Developing "Democracy in Sheeptag"

Since we got a mapmaker who is actually ready to change the map it has gotten increasingly obvious that there are a lot of aspects we do not fully agree upon in this community. Throughout the history of sheeptag people have often argued that they had their majority on their side for their idea, but despite various lists, polls, etc, there have never been a sufficient way to actually determine this. What we have learned from this is that we lack a method to determine what to do in a disagreement.

Up until now the community has been left to the mercy of the mapmakers, the tournament arranger, or the forumadmins, to settle disagreements, which have lead to a cut-throat enviorment with lies, manipulations and various alliances just for the purpose to have collateral towards whoever is in charge. It have strongly damaged the chances of civilized discussion, and often friendship have been privilaged before good arguments. It have also been tough for the mapmakers/tournament arrangers/forumadmins who have been put to hard decisions, and I suspect that the alternative to not do anything have often been more tempting than making a decision in questions of vast disagreements.

Therefore I suggest the introduction of a democractic method to settle disagreements. Now I suspect many of you laugh and doubt this is even possible, and you are right by doing so. But when you really think about it, I dont think it actually would be this hard.

My suggestion is similar to many countries, but obviously a lot more simple. What I suggest is a council made out of different "parties".

A party consist of a party-leader, council-candidates and ideas of how to develop for instance the map.

What I suggest is that people who feel they have strong ideas about how the map should be developed form a party, present the direction they want the map to go in, maybe if you have some especially strong questions thats important for you for instance the stackfarm or removing invis and then who the leader is and who the council candidates are.

Between 2 specific dates we then have the voting, this is the hard process and Ill get back to that later, when the votingprocess is over all parties over a certain limit, lets say hypotheticly 5 % get a part in the council. The council consists of the partyleaders and additional councilmembers for the bigger parties after a certain pattern. For instance this can be that you get one candidate for each additional 5 % you have. Now, the function of the council is mainly to discuss and debate sheep tag questions.

The actual decisions are then made by the parties through a voting where each party represent its voters. You represent your percentage share of the total votes the councilparties got in the election.

Obviously we will also have reelections at recurring times which prevent parties from doing something else than what they promised.

The complicated part is, as I mentioned above, the actual votingproces. But I dont think its imposible to settle.

Some of you might wonder why not just have direct votings?

Well first of the problem is a votingprocess is very complicated. We cannot have direct voting at every suggestion, whereas a democratic council can easily pass through basicly any amount of suggested mapchanges per week without any problems. Its also a lot easier to repair misstakes with a democratic council, lets say you have a major voting, you vote yes to introduce something but quickly realize it was a misstake. Will we have a democratic voting direcly again then?

Edit : I made a new topic where we can discuss what system to use so that we can use this topic for questions and suggestions specificly around the democratic system.

So basically, this is a representative democracy in which people will elect one person of similar opinion to represent them, much like the US senate or house of representatives. The thing I worry about is that our community is so small, we might only have ~3 representatives, which gives each one a ridiculous amount of power.

First of all, the councilmembers dont have any power, their job is to argue for their parties opinions. The parties have as much power as the members give them.
Second of all, the number of councilmembers will be decided before the election by the system we chose. It can be 3, 5, 10, 15 or 20. Or even more.
Third of all, if a party "abuse" power in any way, they will obviously not be reelected.
Fourth of all, I cant think of ANY other system with LESS chance to abuse power for the one in "charge". Can you?

If you can organize this successfully it sounds pretty cool Shoop.

Im a bit confused.

Who actually votes for the changes in the map? The party leader?

Once a party has a sufficient amount of people following it(5%) you say they get to send people to a council(one person for every 5%, the leader being the first to get in i assume). So now, we should have 20(5% x 20 = 100%) council members. What exactly is the job of the council members? You've said that they don't have any real power and they are just their to debate sheep tag changes, but what is the point of electing them if they are just going to debate like a normal member of the forums?

Perhaps I'm completely wrong in my interpretation of your system. Idk, clarify for the weak of mind such as myself please<3.

The councilmembers are representants from each party in the council, the council should have a forumsection where only councilmembers can post but everyone can read to discuss forumchanges and argue for what they want.

If you can put together a good democratic system I will honor your majority decision. Of course I reserve the right to veto an idea that is terrible in my opinion, but that would be very rare and if it really came to it you could overrule with a huge majority i guess.

