Silent Hunter wrote:Are you happy with the current voting technology? Also, how do you think we can increase turnout?
Good questions Silent. Sorry I didn't get back to them sooner, but breathing hasn't been my friend this week. As for ballotbin, it appears to be adequate for our needs. Could it be better? Very likely. My biggest gripe is trouble putting links in the ballot questions, the character limit on questions and the way that outbound email appears to recipients. But again, it serves our purposes at the moment.
Your second question is a bit more difficult to answer. The last two elections have had higher percentage turnouts than any we have run. The fact is we may never get everyone to respond to elections. On an average phoenix has about 20-25 people that would count as actively participating in the site. By the rules, there are 42 names in the membership registry that count as eligible to vote. At best we will be lucky to do much better than 50% participation just based on active players to membership ratio. The recent AJJE merger vote got an enormous turn out with 25 respondents. The extra ordinary GC election had 15 respondents, the previous 14, and the GC election prior to that 11. It appears that our response numbers have been improving.
The most effective solution to building up our participation is community building and letting people have a greater sense of ownership in their contributions to Phoenix. The more we grow our bonds as a community, the greater participation we will get in elections and other issues effecting the site. It's important to vote, it's also important to that the membership know that Phoenix is only as great as we the members make her. We all have a voice.
