Voting in TB Elections? Some things to consider.
 

I hope that everyone takes the time to read candidate platforms and the answers they gave to the Community Director in the "Debate" forum.

As a former Talkboard member, I have always followed this forum and been an active participant.

A few things I have noticed that will impact my vote this year:

1. Many new names on the candidate list. Is that good or bad? Some rarely post so difficult to know how they would represent us as members. Others have been around for some time and are very valuable and contributing members to the community. A great slate in terms of diversity!

2. In the debate forum, there were 10 questions posed to the 16 candidates. As of this posting, the following is noted:

-- Only 8 candidates (Bdschobel, CMK10, Goalie, Jason8612, Kokonutz, Marathon Man, Rwoman, Schley) chose to answer all 10 questions posed by the Community Director and members.

-- 4 candidates (Allvest, Cochinjew, Trayset, xmlsosa) chose to answer NONE of the questions. Access is not an issue as they have all been on FT since announcing candidacy; as late as today.

While I disagree with many responses (including their responses to the question I submitted!), I respect someone who takes the time to put their opinion out there.

If someone is not willing to support their own candidacy, will they be active participants in Talkboard? We have seen people get elected to TB, and then they just disappear. Do we want that to happen?

I hope everyone here takes the chance to review the platforms and the questions before casting their votes. There are some great candidates here....

I know my votes will be decided among the eight candidates that chose to actively participate in the debate.

TALK THE VOTE!

and do not forget to sign up for SECRET SANTA! :)

Very well said ^ and if I may add one more item (and this holds true for any election)

If you don't vote, you can't complain about the outcome

In some cases if you are overseas and don't have time to go to a consulate/high commission/embassy it can be difficult to vote.

Face it: it's going to continue to happen until Talk Board changes their own rules or the Community Director comes along and boots someone out. Has that ever happened? I complained about the level of participation here before, asking that some minimum amount of threads be involved (as little as 10%--surely a Talk Board member can post in 1 of 10 threads to show us they're still around), and there was just no support for that.

I did a quick search on a Talk Board member that I don't see a lot of. He has posted ONE TIME in the public forum since January while he has almost 200 posts in other forums ( that would be about 1% of the threads in the Talk Board forum--at least he is not at ZERO). For about four years running now we seem to have members go AWOL from the public forum. including the Talk Board president at one time.

Spiff reminded me a number of years ago that there is no requirement to publicly participate here. If I was a Talk Board member, I'd stop participating, too. Why carry the weight for the other members that don't want to participate in the various discussions taking place here? Would make it a lot easier to just shut down the forum and disband the Talk Board when the discussions stopped here.

I haven't decided whether I'm even going to vote this time. It's pretty frustrating to continue to elect members who don't want to interface with me, or other members, here on the public forum. But, hey, those Talk Board rules say you don't have to participate here, so please continue to take advantage of that, including any newly elected members who might not want to participate on the public forum. Remember the rules say you don't have to.

Tom in Galway

There is voting bias, though-you are more familiar with those who post on the same forum as you do, have the same nationality, and those you have met in person than the others. Those that you see post more often may also reveal more of their character and method of governance and opinions.

Well..... I still consider ScottC's answer about the accusation of not participating to be entirely apt: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/talkb...ml#post4818135

I know some of the candidates by their posting history. In some of those cases, there is nothing a poster could post in the questions-and-answers forum that would ever cause me to vote for that person. More positively put, in some other cases, though, there is nothing that a poster could post in the question-and-answers forum that I can imagine dissuading me from voting for him/her. Posting history over the years is far more important to me than anything else. Which is why in 2005 I voted for ScottC and why he won. :)

^

I hope a TalkBoard member will make that motion :)

I'm not certain why selective quoting and a gratuitous shot at the TB is necessary. Then again, I'm not surprised.

Not gratuitous at all. :confused:

Aw, you'd HATE it if the TB went away. Then what would you have to gripe about!? :p

While most members are known by their posts, I do believe candidates for Talkboard have an obligation to support their own candidacy by responding to questions from the Community Director and members they are to represent.

If someone cannot take a few minutes to respond to 10 questions, that may be an indication of their ongoing participation in the Talkboard.

