O5 MIRROR
As it currently stands, the burden of promotions falls on those nominated to convince staff who aren't necessarily aware of their work to vote in their favor. Again and again, voting staff have the resources to educate themselves on the accomplishments of nominees, but they choose not to. I'm not arguing that we force voting staff to educate themselves; I'm arguing that we remove the veto power of abstention so that this ignorance doesn't punish nominees.
I propose a simple voting majority system for all promotions. Nominations would still be made by captains or admins, so vetting by those most familiar with the work would still be occuring. But at the voting stage, we would require only for yesses to be greater than nos.
This would still give a slight edge to the no votes, but that's fine. And if there are concerns around a candidate, this would require those concerned to vote an honest no instead of using an abstention to both block the promotion while appearing to not be making a decision.
For reference this is the relevant portion of the Promotions Procedure under Ending the Vote:
All "Yes" votes are counted in favor, and all "No" votes are counted as opposed. Candidates can have no more than 1/3 of the staff participating in that round of promotions abstaining, as well as at least 60% of those who do vote for them to vote yes (as is standard) to gain promotion to operational staff.
And this is the relevant portion from the Promotions Policy:
Promotion votes for staff candidates will last a period of one week. In order for a candidate to pass and be promoted, 60% of cast votes must be for yes, counting abstentions. For a promotion vote to successfully pass, Quorum of active staff must be met as defined by the site charter, with abstentions counting towards Quorum. Staff may abstain from voting for candidates of any rank. Staff may not cast a vote for themselves.
With this current system, you could receive 26 yes votes, 0 no votes, and 14 abstain votes and fail to be promoted. But if it was 26 yes, 14 no, and 0 abstains, you'd be promoted.
There could be some tweaks to those numbers to mitigate these effects, but I really see no reason why abstentions should have any bearing on someone getting promoted or not.
There are separate rules for promotion to admin, but I'm fine with those being stricter. If anyone feels that those should be visited, let's open a separate discussion and vote.
My proposal is to replace the above quoted text from the Promotions Procedure and Promotions Policy with the following:
All "Yes" votes are counted in favor, and all "No" votes are counted as opposed. Candidates must receive a greater number of "Yes" votes than "No" votes to gain promotion to either Operational Staff or Moderator. For a promotion vote to successfully pass, Quorum of active staff must be met as defined by the site charter, with abstentions counting towards Quorum.
Since this is changing a staff policy, I will be taking this to vote even if there is consensus in this thread when discussion expires.
This discussion thread will be open for one week.
