Be Excellent To Each Other

All of the below is in MOD VOICE but would be annoying to read in blue.

Guys, unfortunately we have received a confession that someone used multiple sock puppet accounts to successfully tamper with the outcome of the last mod election. We do not wish to go into details, and we hope you can all agree that we have had enough drama?

Anyway, your current moderators feel it's prudent to change the vote procedures this time to try and guard against this. This election, all votes will be sent via PM to a group of three vote counters. The counters will have to tally votes by hand and will be allowed to disregard votes from sock puppet accounts, defined as zero-postcount accounts with recent signups, or accounts where the majority of posts come from either an anonymous proxy server or from the same IP as another Beex poster. Obviously judgement will have to be applied, as sometimes people share IPs for a good reason, but some PMs should sort that out.

Grim... will act as one vote counter, as site admin. We are looking for two more volunteers who are not current moderators and are not standing for election to act alongside him. It shouldn't be an awful lot of work. If you would like to volunteer, please indicate so by posting to this thread. If we get more than two volunteers we'll draw names from a hat or something.

We hope that they won't have to disregard any votes at all, and that the mere existence of scrutiny will prevent anyone playing silly buggers. We are extremely disappointed that its come to this, but feel we have little choice.

FIGHT THE POWER!

VIVA LA REVOLUTION!

HANGING CHADS!

RON PAUL!

CHE BERETS AND STUBBLE FOR ALL!

SMACK MY BITCH UP!

Actually, I think

"we have received a confession that someone used multiple sock puppet accounts to successfully tamper with the outcome of the last mod election." is pretty hilarious.

Especially as current mods have known about it, maybe for some time, but decided to stay in power and not rerun things.

This is better than Animal Farm.

This is serious business, stop being daft.

Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate!

I can just about count. I don't mind helping.

Unless there is a limit to the amount of consecutive terms a mod can serve then a vote is pointless.

You've said this before, and I'm not really sure I understand your train of thought. If someone does a bad job, they won't be voted in again, but if they do a good job they should be (in theory).

Why would you want to force someone to step down arbitrarily if they're keeping this place ticking over? Obviously as a present incumbent, I'd just like to know where you're coming from with this.

I don't mind counting, I suppose.

I don't mind counting. I don't plan on standing for mod and am fair AND can count!

I seem the perfect choice!

My point is that the same people will be voted as Mods regardless of whether they are doing a good job or not. And if not they are clearly fully prepared to cheat to do it. It clearly means a great deal to some people.

I don't really care. If moderation bothers me to any extent I am free to leave. However it does irrtate me when moderators claim to have a mandate when they obviously do not. At the very least the person responsible for rigging the last vote and betraying the entire community's trust and confidence should be identified and barred from taking part again. Otherwise we could find ourselves voting for someone who has no respect for us at all. It's a complete waste of time.

The vote rigging wasn't done by anyone currently using this forum, and in the end it had no material effect on the result.

I guess we shall have to take your word for it. Although it does raise the question of why even a rigged election cannot change the result?

Because whoever they voted for would have won or lost without the extra votes anyway, obviously.

Either way, I don't care to be honest. It's all the same to me, I just ignore the drama when it comes up. It's tiresome.

If it was obvious I wouldn't have asked. As for the 'drama' - I have no idea what you mean. I was merely asking for some transparency. But, as I say, it doesn't matter, so please carry on.

I just meant forum drama in general, not any particular person or issue.

"Mod election rigged by person who left hte forum with sock puppets" is awesome drama.

That's practically cannon now.

So, which mod was it?

And how did it come to light?

And do the other mods know?

I want to be a mod.

Vote MaliA for awesomebestness.



Good rules. It is the beginning of stuff, and nothing really major happened with this bunch of mods anyway, so no harm done. I think.

I may be being a bit thick here, but why do you believe that? Even the mods won't know who has voted for them or how they are doing until the election is over.

I'm pretty sure that I speak for all the mods when I say that anyone found cheating to get that postiton would be de-modded on the spot and a bi-election would take place. (On a personal note, I certainly wouldn't want to serve with someone I considred to be cheating scum or on a power trip.)

They are barred from taking part again, we haven't revealed who it is because the problem has been dealt with. We are trying to avoid it happening again by changing the system.

So why wasn't the current incumbent de-modded on discovery? When was the discovery?

They are barred from taking part again, we haven't revealed who it is because the problem has been dealt with. We are trying to avoid it happening again by changing the system.[/quote]

Because they have left.

Which mod was it?

As I've got a 1 in 4 chance, i'm going for you. Was it you?

Heterophobe!

Why aren't we just using a poll thread?

The voting was rigged to keep someone out not get them in, it didn't work so made no difference anyway. I don't know the date of the discovery, another mod will have to answer that.


Not sure I see what making this information public will achieve.

Because then anyone with more than one Beex account can vote more than once. Many people have more than one account, created for jokes or whatever. We thought we could trust people not to take the piss, but we were wrong.