What I like about shoops system is that we can actually weight different opinions. One party has to come up with an opinion, so first there are discussions on a lower level (here the own section of every party where only party members are allowed to post). The even better thing about this is that discussions are actually about the subjective pros/cons of each party, so not everyone has to argue about the same topics over and over again, because of vastly different opinions.
so a party has a certain program (f.e. + invis, - stack, extreme mastery fans, extreme teamplay fans, or some mix of whatsoever) that makes discussing problems in the party easier.

A good point I'd like to underline is that if someone changed his opinion, should we make a new time- and nerves-taking vote?
No, of course not.
1.) Discussions in the own section give a clear picture about a topic in the first place (no suspects about agendas etc.), reading on other parties sections allows to see the other side
2.) if you change your mind about an important point you can simply switch parties and therefore instantly give power to the other party without starting a new poll, or you're unlucky and go with the desicion your party has made, since they represent you, you can still hope that your (regreted) vote isn't taken into account.

However, the system doesn't seem to complicated to me. Simply have parties, those have leaders who speak for the parties and have weight equal to the amount of members they have. (Correct me if that's wrong).
Also, I don't think the community is to small for this system.

Furthermore, if there is a leader of a certain group of people who have about the same ideas about st, it's easier to get a poll started. A Leader probably also has the function to mobilize his party to make a party-vote, so he then can quickly give his vote in the council. (this comes in handy for easier problems that should just be fixed quickly, such as the bomber-problem)

A counceler then just has a representetive function, but high responisibility. The Council, however doesn't have much power other than to present the result of all the discussions that there have been in the parties.

The setup then is easy, some people feeling distinguished can wirte down a party program and if other people like the ideas and a distinguished person has a certain amount of followers he gets his own section/party. there should soon be atleast two parties.

Thumbs up for shoops idea!

If we are going to implement this we first of all need a list of everyone who are allowed to vote. After given this some thought I think it would be close to impossible to come up with actual criterias that we can check people off of, but we could easily get a list of people who fit a certain description, for instance it could be "active members of the sheep tag community".

A way to get such a list of names would be first to have everyone who want to vote sign up through this forum and simply posting their interest in voting and their BNet account(s).

Then we have a group of maybe 10 reliable people from both Europe and US East who each approves the persons they think fit the description, and then we let every person with for instance at least 5 "votes" vote.

Shoop wrote:

If we are going to implement this we first of all need a list of everyone who are allowed to vote. After given this some thought I think it would be close to impossible to come up with actual criterias that we can check people off of, but we could easily get a list of people who fit a certain description, for instance it could be "active members of the sheep tag community".

A way to get such a list of names would be first to have everyone who want to vote sign up through this forum and simply posting their interest in voting and their BNet account(s).

Then we have a group of maybe 10 reliable people from both Europe and US East who each approves the persons they think fit the description, and then we let every person with for instance at least 5 "votes" vote.

Whole idea seems to be quite democratic, but there are some disadvantages:
1. If we include people like dark_exodus into active members , they should only be allowed to vote. I literally have no patience to read irrelevant blabber, spams by such ppl , they bring 0 content.And i believe most of u would agree with this.
2. Talking about '10' reliable ppl , this will cause ALOT of discussions , since if someone gets excluded of the list ( for example beeeh) , he will start to whine, spam, flame and will try to ruin this system, he will feel 'underrated' because he wasnt chosen as a reliable voter and i give 100% he will try to destroy the system.

So to sum it up , THIS idea should be tested and worked out before we implement it. We should seek out any disadvantages this system have ( for example 2 of my above) and try to fix them.Ofcourse there will be more , since its hard to find PERFECT system , we can obviously see that from different countries.

I'm sorry but I don't see the point of this at all. First of all I don't think the ST community is big enough to need representation in a democratic form. Having 10 people voice the ideas of 50-75 people doesn't really seem worth it to me. And the people that would be voicing those opinions are already the people talking on the forums. I just see this as a couple people trying to gain more power in an already disintegrating society.

Night, I think you missunderstand the point of those 10 reliable people. Their job is just to approve the persons who match the criteria we set up for voters. For instance "active members in the community". This is mainly to avoid people smurfing. Their job would basicly just be to say "yes Ive seen this player for a while". Or "no, I havent seen this player for a while".

Zoolander, there have been various reasons for this presented by both me and other posters in this thread. If you dont think any of them are valid, why dont you explain why? Now it just seems as if you read the title and then posted that you dont think its a good idea. Also the point of the system isnt to let people voice their opinion, the point is to actually make decisions. And we do not have a system to do that today.