Again, it is just one of my criteria... I too voted for ScottC back then... but I knew about Scott and his commitment to Flyertalk... and knew he would represent well.

When you have so many new "faces" running, I think it is more important that they tell us more about themselves and their viewpoints.

In the end, I do hope people VOTE VOTE VOTE.

Oh, I'm sure I could find something.... We might even agree on an item or two :)

At least the candidates who have participated in the debate forum seem to have voted.

Hm. Maybe.

But NOT steak with milk. Ever!! Ew! :D :p

Mmmmm...steak and Cabernet.



Getting back to the OP, as for how I decide for whom to vote: some of my my best friends are moderators. But they have enough say in how FT is run as it is. I vote for non-mods.

And whether I get re-elected or not, I fervently hope that, for the first time ever, a non-mod will be elected President of the TalkBoard in early December.

In any case, whatever criteria one uses, I do hope everyone takes the opportunity to vote!

Let's stay on topic kids...

obviously I am new to TalkBoard and I have never participated here.. never ventured this way before. When I saw the email inviting people to join and run, it said that people abroad would make it good for diversity sake, and thats what caught my attention. Honestly, I did not answer some of the questions because, some of the answers I saw made sense to me, and I felt I would add nothing saying "me too" or "I agree with such and such" so I kept mum. Also, I thought that once voting begun the questions were closed to us to answer, so, it seems that I can still go there and answer them now, which I will try to do, so people can know more of me and my views. I've never been in politics or aspire to do so, so my running was more based on if chosen, I will do my best to honor those who voted for me and participate to the best of my abilities. It seems that the inner works of FT to be very political, something that I never really dug in... anyhow, I too like those familiar names with lots of posts and wish everyone best of luck and most importantly, represent us well!

The debate forum was made "read only" when voting opened. (At least, hopefully, it was. Sometimes these tech things don't happen quite as intended.)

We'll find a way. ;)

This is 100% correct. In the OP's list uptop, I know many of those named. Some I've met in person, and some I only know by their postings. The last name mentioned does post a lot. I'd like to say that quantity of posts does not = quality of post. @:-) Please consider that when you vote.

dh

Now now, every post has a quality. It may not be of a good quality, however. ;)

I would use a normal curve with the x axis being logarithmic (though not necessarily base 10) to gauge post quality.
(though it may be skewed to the left, to think about it.)

Voting in TB Elections? Some things to consider.
 

I voted and certainly paid attention to everything anyone said. It's been way too political the last few years and while I rarely comment here I do read regularly. I just hope people voted for the candidates who genuinely want to offer something, not big note themselves and use as an ego trip as quite a few have done. I voted right across the board this time and chose the responses I like. Post count means little to me. I'm here daily but don't post much, so I'm gonna give someone a fair go too. Also I think when people are too chummy outside of FT this isn't fair for new candidates to get a decent shot.

The Talk Board could change the rules there and specify certain slots for newer members (i.e. blocking one slot for a member with less than 3 years, for instance), or blocking certain slots for those that are not incumbents. Personally, I don't see that happening, but you're free to suggest something like that if you don't think the current system is balanced.

I think the bigger issue, though, is loss of interest in the Talk Board and what they're doing. With 500,000 members you would think we'd get more than 1,000 votes. Maybe need to offer some iPads to get members to vote. :)

I see this (similar to what I have experienced directly with several other organizations) as a sign of health: comporting with what several surveys over the years by previous FT ownership found again and again, "regular" folks are generally very happy with FT. They come for information, find that information well-organized (at least in most forums), find mostly helpful posters ready to assist, and these things are made possible primarily by a strong and well-led moderator corps that is for the most part highly committed to continuing education, best practices, and keeping the forums they moderate attractive and easy places to find information. So, I'm pleased with the "lack of interest" since it is an excellent index of excellent health of FT; "lack of interest" in the TalkBoard has nothing to do with level of interest in FT.

Buying votes always ups the quality of the citizenry. ;)

Well thanks to recently enacted term limits and retirements there will be at least 4 and perhaps as many as 6 new faces on TB in a few days.

And no more 'Presidents for Life'!

It's too soon to say if that will end up being a good thing or a bad thing, but it IS a thing.

...drum roll...

...and the winners are... :D