[Answered] Abstains Need to be Fixed

Abstains are really gettin outta hand yo!

Abstain. Although ZE is a very populated server and fun to play on, I recommend playing the other servers SG provides as well such as TTT and JB. Those are also 2 major servers they have running and that's where you can find the community! And since I do not know you I cannot vote either reapply or support, get on those other servers and meet us! Good Luck

Since you don’t play on other servers I don’t know you. Would love to see you expand to more of the servers provided by SG. Another thing is that I’d like to see an increase of forum activity from you. Those are the two main things I’d like to see but I really recommend on expanding to more servers, this’ll help you get to know more people and help out on other servers if needed. Good luck on the rest of your app.

abstain

I really haven’t noticed you on the servers so that is why i am am abstaining but my recommendation will be to improve you attitude since as many people pointed out your attitude problems

I know this is already being reviewed but just some more examples of how useless some of these abstains really are...

https://i.imgur.com/SvLXQl5.jpg

I agree abstains need to be fixed, but not removed entirely (that would be real bad imo). How about some of the points addressed in this page here under "For Members Responding to Admin Applications" become necessary criteria that have to be addressed for a post to be considered a "valid comment", and if a post doesn't have these things, it gets removed (to prevent post farming)? For example, I would suggest these:

1. "You should provide a reason why the person applying should have admin."

2. "Provide specific examples of why the person would be a good admin, such as past experiences and how the person has been helpful as a regular player." (each post requires one example, maybe?)

3. "If you're voting reapply, give feedback on what they should improve on in addition to your reasons."

I would recommend adding the following as "rules" to a valid post:

4. "If you're voting abstain, give a reason why you are not making a firm decision (yes/no/reapply) on the application."

5. "'Cool guy'/'Good guy'/'Knows the rules' are not reasons for stating yes. 'I don't play with you often'/'You need to play on JB/TTT more' are not reasons for stating reapply or no."

Making these firm rules to a quality/acceptable post would remove most useless "abstain" votes, including useless yes/no votes that only say "You're a nice guy, and you know the rules!" Does this make sense to anyone else?

Easy fix: No voting if you do not know the person. Don't know why this isn't a thing

Easy fix: No voting if you do not know the person. Don't know why this isn't a thing

This. When I'm looking at people's replies, I'm personally trying to gather information about the applicant. I do not obtain information if you have no information to provide other than the fact that you don't know the person.

If you are familiar with Robert's Rule of Order, abstention is not counted towards a motion. When discussion occurs, you provide pros/cons, or pass, when you have the floor. There are no neutral discussion points. When the vote is called for, you either state "yes", "no", or "abstain".

So, if neutral points are never discussed, and you vote to "abstain", and then EXPLAIN why you abstained - you contributed nothing to the motion, and wasted everyone's time.

I don’t really give a shit about abstains. Abstains are more or less worthless, but they’re not harmful either. The lack of people posting in an app serves as well as an abstain. Occasionally there’s an abstain something along the lines of ‘i know you, but I’m torn between yes and no, so abstain’...which is fine. If anything, banning ‘don’t know you, abstain’ posts are fine. But like i said, i don’t care one way or the other. Doesn’t matter.

This is what I posted in a higher up thread and is more or less my take on abstains. To further expand on my abstain stipulation that I was fine with:

While ‘abstain’ was never a thing during the first portion of SG’s lifetime (or so I remember), conditional approvals were - ie ‘I’d support you if you got your activity up, you are a great person but don’t have enough server time.’ While there may be an argument that this can be considered ‘no’, this is just an example and some of the posts have been tricky to depict whether a person was saying no or abstaining. The additional upside is that it allows someone to see where they are lacking and need to improve. We could have CA’s sift through and gather specifically ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but I don’t really think it’s needed. There are meaningful ways to contribute without officially giving a ‘yay’ or ‘nay’, especially when we don’t even require a specific vote count / ratio. ’Dont know you, abstain’ type posts I can agree are worthless and provide nothing, however I don’t think every abstention is black and white worthless and provides nothing. Does it in a raw vote count? Sure. But we don’t approve people based on a specific number of votes, there are multiple factors that come into play.

At the end end of the day I don’t really care. I don’t think it’s a big enough problem to restrict people from giving somewhat of an opinion. I’d rather just restrict ‘i don’t know you’ type abstains...but even then, making the section not count toward post counts would probably limit the amount of those, in my opinion anyways. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t.

Something I've tried to explain when this topic comes up from a former higher ups perspective is that voting with a "I don't know you" thanks for the free post kind of answer is literally going to get ignored. What's the point in posting on an application if you have nothing to say? I would say it also devalues that specific person's opinion in the future as well. Bottom line: If you don't have anything to add to the discussion on the player then don't post. I'm also cool with people who can't make up their mind using an abstain but if it's just "never see you on the x server, abstain" you literally just wasted however many bytes it took to transmit that post.

Why even require or encourage people to leave votes rather than just input. It's been made very clear that you aren't voting for the applicants anyways, just leaving input that the BDs will take into account. The only use I see for actually needing to specify an abstain/support/reapply is if your input includes so much criticism that you would need to specify. I think that leaving an actual vote discourages thoughtful responses and criticisms, as many respondents will make up their mind first, then spout out buzzwords like "he's active" until their vote is sufficiently detailed, leaving out any constructive criticisms.

Initially after reading the bottom part of Caution's post above I was going to react negatively, as I believe that a substantial number of votes contain enough detail to be worthy of contributing to a post count, but after thinking more about it, I think that making admin app posts not contribute to post counts is a worthwhile tradeoff to help mitigate the free posts. The players who usually have worthwhile contributions to admin app conversations are regulars and administrators that already have a large amount of posts. On the other side of the spectrum, those who use votes as freebies to boost their post counts usually are those under 10 posts (trying to get enough to post their own admin app, you can see this with some of the players who applied in the last two weeks) or those under 50 posts trying to get to the regular status. If those who contribute good posts don't need to increase their post count, and those who usually contribute bad ones need them to increase their post count, it really makes sense to just stop counting admin app posts towards a users post count. Would it be possible to get a vote on this, because this seems like a pretty easy to implement and effective solution.

Initially after reading the bottom part of Caution's post above I was going to react negatively, as I believe that a substantial number of votes contain enough detail to be worthy of contributing to a post count, but after thinking more about it, I think that making admin app posts not contribute to post counts is a worthwhile tradeoff to help mitigate the free posts. The players who usually have worthwhile contributions to admin app conversations are regulars and administrators that already have a large amount of posts. On the other side of the spectrum, those who use votes as freebies to boost their post counts usually are those under 10 posts (trying to get enough to post their own admin app, you can see this with some of the players who applied in the last two weeks) or those under 50 posts trying to get to the regular status. If those who contribute good posts don't need to increase their post count, and those who usually contribute bad ones need them to increase their post count, it really makes sense to just stop counting admin app posts towards a users post count. Would it be possible to get a vote on this, because this seems like a pretty easy to implement and effective solution.

To further expand on that:

Its my honest belief that regular users of SG won’t give a fuck of post count is removed. Why? Because they don’t want people getting admin who shouldn’t get it, and don’t want people being denied if they deserve it. The only thing it’s going to deter is people bullshitting for a post count. Might as well be a happy birthday thread or a welcome thread lol, it’s just empty BS to gain a post. But the people who put blood, sweat, and tears into the place are going to voice their opinion on an applicant who is deserving (or undeserving), regardless of post count.

tldr i said politely that the people who contribute and actually matter / care about the overall success of SG will still post