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Post by Gilthonielle on Sept 30, 2009 16:35:21 GMT -5
Hey, if you need someone who is mostly "outside" the realm to help officiate from the internet, I'm game. I still have an interest in the success of Maethodoron but not necessarily a personal interest in the results of the election.
And now for a bit of a rant on the nature of leadership, government, and the future of Maethodoron: (TL;DR: I want you guys to do this thing right because I care a lot about Maethodoron and so I think you guys have a lot you need to consider).
I think you want to beware of over-complicating your positions. Yes, Maethodoron has grown quite a bit over the past several years, but it's still a fairly small realm. Having too many positions and a complex series of voting rules may result in nothing ever getting done / never having enough people to vote on anything.
Something else that is important when establishing elections: is this a one time event or are you going to have elections at regularly prescribed intervals? In gov't there are elected positions with an expiration date and there are also other positions with less-definition. There are pros and cons to both. One advantage to having scheduled elections is that you rarely have to worry about deposing someone, you merely have to wait it out until elections. One of the cons is that it means elected officials may try to "curry favor" for the "next election." Etc, etc.
In my experience with Maethodoron, things get done best when someone realizes an issue, takes initiative, and just gets the job done. It is when people spend time waffling and debating and asking for every member's own personal opinion that stuff gets bogged down. Remember: just because an admin hasn't scheduled a practice doesn't mean you can't still have one! Just because the admin aren't hosting an official sword building session doesn't mean you can't build weapons! If you want to go to Badon, just get your own ass there, don't rely on the admin to vote on the day and time of arrival and a committee to feed your sad self. If individual members take personal responsibility for the things they want to see accomplished, you practically don't need administrators. They should basically there to fill in the gaps and keep people organized. But then again, I'm for a limited central government with strong local support based on individual accountability.
Remember too that elections mean nothing if in the end, the same people have to take up the slack. I know people have been saying this for years in Maeth, but remember that very little actual power and a great deal of responsibility comes with leadership in Dag. If you are running for a position because you think everyone will "finally listen to you" or because "then I'll get to make people do what I want" you're barking up the wrong tree. In the end, unless you can convince people of the validity of your position and/or "jist git 'er dun," there will be industrious, productive, take-charge people in the group that will do your job (and resent you for it). I'm not saying that figure-heads aren't valuable in some cases. I just think that in a small organization like Maethodoron that they are redundant. Be responsible!
Okay, I'm sure that's enough from your Northern Sister. Hope to see you guys soon...I'll have to find some event that's in between PA and RI. Heh
-Gilthonielle
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Post by Swordbrother Nova on Oct 1, 2009 0:44:07 GMT -5
Problem is More than just maeth members can vote, and random people could get friends to vote. (Kinda sad if someone would do that, but hey....) So we have to be careful about that.
(In response to tibby's post about online voting)
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Post by Morguinness on Oct 1, 2009 18:05:10 GMT -5
as far as voting goes, how about this: we designate someone trustworthy and entirely outside of the realm to count the ballots of the vote. that way, at least in theory, it will be fair and impartial. we could do this by mail-in ballot, and in order to make sure nobody is voting more than once each person voting would have to put their name on their ballot. technically this would not be a "secret" ballot, but part of the rules of the voting process would be that the person counting the ballots is not allowed to divulge who voted for who. that way at least our votes should remain "secret" to eachother.
as far as the ballot itself goes, we could post a blank one on the boards as a printable document, and have blank hard copies available at practice. this way, nobody can claim that they were shut out of the voting process. i understand that some people don't have Internet access or for whatever reason can't get on the boards regularly. but everyone should be able to fill out a ballot, put it in a stamped envelope, and place it in that magical blue box labled US Postal Service.
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Post by Tiberius on Oct 1, 2009 20:35:47 GMT -5
if we are to vote my mail then it will be like 3 weeks before the results come in. to slow.
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Post by Izad on Oct 1, 2009 21:57:23 GMT -5
if we do like Morguniess said, then i think, we need to get a list of people that are allowed to vote. Like, all of the members we have so far and send that with the ballots to whoever it is that is counting them. That way when they get to each person's ballot, they can cross them off of the list to make sure that that person has only voted one time. And if they happen to get 2 ballots with one person's name on both of them, they just throw the second one away. To make sure that each person is only voting once.
that might not make sense to everyone. i know how i wanted to say it in my head, i just dont know if it came out correctly while still making sense.
But i also think that when ever we get this ready to go, we need to set a date to have the ballots in by. We can give everyone more than enough time to get their ballots, fill them out and have them back to us. But i think we need to have a cut off or else it will just take forever to get this done and out of the way.
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Post by Swordbrother Nova on Oct 1, 2009 21:58:12 GMT -5
We could e-mail/text someone from out of realm that we choose and require actual names be attached.
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Post by Swordbrother Nova on Oct 1, 2009 21:59:06 GMT -5
Made sense to me.
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Post by Vors Nymphkilla on Oct 1, 2009 22:46:23 GMT -5
i think voting rights should be people who have been with the realm at least a month (or something else time based) and who frequently comes to practices (at least once every 2-3 weeks) and/or events. This isnt to exclude people who dont come out like their opinion doesnt matter, but typically they are out of the loop and may not always understand why a vote is taking place at all. I know I'm gonna be out of the loop until my concussion and infection heal so I wouldnt expect to vote on things that I havent been a part of.
