor was elected aswell. Which happened just recently.

And the others cannot be elected. (administrative councillor(legally), dev councillors(really bad idea, also a legal issue due to server access probably), moderator councillor(legally))

[Mountain]

I (promo councillor) was appointed, not elected.

[Morax]

Yeah they had to ensure moon did not win.

[FtXCommando]

May I inquire as to why only these two annual elections?

I think some other positions deserve to be contested so if anyone in particular may be better suited, or the current councilor needs motivation, there is backing.

Council decision (basically unanimous on this part) was for effectively every position to be elected. However, this didn’t mean for every position to be elected by the general public. The idea is that for several positions (devops, game code, moderation) involving the general public would be a needless complication that makes performing duties harder. For devops and game code, you now risk people promising things that can’t actually be done as well as simplistic explanations that do not adequately explain certain situations or conflicts. For moderation, well, it’s kind of like electing your cops or judges (and the danger of that can be seen in some US counties).

The conclusion was to create some sort of system that allows for the group said councillor LEADS to be the people that decide on the position. Devs vote for dev ops, game coders vote for game councillor, moderators vote for mod councillor, etc. This is basically what led to Gorton gaining his seat.

This also means that if those under a councillor feel the councillor is not doing his job, some sort of petition process can be done to initiate elections (if they are not annual).

There were three areas of controversy that arose during this decision:

Some felt that Balance Councillor should be publically voted on. I and some others disagreed because of the fact it seems to inevitably come down to a popularity contest (as the BH v Zock election certainly had this element) and it encourages an oscilation in balance policy. People that dislike balance changes will be predisposed to actively push for a change in balance and will try to get a councillor that pushes back against the change. Said councillor gets the spot, revokes changes, and now the faction that made the initial changes would be booted from the balance team (losing experienced members) and try to do the same thing to the new balance faction. This oscilation will destroy the stability of the community and eventually it was agreed to keep the vote within the balance team.

Admin Councillor voting was one that could either not be possible due to legal reasons as it would involve a lot of transferring of certain FAF accounts and might pose a security risk or it would be a decision done by the Council itself. Kind of like a board of directors choosing a new CEO if they feel the current one is unsatisfactorily handling his duties. No real decision was reached on this matter so currently Admin isn’t a position that can be touched.

Last controversy is the Promo Councillor seat. It’s not really a controversy so much as me disagreeing with the overall decision, though. Basically, I wanted to have a general election for promo because I saw no real reason for why the general public would harm the integrity of the position or be unable to understand the platform of candidates. Others felt that the position held too much power as it gave access to things like the FAF Facebook and Twitter and so if a risky candidate got the position they could harm the FAF brand.

So this leaves us with Maps/Mods and Player for annual elections.

[Morax]

First and foremost, good summation and history - appreciate it!

Balance will always be an oscillation of mixed opinions and like/dislike. I don't think that means it should not get a chance to see if perhaps there's a better person out there.

Jagged is great, don't get me wrong, but why the solidification in his hold exists is beyond me.

Moon bear could have at least been given a chance much like yourself. People doubted you and you turned out to not set out to destroy the community.

[FtXCommando]

As an example, the general player on FAF is an 800 rated astro crater/dual gap player. In order to appeal to said player, are people going to be arguing about the need to allow cheaper t2 stage to make 5x5s easier or is the general debate instead going to hover around whether we need to introduce a t4 mex to make the late game more fun?

The balance forums themselves seem to be an excellent look into the sort of discussions that will be inevitable if the balance spot becomes a publically elected spot and that really doesn’t seem like the right way to go for me. I’d feel a lot more comfortable keeping it between the balance team, particularly since the balance team as it is now isn’t just a hivemind of similarly minded people. To me it looks like the balance team is a solid curation of the people that know what they are talking about in regards to game balance issues and if someone is unhappy about the ways things are progressing they should try to see if they could help the team/get involved in conversations.

We did give moonbear a chance in that he had an interview just as the other 3 candidates for promo did. However the Council ended up going with Mountain. If you mean that it should have been elected, well, I don’t disagree with you. But the rest of the Council decided it wasn’t a good idea to make it an elected position and so here we are.

[Morax]

If you mean that it should have been elected, well, I don’t disagree with you. But the rest of the Council decided it wasn’t a good idea to make it an elected position and so here we are.

As long as you disapprove of the council being tyrannical then I approve of you.

Cute how politics at all levels involve changing around things in favor of who is currently in power.