Mafia Universe Championships - Representative Nominations

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My #1 vote is still N_M.

I will think more carefully over whether or not I'd be eager to play. The chance to play high-level games is always a treat, but I have severe reservations about nominations, awards, competitions and the like. I always find even simple compliments difficult to stomach. I would want to commit fully rather than pull my hat in or out whimsically.

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After thought, I confirm I won't play this year. My apologies for the indecision and any confusion it might have caused.

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Guess I'll kick my nomination to cat.

Assuming that it's really just a two horse race at this point, cat is both one of the best players onsite and has plenty of experience with the shorter deadlines.

I'm obviously biased on that front, but I can more objectively say something that might not be immediately obvious: cat isn't the most outspokenly enthusiastic, but his passion for mafia runs incredibly deep.

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I also am legitimately baffled by the administration's approach to this.

If your goal is to just let the site slowly die, player numbers tank, and let the queues hang on the edge of the precipice of no return, this is a stellar job.

It is incredible to me that the site's own administration doesn't believe in rallying up any sort of spirit, representation, advertisement, etc. Zero attempts to galvanize the community, and they let what remaining beacons/rallying points passively fall into a permenant state of disrepair.

You have players eager to represent the site without clear behavioral redflags. At least get out of the way and let them do it.

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I just don't understand why people with zero interest in advocating for or growing the site are intent on remaining its stewards.

I guess I never will.

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Catboi and Andante got an overwhelming number of noms. ND39 got exactly two, I'm not sure if anyone else did.

Can do a simple ranked choice voting, probably IRV style elimination. 1-2-3, no commentary or teardown needed. Build a candidate up if you want to.

Have the candidates confirm interest, give a deadline of like the 16th to give us some leeway and let the mods have a veto for behavioral concerns.

Mods refuse to serve as an objective, authoratative leviathan in the one place they should be and are kicking the can to a group that is obviously never going to be completely unanimous.

At some point we just need something to work, and I think this does. If I get enough agreements/people are fine with the deadline suggestion and IRV voting I can just start it within the next day or two. If people are worried about me specifically posting deadlines whine at the mods to post a countdown and maybe they'll actually put a minimum amount of effort in.

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tl;dr of my suggestion:

Three candidates: catboi, Andante, ND39. Public ranked voting, simple 1-2-3 with names, that works like this:



Deadline of April 16th, midnight EST. Start the vote April 4th or 5th if there's something resembling consensus, even if not unanimous. First place goes second place gets backup.

Avoid player teardowns/criticism, building up/complimenting players OK

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As a sign of good faith all of those people I normally refuse to get within 10 ft of-Gamma, Koba, etc.-it's open season, feel free to yes/no, insult my parents, burn down my house, etc.

Just completely sick of "Let the community decide" while refusing to set up even the most basic structure to allow for it.

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In a gesture to the mods we can also add a "Send No Representative" option

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I remembered the wrong deadline so I edited my tl;dr post to give more time for voting, 16th should be good. Deadline is the 23rd which gives one week for listmod veto, plenty of time to PM them privately about any behavioral/representational concerns from final selections.

I'll wait until the 5th for some more yes's and no's to roll in. Depending on the ratio I'll either just move ahead, pointing the no votes to the modteam for adamantly refusing to lend any structural assistance whatsoever and insisting on complete anarchy, or step back and let someone else give it a try.

Moving ahead would probably entail a new thread to make the votecount+deadlines front, center, and clean, along with a uniform mass PM to anyone who posted here inviting them to place a vote there.

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With Andante now out, does anyone really still want to go through a formal vote?

As much as I hate to scrap my own attempt that got consensus, there are now exactly two candidates left and the nominations are now overwhelmingly in favor of one player. I'm still willing to put up the hoops and pollbox if people want, though.

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I have had several paragraphs typed up for an hour. I have many grievances regarding the modteam's approach to this, start to finish, sometimes acting as saboteurs, at others as neglectful observers, and finally here as the designers of a great goose chase. I will save it for another time.

I am interpreting this to mean that one of catboi & ND39 would be rejected by the moderation team. I am positive I know which one, and even agree with it wholeheartedly, but I will skip it. I personally do not think this is the place to relitigate a ban history or a person's record of improvement or lack thereof, even as the modteam's indirection and lack of transparency invites us to do exactly that.