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Post by Seamus on Oct 2, 2009 11:13:47 GMT -5
I Like the idea of Gilth being impartial outside counter. As well i think elections should be held as a more regular thing, so more people have the ability to know how everything works. Mabye once every year none of us are going to be here forrever to help out so we need to keep training people how things get done so people can take over plus no one get burnt out
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Post by Mercaine on Oct 2, 2009 13:54:02 GMT -5
Everyone who considers themselves a member of maethodoron can vote. I'm going to say that includes anyone who has attended as little as three or more practices. Which means all of our newest members who've been here since welcome back would also have a say in how things are running. If we want to get everyone involved then it's important to get EVERYONE involved and not just "vets" Maeth has always been about the new people, and we need to make sure they are involved just as much.
Gilth could easily regulate both online, txt, and email voting. She could watch the polls and we could give her exclusive access to the poll and how to run it. It would be posted on the website not the forum. People would be required to fill in email address and name to vote, that way she could validate the voting process with names. If she doesn't know some of the newer members she could ask me or anyone who they were and we could say yes they are real or no they aren't without ever having to know who voted for whom.
We'd then keep the polling open for about a week or so, after that time we'd count and see what we've got.
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Post by Vors Nymphkilla on Oct 2, 2009 23:16:55 GMT -5
i think thats a decent idea. i cant think of any objections at the moment. i think a huge part will be the need to verify who has voted and their legitimacy
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Post by Tiberius on Oct 2, 2009 23:23:21 GMT -5
i say a minimum of 6 months, because i really had no idea of what was going on in maeth for at least that long.
i agree on the email your vote in. like in order to vote you need to have an outline(anti vote spamming) , like
what ur voting for...
answer to vote
name and dagorhir name
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Post by araduin on Oct 2, 2009 23:42:01 GMT -5
Everyone who considers themselves a member of maethodoron can vote. I'm going to say that includes anyone who has attended as little as three or more practices. Which means all of our newest members who've been here since welcome back would also have a say in how things are running. Well, that sounds fair. But there are a few problems with that. 1. If the new member only came to three practices, chances are, they may not come to more. We all know how many new people drop out, and the one practice I attended this year, there were more new people than there were people that have been in for a year. Say you have 15 new people. Odds are, you'll keep about five. Should ten people who will never come to a Maethodoron practice again have a say on how the group should be run? 2. If new people are allowed to vote, they better be informed on what they're voting for, not just who they're voting for. It would suck if a candidate decided to be supernice to all of the new people just to get their vote, only to start blowing them off once the candidate got elected. 3. People who have only attended three practices have not had a chance to get to know the game, and may not grasp what works and what does not. They have fewer tools and may potentially fall victim to favors (a vote in exchange for free weapons, free garb, unit membership, etc.) Plus, after three practices, they do not yet know what separates a good leader from a bad leader, because they haven't had a chance to observe how a realm is run. 4. Odds are, this election will not occur tomorrow. If it takes place three weeks from now, then any aspiring candidate has plenty of time to "pad" their numbers by inviting fifty of his or her closest friends to come to the three practices, only to have them drop out after the elections. 5. If new people can vote, since they have a right to decide how the group is run, can they also run for office? What if you have 15 new people, they're all friends, and they all vote for their buddy? Guess what? You're realm is being run by someone who has been in the game for a month. Have fun at the Winter Invasion. 6. Let's say you do limit voters to "veterans" who have six months in the game. What if a member showed up for the first time seven months ago, and never came back until it was time for an election? In the United States, not everyone can vote. Only registered citizens may vote, and people under 18 cannot register. Illegal immigrants cannot vote; neither may legal immigrants, unless they become citizens (which probably never happens within three weeks). It is not undemocratic to limit who can vote, as long as it is not based on race, gender, religion, etc. New people should understand this, since most of them are around 18 and they had to wait until they could register to vote. Don't even get me started on term limits; I'll go on all night, and I have to go to a wedding tomorrow... |
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Post by eoin on Oct 2, 2009 23:46:56 GMT -5
I'm against time in maeth as a cut off. I registered for the boards on 30 Apr, like a week before I could regularly come to practices. Thats about five months if you don't care to do the math. Because my covered May through August I'm not nearly as familiar with the non-resident college members as some of the rest of you are. Does that mean that my preferences for what direction the realm goes in are less valid? I see a potential for this to be a simple popularity contest with out any voicing of the pet issues the canidates have. Heck I don't even know who the canidates are except the people currently in office and I check the boards atleast three times a day and I think I have been to all the sunday practices and aleast half the friday ones as well.
I think that if you give us newbs the information we need to make informed votes we can vote in an intellegent manner. Heck I am already trying to get the knowledge base I need to start a realm from the ground up come next fall when I stand an even chance of going to grad school in an area with out existing chapters.
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Post by Tiberius on Oct 2, 2009 23:52:13 GMT -5
we need to gather the brethren court to assemble a code book to settle all this gray area stuff and new idea's from the past few weeks and to officially say how voting works instead of blurting out idea's and not having it set as what we go by. we have all this talk and no show for it.
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