I think that smilie sums up my feelings over this adequately.

Yes and no. If we get idiots again that make 101 alts to vote for their main so they win important elections, I will be pissed.

It was stated that the coded mechanics have not changed; you've always needed to be gr3 to vote.

I'd assume if Bob the player made 10 alts, and Bob's main char. kept favoring them all to gr3 that would be a violation of help seconds, and he'd be smacked around and shrubbed.

Edit:In fact yes I remember someone (Annabelle?) using an alt or two to vote for himself in a public cartel, and getting shrubbed for it.

I agree that this is a very good change.

Bothersome that it had to come up, but oh well. Certainly nothing to complain about here.

Goody. Those rules were never followed anyway.

Personally, I'd like it better if voting rank stayed at 3, and contesting rank became 5 for guild positions. IE, the rank where you get access to GTS, "inner folds of the guild" supposedly, and so on.

When I contested for Hierophant, I'm decently certain that no gr5+ wanted the job. I was gr3. It would have been vastly annoying.

Yes. I can assure you that making contestation require GR5 would be a BAD, BAD idea.

For one thing, there's already a lot of positive reinforcement for people already in positions, provided they're not doing an absolutely HORRIBLE job, and even then they can sometimes get away with it. On top of that - and this is entirely the guild's fault, I'm aware - in some places it's difficult to get GR3, let alone GR5. People just don't care so much about GFs as they do CFs. The problem with it being the guild's fault though is that since the point of contesting is to try and clear these sorts of things up, it doesn't help to prohibit it.

Guilds honestly might be better off if anyone could contest, but GR3 isn't -that- hard to get in most places.

Voting for your alts is a clear violation of HELP SECONDS. We have shrubbed characters in the past for this, and will continue to do so in the future.

Well, as soon as I saw the post, I made the appropriate changes to our guild rules. Though it was interesting to note that the guild rules were never actually followed anyways.

Interesting. I don't like it, actually.

We have Guild Patrons to oversee Guilds and make sure they are running in a way which is condusive to the long term health of the game. If there is a problem, let the Guild Patron step in.

This hard coded decision will have a subtle but nonetheless tangible effect on guild roleplay.

Let Freedom Ring….

What an amusing thing to proclaim regarding this. But I’m having a hard time seeing how this move makes the game better or for that matter more free. In truth, it actually restricts freedom in the arena of politics and adds more of an OOC element to the world.

To elaborate, let’s say that a guild has a requirement in place that you must be a certain rank to contest. After this announcement, must they now change their laws? What IC justification would they have for such a move and what if they don’t? What will happen when someone breaks the law that the guild had in place? Will players be able to use the OOC announcement as justification for breaking an IC guild rule? Or will the administration step even more directly into the guild’s affairs?

There are also other elements to the discussion as well, how does one judge the motive that has gone into such laws in the past. There is not always malicious intent behind their creation, or the desire to protect one’s own position. What if the intent was instead to offer an incentive for members of the guild to push harder? Also how will other acts that are considered malicious or detrimental to the game be handled?

Then what about guild favours, will the administration step in there as well to make sure that they are given out fairly? Or stand by silently as players favour their friends and allies? Will they adjudicate over every outguilding and punish where they feel wrong doing has been done?

These are the questions that swelled up inside of me after reading that post, rather than “Let Freedom Ring”.

I think you can work around that. You can make suggestions without them actually being rules, and if the discipline in the ur'guard is good enough, then the mere suggestion should be enough. If the discipline is not good enough, then that means you need new leadership anyways.

Good and bad, I think. Daevos explained the bad rather well, however I see some benefits from this. Let's say a certain guild has leaders which are greedy and selfish enough to make "laws" that keep them in power by preventing people from contesting unless they get permission. In this case, the announce is a good thing.

I assume you meant that using alts to vote for a main was a violations of HELP SECONDS. But this does bring up something else that annoys me: having multple alts in the same organization who are used to make your one vote into two, or three, or five.

The last Glomdoring election had 68 votes cast. I'd love to have 68 people active in Glomdoring, but alas, we all know this is not the case.

In Aetolia, I believe the Admin just announced that they would be cracking down on that sort of thing. What is Lusternia's stance on alts who are logged in solely for voting purposes?

With how people already cry foul when a god shows any sort of support for one canidate or another? Do you really want/expect them to step into elections more often?
New information as come to light in other situations, which has made organizations heavily modify what they had previously set up (wyrdling event anyone?), I don't see this as any different, and surely more minor.There might not always be malicious intent, but an org can still be harmed by something that wasn't meant to be malicious. Yes, the guild patron could look at it on a case-by-case basis, but then we're getting into my earlier point.
That concerns me as well, I might, (I don't, but I might, hypothetically) have a Hartstone, Spiritsinger and Serenguard alt, but where is the line, does it fall to my own discretion to have them vote for the Seneschal candidate which they themselves would vote for, rather then who I think is best for the wilde? Now, that's one of the reasons I don't have multiple alts in a nation active at the same time, I never want to run into that type of situation, but are we to trust others to handle it with their own discretion as well? It's certainly not as important as this change, but it's quite close.

The "what ifs" you put forth here should never be an issue if an organization has removed any restrictions beyond the coded ones regarding contesting.

We are not making any judgments as to the motives of these rules, which is why they are categorically banned rather than on a case-by-case basis. We do realize that many of these rules are made with good intent. I don't believe it was ever stated or insinuated that we think these restrictions are malicious. Rather, not having such a policy creates an inherent situation where leaders have great incentive to create restrictive - whether highly or not - regulations over elections. The truth is that I, personally, would rather be in an org where my friends are the leaders simply in terms of my own enjoyment, and I think it's the same for any other rational actor, to use an economic term. This isn't bad or malicious, it's just a preference, and if I have the power to make it more likely that this will happen, why shouldn't it be used? I'm not of the school of thought that it is fair to create a situation where a reasonable person acting in their logical interests is a bad thing. That is why we are not dealing with this through Patrons or other IC venues (Patrons are not, after all, They-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed but are instead advisors) and are removing this situation entirely.

I think your arguments assume that we view players as malicious, and that we view these players' friends and allies as likewise malicious or incompetent to lead. Both of these are a far cry from what I, and other Administrators, believe.



Using one one of your characters to vote for another is a violation of the seconds rule. The specific rule reads: no character may ever help any other character in ANY WAY. Inactivity and voting is not something we have yet addressed, though we may do so in the future.

I think this new rule is fine. though it takes some RP flavour away from it.

Your reply actually illustrated my point about the OOC/IC divide shrinking further. The administration is requiring that all guilds change their policy as a result of an OOC announce. Implied in that as well is the threat that failure to do so will result in punishment on an OOC level. It begs the question where else will the administration step in at.

In addition to that, while you may not be making a judgment on the motives behind such policies you all are making a judgment on their effect. In one fell swoop, the administration declared that all such policies are far more bad than good, and thus must be banned. Now I can agree that restrictions against contestation can be bad, but I see them as a dual-edged blade that can cut deep into those that would employ them.

Most of my….displeasure let’s say stems not from the final result but from the means to the end. I question the application of administrative authority into the management of guilds. As well as look forward into the future and consider in what other areas it will be used and for what reasons.

So I find it hard to look at this matter in isolation.