/tg/Station 13

Hey guys, voting is currently happening for all players but I figured I would post this now.

Next election instead of doing the usual nomination and then creation of a thread for the player vote, it is going to be required that anyone who wants to run (as everyone basically nominates themselves already anyways) must acquire the endorsement of two (2) players and one (1) administrator. Players and admins can endorse multiple candidates if they'd like. Endorsing someone for candidacy is simply saying you'd be OK with them being a headmin.

This system will encourage more activity of potential candidates (they'll need to talk to people, etc) and removes the need for the host to be involved in the nomination process. At a base level, if someone (an admin or a player) can't find at least two players and one admin who would theoretically be OK with them being a headmin, they probably shouldn't be allowed to run.

Once someone is able to confirm their endorsers they'll make their thread, in that thread they'll mention who the 3 endorsers are.


I want to point out that this does not remove the possibility of nominating a candidate you like who has yet to show interest, all one has to do is approach that person and say "Hey you should run, I'll be one of your endorsers!" etc etc.

If anyone has any concerns with this system please let me know, I think it's better than what I came up with on a whim before.

Sounds like a good plan. We'll probably have to make sure that people aren't making duplicate accounts or whatever to vouch for themselves, but 1) that'd probably be really easy to spot, and 2) a person who can't get three people to vouch for them they probably don't have a chance of winning anyway.

I imagined the title being screamed in Dr. Weird's voice.


Yea, I see little issue with this at the moment.

Yes, I guarantee the system is going to change, because setting up a new system at the end of one election, 6 months away from the election this is going to apply to is going to cause weirdness. Situations may change, and nominees are going to be literally scraping up endorsements from anywhere.

Also, this was discussed in adminbus with no player input wasn't it? Don't forget the players came up with this idea of having three split up votes too. Not saying that the process is in stone currently, but maybe a discussion should have been made before concreteness instead of the opposite.

This system wasn't discussed anywhere. The system we had going for the past two elections I just pulled out of my butt initially to make things happen quickly, this new system is just better. This thread is for discussion.

I shall be proactive, and begin my bribery campaigns six months in advance! In three months I will commence mudslinging of prominent figures via multiple anonymous servants on singulo and then spilling out into forums and game, and all shall be in my hands...

What will happen with the adminbus election and the host/coderbus choice?

Malkevin wrote:What will happen with the adminbus election and the host/coderbus choice?

Left to their own devices? Adminbus is much smaller and we just do a forum poll on the admin forum. Arguably our two choices have been very popular with the playerbase as well so I don't see any reason to change our system.

Violaceus wrote:Admin's endorsment requirment will cause many whining about how admins control everything, I am sure.

Obviously this suggested system looks better than what we have now.

I threw this in here as a means of ensuring that a candidate should, theoretically, be considered competent to be an admin. For example, I can think of plenty of players who have never been an admin who I think would make fine headmins, but there are also a lot of players who wouldn't and that type of identification could only really be made by someone who has administrated while they've been around. We also have a lot of admins, it should be no problem to find one to simply say "I would not be opposed to them being a headmin".

Before anyone accuses me of being salty I knew I wasn't going to end ups headmin no matter what happens. Neither was any of the other non-admins.

Here's the problem with the player vote, outside the forms/wider community (half us go months between rounds at times) a good deal of the players don't really know anyone that isn't an admin because they are here to play spacemans and aren't yet bitching on the forums and remembering everyone's names and characters and having loads metafriends.

Admins are notable to the players that just play, most other people that don't piss them off are not.

Coderbus having a vote when HG is headcoder is also a problem.

Someone could easily gain the admin boost by asking myself or another trainer to candidate you a few rounds, etc.

Only players should be able to run for the player vote.

Tsaricide wrote:Only players should be able to run for the player vote.

Then people are just voting for people because it says they have to and abstaining would be a waste. Nobody has time to read 8 different candidate threads and play this game at the same time.

Tsaricide wrote:Only players should be able to run for the player vote.

It's important in any situation that people see their leaders as having legitimate authority. I can't see many admins being content with a situation where they have to basically teach a person how to actually be an admin; what button does what, how to edit vars without setting the AI laws == a pipe, etc. and then an hour later have that person dictate policy at them.

To entertain the idea of a player elected headadmin.

The player headmin does not necessarily need to have in depth in game administration knowledge, the job of the headmin in this case would be primarily to dictate game policy as well as oversee all other admins. Thus a player admin would be far more focused on the policy aspect of the job than the oversite of other admins.

I'm not against the idea of a player headmin, to be honest what's the difference between a knowledgeable player wanting to shape the game's policy to a knowledgeable admin wanting to shape the game's policy? The only real difference between the two is that one knows how to act as a admin in game and the other won't necessarily, but as noted above a headmin is more focused on policy than administration, at least for a playermin.

In addition the people I would bet on being elected on being player headmin would problely have all had at least some brief admincandidate time, hell a lot of people I would never have suspected otherwise have been admincandidate's for a bit.

Cheridan wrote:

Tsaricide wrote:Only players should be able to run for the player vote.