All that matters is that one or both are liable to be rejected by the administration. We should go back to the drawing board on nominations in the event of any vetoes.

Nominating Datisi, shiki, Lukewarm

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I'm okay with a veto and going back to the drawing board. It was always part of the structure, and I fully anticipated it being utilized, especially when it came down to these two players. I never felt it was my place, especially with the arbiter role I've taken on, to tear down a specific player's character or pass a final judgment on player behavioral history. Again, only one set of people have the communal authority to make final decisions on those matters.

However...

Spoiler: Criticism regarding the de facto mod veto

Instead of vetoing a specific player, or just broadly saying "We need more nominations than the ones presented" to set the right tone, it was a vague and indirect "intention to veto" non-specific to a player. It put the onus on us to reevaluate and publicly discuss the two given candidates through the presented lens of behavioral concerns+ban history.

This is practically begging for us to detail/relitigate old bans and air out personal vendettas in order to

figure out for ourselves who the mods are saying no to

, and adjust our votes in reaction to that hidden decision. That's not community driven decisionmaking. It's a mod-driven goose chase because they don't want to be the ones to reject a selection and get their hands dirty.

We can steer it back on track by just widening the pool...but again, why am I having to course-correct a mod's public invitation to tear into players personally and set the thread on fire?

@The Modteam: If this course correction/emphasis on nominee/player positivity is unwelcome, let me or us know that we should indeed be publicly tearing each other down for sport and I will cede the floor...but my thinking is that these behavioral critiques & concerns are better sorted by private PM to the modteam.

Edit: Thinking on the above a bit more and reviewing Penguin's posts, I guess a "gentle reminder" to keep these criteria in mind when posting is not an invitation to verbalize and discuss them. I still find how this post effectively functions regrettable.

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Anyway, I did have to get that out, but the real focus should again be on widening the pool of nominees. I think the above are good choices: Variety of playstyles, strong, modern and used to fast-paced games even if not the specific deadlines.

I definitely encourage nominating any others that come to mind.

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The mods yesterday did not use a straightforward veto. They used a vague implied threat to avoid getting their hands dirty, encouraging us to relitigate behavioral history and character teardowns.

Absolve yourself of blame and claim nothing was implied all you want but it's disingenuous and I'm sick of it.

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Spoiler: Reply to AniX

This is disingenuous. No one claims it was a formal veto or that it was finalized. It was a vague implied threat that encouraged us to litigate those two specific players' character and ban histories publicly. You pointed us in a direction and said "Well, we didn't actually tell you to run that way". I'm tired of disingenuity, responsibility shirking, and gaslighting.

You should have just asked us to expand the nomination pool. I did it for you. You're welcome. If you wanted a public nominee teardown, sorry it didn't happen.

I've really appreciated the contributions of everyone the last day. I agree that support is clear, and it's unfortunate that many of us (Skitter, myself, Pooky, Andante, etc.) simply can't participate for one reason or another.

I'm really happy that Lukewarm is willing to serve as a backup if that's the obstacle to our participation. For Datisi, I'd encourage you to let the community vote decide whether or not you're better suited than the peers you have in mind.

You're also encouraged to nominate those peers!

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I agree with a new deadline on nominations, now that we've opened it back up and are rolling again.

As we need to get voting, but have struck renewed interest, I think the 10th is fair to get more nominees and for any nominees to confirm interest or decline, with a goal of starting the vote the same day and running through the 17th.

If this seems agreeable, I can post a countdown with a set time.

I would love for the voting stage to be run by the moderation team, using the basic ranked-choice voting I described earlier. In an ideal world, there are private ballots for those who don't feel comfortable ranking in-thread, or even ideally all votes are private, but this can't really happen if I am the one counting. I'm in the position of being both a makeshift arbiter and a blatantly biased advocate for one of the players. It's conceivable that I manipulate the private ballots to suit my favored candidate. It is less conceivable for the modteam to do so. I'm okay using Google Forms, but the perks of using forum posts/private PMs mean there's virtually no risk of doubleballots or false identification.

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To be clear, if there's strong support for private ballots and the modteam is not willing to be the one to count them, we can work with a dubious system and I (and/or someone else!) can be the one to take them. CC'ing someone else can add some layer of safety but people will forget, the most energetic atm is Lukewarm who shares my view on who should go, etc.

My personal preference is just to not even have that question of veracity.

