Feedback thread regarding the mod voting change

[thrawn21]

Heyo everyone! As per this new mod vote, we'd like some feedback on the change to three option voting. If you have any opinions on the matter, or suggestions for improvement, we'd love to hear them. 

[TornadoHorse]

Change "Don't know well enough" to "Neutral". To me, don't know well enough just sounds like a reason to not support someone, whereas neutral would be a middle ground. 

[thrawn21]

My personal opinion on the matter is that I prefer two-option voting. My reasoning was to try to give the mod who votes No (and means no) an out in case of this kind of situation:

• Player B: "Hey Mod, why'd you vote No on Player A? 
• Mod: "Oh I just didn't feel I knew them well enough to say yes."

I'm sure you can imagine a nastier version of this conversation happening, and I wanted to protect mods from that. However, I know this doesn't work when the mod and Player A do in fact know each other well. 

 

The reasoning for the three option voting is to make things clearer, both for tallying up the votes and making the final decision and for non-staff who are watching the voting. 

[TornadoHorse]

But what does the 3rd option add, how does it impact the final result? Will it be counted against the player, or is it just a throwaway vote? 

 

I'm sure you can imagine a nastier version of this conversation happening, and I wanted to protect mods from that. However, I know this doesn't work when the mod and Player A do in fact know each other well.

 

I think having "Neutral" would both serve the purpose that the current 3rd option does as it would cover that reason, but also solves the issue that you brought up. If you don't have an opinion on a player getting staff but have heard good things, you can vote neutrally on the player which neither harms or supports their chances.

[TheRandomnatrix]

Personally speaking, I'm fine with either. I agree with the notion that it's pretty hard to trust someone if you don't know them, which would of course be a 'no', however the 2 vote system leads to ambiguity whether or not it is because of specific reasons or just not knowing them enough. Adding in the third option removes that ambiguity, though I find myself wondering what the ramifications are on some relationships. I fear it may encourage some artificial relation building of people who 'don't know someone enough', where those wishing for modship may act nice around them in order to gain favor. However, on the flip side of that it may also encourage reputable people to 'come out of their shell' so to speak, and get to know more of the staff.

 

I trust the staff to make informed, well thought out decisions on who is responsible enough to handle modship.  I encourage that those that do 'no' under this 3 vote system provide additional information to supplement their reasoning, probably in a private setting as is typically done.

 

All in all I welcome the change, at the very least to see what becomes of it.

 

TornadoHorse, on 05 May 2014 - 1:04 PM, said:

I think having "Neutral" would both serve the purpose that the current 3rd option does as it would cover that reason, but also solves the issue that you brought up. If you don't have an opinion on a player getting staff but have heard good things, you can vote neutrally on the player which neither harms or supports their chances.

I don't feel we need a neutral vote. Either you trust someone enough to give them power or you don't. If you don't know them enough but hear good things then at that point you should decide if those rumors are good enough to go on or not.

[WayneByNumbers]

I, for one, like the change.  It does remove the ambiguity of a "no" vote, but on the other hand, in the older system, that ambiguity was given equal weight to more decisive votes, skewing the percentages down.

 

As for the problem of people seeing decisive no's on their name, I admit there's no way around it.  Nominees are contacted beforehand, so anybody on the list has promised to be able to handle that, but I'm sure some minor tensions could still form.  This might skew the percentages upwards as people are less willing to showcase their reservations about handing someone modship, but if the decision must be between bias in the nominees' favor or bias against, I prefer the favor.

 

If anyone can come up with a completely unbiased system, of course, then the problem is solved, but I sure can't think of one.

[gdavison]

I think it's good that we're trying out new things, and the results have been interesting so far.  We may need a couple of months to figure out if this was really a good idea or not though.

[EeHee2000]

I agree with gdavisdon, it's pleasing to see that we're seeking out every way to make these servers better. The mod nomination cycle, which is atrocious in my opinion, is one of the best places to improve.

[thrawn21]

I agree with gdavisdon, it's pleasing to see that we're seeking out every way to make these servers better. The mod nomination cycle, which is atrocious in my opinion, is one of the best places to improve.

 

Got open ears for suggestions, some complaints and ideas were brought up in the MCP thread and as soon as I'm past finals, I plan on pursuing them in a public thread. 

 

 

I, for one, like the change.  It does remove the ambiguity of a "no" vote, but on the other hand, in the older system, that ambiguity was given equal weight to more decisive votes, skewing the percentages down.

 

Yeah, it is nice to be able to remove the ambiguity with definitive "No's," but I'm afraid of it adding a bit more fuzziness to the final decision in terms of how much the "Don't know" votes should be counted against a candidate (if at all). With just yes and no, the headadmin call is just "where do we think the line should be drawn? 60% yes? 65%? 70%?" But with both no and don't know, it's not as easy to decide that, and it's something the heads are going to have to sort out with this vote. 

[TornadoHorse]

Don't think of it as "Don't know" vote, because that would be a vote for an undecided person leaving you not really knowing what their stance is. Having the 3rd voting option as neutral would leave it as a throwaway option, if you will. If you don't have an opinion on the player you can choose to just stay neutral on them, and that vote will count neither for or against them. 

[djt832]

I see the "Don't know" vote as a throwaway vote. It brings some balance to the system. There are players nominated that only play on one of our three servers, and you cannot expect someone you have not interacted with to trust you enough to give a solid yes. Even if you disregard what server they play on the majority of time, it can still be hard to meet every mod due to time differences. 

 

As far as how it should be weighted toward the final decision, I'm not sure. I don't necessarily view it as a negative vote towards a player and it also gives them the opportunity to reach out to other parts of the community and get to know more users.

 

 

 

I trust the staff to make informed, well thought out decisions on who is responsible enough to handle modship.  I encourage that those that do 'no' under this 3 vote system provide additional information to supplement their reasoning, probably in a private setting as is typically done.

 

I am not sure how the current system handles "No" votes, but I agree that it should come with some sort of feedback. If there is a reason a mod is voting "No", it is important enough for the rest of the staff to be informed of as well. Of course, this is assuming no one is voting "No" just because they personally dislike the candidate. 

Edited May 13, 2014 by djt832

[schererererer]

There's going to be an ambiguity/subjectivity of setting a threshold in any case. How would (5 Yes, 1 No, 15 Neutral) compare to (11 Yes, 6 No, 4 Neutral), etc?

 

Picking an "X% Yes" minimum, "Y% No" maximum could work, but these thresholds would really have to be public before tallying and stay consistent (and in any case be problematically affected by mod population imbalances between servers skewing the "% Yes" value low). This could also get ugly with borderline cases.

 

I'm still a fan of basically just: 1) open nomination 2) make sure the nominee is active / has been around for a while 3) make sure there isn't actual non-trivial opposition to nominee 4) make sure there are at least some supporters for said nominee, and not worry about specific vote counts. If no one gives a specific rationale for a "no" vote, I'd tend to trust the judgement of those supporting a nomination and rubber stamp it.

[barneygale]

AFAIK voting is just a rubber-stamp, as currently (previously?) the head admins won't nominate people they aren't already 100% comfortable becoming mod. On a number of occasions people have been made mod despite a bunch of "no" votes (I believe I had a *majority* of "no" votes!). Separating "no" and "don't know" votes makes sense to me, as it becomes obvious when there is actual opposition to the nominee, which will make the vote less a formality.