It's important in any situation that people see their leaders as having legitimate authority. I can't see many admins being content with a situation where they have to basically teach a person how to actually be an admin; what button does what, how to edit vars without setting the AI laws == a pipe, etc. and then an hour later have that person dictate policy at them.

Same argument could be applied to a coder, just because they code for the game doesn't necessarily mean they understand admin tools or how to admin.

Granted HG is an experienced admin but if the coderbus election wasn't between HG again or an IRC bot or an ASCII penis... some coder could've been elected that wasn't an admin.

Malkevin wrote:

Cheridan wrote:

Tsaricide wrote:Only players should be able to run for the player vote.

It's important in any situation that people see their leaders as having legitimate authority. I can't see many admins being content with a situation where they have to basically teach a person how to actually be an admin; what button does what, how to edit vars without setting the AI laws == a pipe, etc. and then an hour later have that person dictate policy at them.

Same argument could be applied to a coder, just because they code for the game doesn't necessarily mean they understand admin tools or how to admin.

Granted HG is an experienced admin but if the coderbus election wasn't between HG again or an IRC bot or an ASCII penis... some coder could've been elected that wasn't an admin.

Well, I think that most coders do have at least some admin button experience because they should be bringing up private games for testing. But you're right, even that neglects the "bedside manner" aspect of answering PMs and not being a donk in OOC.

Since you've opened the can of worms, I would prefer if the codervote was limited to people who had gone through the trialmin application process.
It also objectively needs to be ran by a neutral third party with clearly established nominees because "I vote for X because I don't know who else to vote for" is a sad political system.

yeah, the coder vote is pretty shitty imo
i don't think we even have any admin maintainers anymore besides cheri and HG.
I feel like the coder vote should go to somewhere where it could be better utilized, but i have no idea where that would be. a second player vote? I don't know.

i am fairly confident that all maintainers have a good knowledge of the admin TOOLS (i have spent more time messing around by myself on a test server than i want to admit), but of actual administration I know little.

also, say what you want about the dumb shit hg does in his role as a headcoder (there's a lot), he's a competent headmin.

Don't see why the three votes can't be of the same batch of nominated candidates.

Malkevin wrote:Don't see why the three votes can't be of the same batch of nominated candidates.

Unless a solid argument can be made against this, I see no reason why this wont be the case by the next election.

QuartzCrystal wrote:

Malkevin wrote:Don't see why the three votes can't be of the same batch of nominated candidates.

Unless a solid argument can be made against this, I see no reason why this wont be the case by the next election.

I'd consider it an improvement, I always found it strange that it didn't work this way.

Because democracy is a work in progress.

I too like the idea that you have a pool of nominated candidates.

Admins vote from it first
Then the host vote is applied ( Currently the 8==D fest in github by the maintainers)
Then the players get to pick a third.

Could do Instant-runoff voting or something similar next time to hasten the process?

Jordie0608 wrote:Could do Instant-runoff voting or something similar next time to hasten the process?

This is quite possible, ranked ballots (or at least multiple polls with clearly labeled "FIRST CHOICE" "SECOND CHOICE" etc) could work.

Jordie0608 wrote:Could do Instant-runoff voting or something similar next time to hasten the process?

Why not just use preferential voting? more work to set up but you get the results in an instant.

callanrockslol wrote:

Jordie0608 wrote:Could do Instant-runoff voting or something similar next time to hasten the process?

Why not just use preferential voting? more work to set up but you get the results in an instant.

Insant-runoff is preferential voting; it's what we use for our ballots callan.

Jordie0608 wrote:

callanrockslol wrote:

Jordie0608 wrote:Could do Instant-runoff voting or something similar next time to hasten the process?

Why not just use preferential voting? more work to set up but you get the results in an instant.

Insant-runoff is preferential voting; it's what we use for our ballots callan.

Clearly I don't understand your fancy proper terminology

I'm leaving this unlocked in case anyone wants to raise any concerns about this.

Relevant:

MrStonedOne wrote:my vote, the host vote, will be going to the headmins next election where they can either give it to coderbus, give it to the player base or admins as a second vote, or unanimously pick a non-current headmin. Failing any agreement on those options, I'll just pick somebody

I'm going to look for a player to join the electionbus conspiracy with myself and MSO, last election was a bit much and frankly it makes sense that someone who isn't an admin plays a part in running this shit. I have a few ideas of who it should be, but I'm throwing this out here so people know.

QuartzCrystal wrote:I'm going to look for a player to join the electionbus conspiracy with myself and MSO, last election was a bit much and frankly it makes sense that someone who isn't an admin plays a part in running this shit. I have a few ideas of who it should be, but I'm throwing this out here so people know.

This player is oranges.

I think this time we should continuosly purge "candidates" who just want to shit up the elections, like sabbat/miggles/pomf last time.
Like, failing to answer anything seriously and memeposting only takes the attention away from the candidates who care about the community.
Maybe after a warning or whatever.

Pomf was running legit, anon3 was just angry about it and the guy who kept shitposting is someone who has been permabanned from vg

Pomf has his own server and he can stay there.

I nominate Oldman Robustin aka ForcefulCJS for whatever that's worth. I don't know if he would complain more or less afterwords.