I understand that alts cannot vote for their main.

Is it legal to have multiple alts in one organization, along with a main, and use those alts to vote for the candidate you prefer, thereby turning your one vote for Trader Bob into 4 votes for Trader Bob?

This the issue that Aetolia recently cracked down upon, I think. Does Lusternia have a stance on something like this? Is it a violation of any policy?

At first, there were simple guidelines about how challengers should have some support in the current leadership. Some organizations limited contestants to only certain ranks in the Guild. Then it became some organizations restricting them to formal approval from at least one of the three leaders. Then it became two of three... and at that point, the system was rapidly spinning out of control. Changes were scheduled after protests, but not soon enough.

Guilds will now have to enforce their traditions by popular vote. Unfortunate, but guild officials can simply remark on their "change of heart" or heeding the advice given from the Creatrix. While RP is one thing, surely a hefty part of anyone's roleplay is listening to extremely powerful Immortals. As for Immortals getting involved in guild affairs- yes, certain people did plan changes to unjust laws, but they didn't move quite fast enough. Of course the Admins will end up stepping in, and in this case they laid down some very strong rules.

He already answered that.

Voting privileges could be removed from dormant characters.

Alternatively, characters' votes could be weighted according to their amount of activity. Not a linear relation but an equation that'd give a very active character about three times the 'worth' of a barely non-dormant one, maybe.

I'm not talking about JUST dormant alts, so no, he didn't answer that.

I actually don't see a problem with this. Votes (outside of abuse) should go to the person who would be the best at a job. I personally would vote for a GR5 who holds a Secretary position over a GR3 who does the bare minimum.

Furthermore, how do you define 'dormant'? I know GMEMBERS has far more population then reality.

Also, there's people have an alt in every organization, and when they hear there's an election, swoop in and vote for a friend. Extremely borderline in my opinion, and vastly irritating.

I am really not familiar with Lusternia's voting system and having played Achaea for a while, barely remember how it worked in guilds prior to houses. This announce post basically states that even if you're GR3 you can still contest for positions (such as the guild Admin)?

I really see no issue with this, primarily because these people still have to win their elections. It's not like the doors have been opened for every GR3 person to run in and usurp long-running, successful GMs.

Gaming the election system is a different story. You have dormant players and alts out there. If I really wanted to, I could have five votes in the current election in Glomdoring, and that's an issue. (I'm only casting one, so no one panic--besides, how much sense is there to casting multiple votes when you're comparing equally frightening alternatives?)

Every other IRE has done this, and I was always under the assumption that Lusternia had either done the same or would if an issue relating to it popped up. But never the less, hooray!

Maybe this is a little overly idealistic, but wouldn't it be fun to have other forms of government? For example, what if instead of voting on everything, and merely changing the titles, it would be really neat to have different processes to select the leaders of different types of government.

When Celest used to be a Kingdom, although Raikogen was king, he was voted into power just like everybody else. I'd love for there to be more politics within the city. There's corruption, the buddy system, etc. in play. I'd love for Lusternian politics to become more complex.

While I was Hierophant, I made a habit of compiling lists of active voters, and comparing them to the numbers of votes cast. Partly out of curiosity, and partly because at that point I was pretty into politics and also had lists of who was projected to be voting for who.

Anyway, I don't see how this was a problem. Guild rules are not mechanically enforced. If your GM is an asshole, a GR3 can contest regardless of the rules. Any methods of enforcement (kicking them or disfavouring them) are either illegal or quite obviously need to be made illegal. As long as you can't forcibly stop someone from voting or remove them from the guild for contesting, the only thing locking bad leaders into place is their friends, which the admin can't do much to stop short of babysitting politics to such an extent that it no longer exists.

That said, I don't see a problem with a change, it shouldn't really hurt anything. If it's against your RP, roll it out slowly and with some reason; elections probably aren't so common that it's really going to cause a sudden change.

My only problem is that if it goes like the others game you'll have more problems getting to GR3 because people will be much more careful on who they give their GF to and rules will become more restrictive about that (and an OOC admin announcement changing how guilds hand out GFs or GDFs would be terribly out of place I guess). In others games it doesn't matter so much because you get GT from gr1 but I don't know how it works in lusternia, just that people got to gr3 much faster than in any other IRE game I know so it sounds like the standard gr1 of other IRE games. Moving it to a minimun requirement of gr5 to contest might help this, separating being a normal guild member from being a suitable contestant. Then, this is just a possible problem, not a sure fact that will happen, as maybe guild admins will welcome the competition.

A person graduates, they get GT. A person gets to GR3 they get News. A person gets to GR5 they get GTS.

The whole GR3 thing is pretty much nulled as most guilds have guild clans and just post there.

Having to get GR3 to get News is the most freaking retarded thing about Lusternia, imo.

The reason it was hard to get GR3 in Aetolia/Guild Achaea/and possibly Imperian is because you don't automatically keep your class when you quit the guild. You had to get GR3 before you could become rogue, so guild were much more careful about giving someone the ability to run around with their skills but without their supervision. Here you get "class" as soon as you graduate (but our skill system is different anyway and we don't really have "class" in the traditional sense) and there are other, rather strong reasons not to go rogue.

Yes, of course they will change the laws - why, because the laws inherently have more problems in them than letting anyone contest does. About the only real problem with the admin stepping in and forcing organisations to let anyone who can contest do so, is the potential problem of someone contesting just so they cannot get kicked out (while the contesting is on) while they blatantly break the other legitimate laws of the organisation.

Wether the motives behind such laws were pure or not have absolutely no bearing to be honest. They are inherently malicious and promote stagnancy within the guild. Just as a quick example would be the recent Ur'Guard one which required either the person you were contestings consent or that of the other two guild leaders. If you cannot see how that system is easily abusable and majorly flawed then you really need to get your head checked. The easiest example of that would be two friends/siblings/married couple/etc who got elected meant that you would never be able to remove either of them, no matter how bad a job they were doing.

QFT

No laws should have been instituted that allowed for such possibilities for abuse. It was completely short sighted that a law like what was mentioned in the quote was created. Good intentions or not, it should have been extremely easy to determine that such a law could be, and probably would be, abused sometime in the future.

And couldn't the divine patron of that guild just take it up with the leadership from that guild and make them remove such a stupid law (or change it) instead of a blanket rule that affects everybody? I mean, it's not like patrons are nobodies that just happened to be around, they're part of the guild leadership and Gods.

..that's what I said, too.