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Thanks for all the work in 117 Lukewarm, especially with adding in all of the single-nominees+splitting off those who confirmed interest. I definitely don't object to PMing them, and I think a combination of self-recusals and the modteam veto (which will only be utilized for final candidates) should solve the behavioral issue.

As a reminder, I at least assume the modteam's PMs to be open to behavioral concerns/ban history. (If that much isn't available we are truly fucked)...But as much as Lukewarm and I can believe this isn't the thread for it, the modteam has made it clear that litigating ban history is a valid topic of discussion. If people actually want to do that, we have no authority to stop you. I just hope we don't go that route.

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I can't say I enjoy these "clarifications" being portrayed as something that has always been the case-for example the two year guideline was only put down by yourself last night with no accompanying suggestion for healthy discussion-but at least we're getting somewhere.

I'm happy enough with the guidelines themselves, so thank you.

Concretely, ND39 has faced mod action in the last year. Mastina has in the last two years, but is right on the border at April 18th, 2020. 2 years will elapse before the final date for MU, which leaves room for ambiguity.

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>youngsters
>catboi, age 66, has been playing mafia nonstop since 1998

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Makes sense, and also solves our ambiguity issue. Thanks for letting us know mastina!

...(and northsidegal!)

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I think we would all love that. It's probably better if you post the voting thread to avoid any mixups. I can draft up the post giving the short (and long) explanation of the voting system and the final list of nominees when you have them, so that all you have to do is paste it in.

No one seemed to disagree with my suggestion of the 10th as a deadline. Give some time now that we've got renewed interest, but don't let it completely die out before the voting stage. Start the vote the next day, and assuming we close votes a week later on the 18th, should give us 5 days to find a backup plan in case of any disasters.

(expired on 2022-04-11 00:00:39) is the nomination deadline.

(That's April 10th, 11:59PM EST)

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There are a few more voting procedure details, such as the order of elimination for ties (Ex. Three users have only one first place vote, who gets kicked first?) but at this point I don't want to design an entire constitution in thread.

Recount ballots after removing the first winner to get alternate (so a universal second place vote doesn't get scammed), tiebreaks probably broken by Borda count (alternative is elim simultaneously, too risky to rank honestly given low total number of ballots), nominees can put themselves #1 if they want, worst case scenario mith picks whose username he likes best.

Not perfect but they work

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Reminder that the nomination deadline is tonight!

I'm also drafting the final voting announcment+procedure post. My current thinking is just PM all the ballots to T-Bone to get counted. I figure publicly posting ballots isn't the best to avoid someone hurt over getting consistently ranked last, but if people want that public post option or want the final anonymized ballots publicly posted let me know. Public ballots are no longer strictly necessary now that the modteam is involved IMO.

If T-Bone wants help counting he can pass them to me with the names of the submitters removed and just doublecheck that it's not flagrantly fraudulent.

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I have the voting post drafted. When the deadline expires, I'll leave it to Lukewarm to put together the final list of nominees in case he got any PMs declining a nomination, and then plug them into the draft to send off to T-Bone.

For the people who didn't confirm or deny interest, I'm not too sure what to do. Some of them aren't very active onsite at the moment, so I'd probably just leave them in until they decline, giving them ~2 days after the election to explicitly accept if selected. I'll leave it up to the modteam whether or not to stick to a hard 2 year guideline and pre-emptively remove nominees with a ban history (eg. Menalque, ND39)

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Sent the draft off to T-Bone using the final nominee list from Lukewarm. Disclaimer that my voting procedure isn't perfect so sorry in advance, not trying to write an entire constitution, hopefully it works out fine. Note that nominees are eligible to vote and whether and where you rank yourself is up to you. I'd recommend ranking yourself first as a sign of enthusiasm and to avoid getting rekt trying to be humble.

When the thread goes up and voting officially opens I will PM everyone who posted in either thread as a reminder to vote.

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I'll give T-Bone one more day. If the thread doesn't go up I'll post it myself and we'll revert to public ballot/PM myself with T-Bone cc'd.

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Well, it's been three days so I'm going to go ahead and move forward without the moderator team. While T-Bone probably had the best of intentions in volunteering to vote count and is just busy elsewhere, I can't say it really helps my previous charge that the modteam has been negligent & borderline saboteurs from start to finish.

I'll try to send out PMs to everyone later tonight if I have the time.

Voting thread is here