Sock puppets operated by someone who isn't here anymore, elected someone to mod, other mods found out, and didn't do anything. As the votes "didn't affect the result", the mod was allowed to stay in power and the proletariat were kept in the dark, even when confronted by calls for "mod transparency" on other issues, it wasn't said. Think that covers it.

Wrong, see my reply two posts up.

I agree. And I have no idea who it could be, but whoever it was should be ashamed.

Fuck me, this is an internet forum. Why is it that there are a few arseholes out there who want to spoil it for everyone? And it is the tiny minority that spoil it for all of us!

That's their decision and it's water under the bridge. Yes there's a need for transparency but apparently this person has left and it's hardly like we have a time machine and can go back and fix it.

It's also incorrect, has everybody got me on 'Foe' or something?

The 'cheating' was done to keep someone out who got in anyway, so it really is irrelevant.

Sorry, with all the confusion in the thread it's abit unclear.

Basically some grudgeworthy person who left tried to rig the last election using sock puppets accounts because he/she disagreed with who might get voted in. This person has since left.

In which case let sleeping dogs lie because the chances are that the person has already been outted as a nasty piece of work.

Why bother doing things democratically if it's such an arseache?

Because it's the lesser of two evils. Like Jade Goody v Hitler.

Because some of us* care about these boards and want them to be the best they can be.



*Everyone of the current mods certainly.

Some light sanding a new coat of creosote should do it.

THANK YOU.

To settle a bet I have with myself, care to guess who it was and what they did?Actually, don't do that. We're best off forgetting about this. I wrote that in anger.

It was me, and I voted for Stuart Campbell.

I'm glad you changed that. I was just logging in to object.

besides it was obviously ('4thDimension' - Uncle Joe Stalin)

So who IS The Albino Kid?

I wouldn't mind being a counter if it's needed.

Much easier to rig the noms that way.

THIS FORUM ISN'T CLAUDIA WINKLEMAN!!!!

I care about them too, I just don't see how the choice of mods matters that much - once the rules are decided (and should be decided by all) the mods just enforce them - personality shouldn't enter into it any more than if the forum were a lawn to be mowed. In fact the only times where the identity of a mod has mattered has been when CG and CUS and so on have been scaring off pleasant posters, and that's so shrouded in mystery I can't form an opinion.

I think we're worrying about roof maintenance here when the foundations have barely been laid. I may be missing aspects of some big picture here, but isn't this a little forum with not much activity on it? Elections just seem so grandiose for what is effectively the same topic threads from a number of similar forums glued together with indigenous memes. Were there an influx of new members from the review site then giving them some say in how the community grows makes sense, but the forum has shrunk since it began, people like Metal Angel fuck off and it gets less lively on here as a result. I'm all for netpolitics, administration and the cut/thrust of online presence in all manner of cummunities. The bigger the better in many cases. But elections on a forum this size seems a little more Lord of the Flies than Lord of the Rings.

My solution...

1: Find out who wants to be a mod
2: No objections based upon clear evidence?
3: Fine, then they are the mods. If one wants to stop, someone volunteers to replace them and if there's more than one volunteer, they decide between themselves.
4: Power abused? Bin them off, someone else volunteers.
5: Have a biscuit.

I imagine some here will strongly disagree with my thoughts, I'm not looking to yank anyone's chain, I'm just presenting an angle I'm not sure has been covered yet, not that I'd read all the ins and outs.

Blimey, an internet confession! How very.

ISTR it being fairly obvious that was going on at the time - there was a thread with a list of the dozens of curiously named accounts with 0 posts. And ISTR that a minimum post count was instated to solve the problem - wasn't it?
But, fair enough, hand counting is probably a better response, all things considered. Interesting timing on the old "revelations" though.

I suggest that we must also, in true NATO style, have election scrutineers drafted in from our neighbouring forums to make sure there's no funny business. Oh, hang on!

Should we be looking for a cloud of white smoke coming out of Grim...'s chimney to declare that we have our new mods?

What's that, then? I don't know anything I didn't know yesterday, apart from what happens in episode four of seasn two of the Sarah Connor Chronicles. While we're having a vote on who to be a mod, let's have one on whether the full disclosure of 'what's been going on' should occur?

I was making the assumption, based on the first post, that this is a fresh-ish occurrence? If that is the case, I was sort of wondering why make a confession at all other than to try to stir things up just before an election. Since anyone who was paying attention knew the issue already.


I guess if it involves people standing for election they might want to do that.

I'm bored of drama. Let's be excellent.

You read that wrong - it's "Be Electorate To Each Other".

And we are being electorate.

Presumably because the issue only arose because we have a vote coming up and the mods are "paid" to manage the election. Following the previous election they discovered a problem due to one (now gone) poster unwittingly outing one of their (many) sock puppet accounts.

There's no guaranteeing that said persons couldn't disrupt the new election with the same tactics or someone else might try it. So basically we have to find some way of weeding this out.

That's my take on it. Manual vote counting isn't desirable but if it's a way of stopping the aforementioned problem then so be it.

[vote: Titler]

Today I chinny lots and lots.

This is why this should have been done and dusted within a week. Fucking drags on.

I'm fed up of this.