The DDO presidency should be abolished

Welcome DDO to a Debate of monumental proportions. I would like to thank airmax for accepting this debate and advise him that next time he may want to find someone to help him and not use his alternative account and break his own policy. No really, thanks Eddie and Max for taking this. With the upcoming presidency I think it’s a discussion worth having. This debate consists of 4 hall of fame members3 former DDO Presidents and a Chief of Staff 3 DDO Moderators3 Jews and a honorary Jew4 guys that are sexy as fukWe have the best lineup of people to be discussing this, so let’s get it poppin.= Framework =Note in round 1 that this is a shared BOP. This is a comparative debate between having a presidency and not having a presidency on DDO. Both sides will present cases to support their position. This is not a debate about changing the status quo, and will be a theoretical debate examining the benefits of having a presidency and not having one. Bluesteel and myself will examine the impact of the current presidency and present a case based on the negative impacts it is. R1) History of the Presidency To really understand the history, we have to review how the presidency started. The presidency itself was a joke at the time of the first election. It was between Ragnar Rahl and Danielle and was mainly a popularity contest between the two, that was riddled with jokes and humor. After the first election, the presidency continued and followed this same line of logic which was basically a popularity contest. This was until Innomen was elected and everything changed. A1) The Change When Innomen was elected he changed the job forever. As a moderator and president he was able to serve as a liaison between Juggle and the community while positively impacting the position. The issue is that we have to differentiate the criteria for why he was able to do that. The real reason he was able to impact the community in such a way was because he became a moderator. He was able to work with Juggle, push for updates, directly communicate with them, and this continued throughout his presidency. Airmax was elected under the same circumstances in a way. Both Innomen and Airmax added value to the presidency for the first time since it began, but this was strictly because of their positions as a moderator. The moderator positions coupled with the presidency inflated the value the presidency had and made it seem relevant, where as the real impacts where that of moderation and not the presidency itself. The presidency was a facade, and added a "face" of DDO. R2) Moderators are the real presidentsTo do what Innomen and Airmax did, one would have to be a moderator. The issue is that under airmax’s rules, one cannot be a moderator and president at the same time. The real presidents are the moderators. The changes that we saw innomen and airmax bring were because they were moderators and were able to talk to Juggle and deal with them directly. The moderator position has effectively taken away the viability and need for a president as it does everything the president was intended to do. The importance of the presidency came from the presidents having the position of moderator, when you remove that position from the presidency the net value of it drastically decreases because it's less impactful and defaults back to a popularity contest.. Everything in advance has to be ran through the moderators anyway, so the president has no real power on the site other than being a figurehead. The key things the President did were: (a) communicate with Juggle, (b) deal with community problems, and (c) push site updates. Airmax now does all three, and Juggle is too absent to want to get to know anyone new. They won’t even give the other moderators airmax has chosen access to the admin site because they are willing to deal with airmax and only airmax. So there’s no point in electing a President who is only a figurehead.In addition, as some of the best and most responsible members become moderators, that leaves no good candidates for president. Eventually, the only people left who can run for president are going to be complete trolls, like bubba, which will finally completely destroy the position. We should get rid of it before we’re stuck with an election between two terrible candidates. R3) No real powerPresidents have no real power, and any member can do what a president can. Want to run a tournament? Just do it. No need to run for president and make it part of your platform. Want site updates? Write up a proposal and give it to airmax. No need to run for president. Want to see every debate voted on? Do what blade-of-truth did and start the Supreme Council of Determination to make sure every debate gets one vote. In fact, people promising to do things only if they become president results in the site losing out. When bladerunner lost the election, he completely gave up on his efforts to make sure that every debate got a vote (this was because it was a campaign promise). If he’d done this like blade-of-truth did, for the mere sake of it, rather than because he was president, he wouldn't have given up just because he lost some meaningless election. People who want to act for the betterment of the site should do it, regardless of whether they win some meaningless election. Assuming there *are* important tasks the president performs, we should just abolish the presidency and create specific positions to do those things (e.g. Juggle Liaison or Tournament Director). The specific problem with the “president” is that they are assumed to represent the site, so it causes more drama than having more specific positions. And there’s no accountability on their campaign promises, whereas if people were elected or appointed just to do one specific task, they would have to do it or they’d lose their position.R4) Unnecessary DramaIt’s election time and the post and threads are already coming. Needless spam and messages in the main forums that compel us to slam our head into our desk on a daily basis. Even if we adopted rules and limited the number of posts, the mass pms will go out. Private messages to all types of members, voting squads, lobbying new members, and alliances will be formed and it can possibly lead to a divide in DDO which happened during my election and which will happen again. Being a participant in one of the messiest elections in history I can attest to this personally. The issue was not how the election was carried out , but the participants that were running in it. Eddie ironically who is also in this debate was the incumbent. Any time where you have two high tier members running against each other and who both want the position, it will lead to some heated and unneeded drama that takes quite some time to heal. This was the first election in the history of DDO where there was 2 major members running for office and where it was an election that challenged the incumbent. The damage it can cause to the site is monumental.The president is also under a lot of scrutiny. If YYW became president, for example, and started another thread where he said something like that he was having a bad day and ended up fighting with someone, everyone would start obsessing about how YYW reflected poorly on the presidency, just as people obsessed on a daily basis over myself and how I affected the presidency. It was a *constant* distraction on the site, that went beyond even the election. Threads cropped up on a daily basis asking for a recall. This stupid popularity contest distracts us from what the site is actually about: debating and discussing real substantive issues. Let's run a hypothetical where YYW get's elected. Think about people that hate him like wrich and others. Can you imagine the threads that will crop up as a result of his winning the election. This is by no means a reflection of him as a person or his ability to lead as I believe he would do an amazing job, but this goes to show how the presidency can distract from the real content within the site and highlights the drama that can come from it. R5) The results are meaningless and undemocraticBy lobbying noobs with 3 or more debates, a candidate can win even if every other member of DDO opposes them. We can implement minimum post counts, but they can just get these n00bs to spam the “XYZ Post Wins” threads in the Misc Forum until they reach the post minimum prior to the election starting. These n00bs don’t even know the candidates, so the election results are even more meaningless. Wrich would say this is the silent majority winning out, but it’s really the least active, involved, and knowledgeable members deciding who the president should be. Running this strategy in my presidency, I proved this to be the case. No matter how you restrict the voting criteria, you can target members to vote for you and lobby them silencing the people who genuinely know whats happening on DDO. Conclusion)What we have to realize is that the position itself is not that important. It’s a popularity contest that elects a face of DDO. The only issue is that it holds no real power. Any member can accomplish anything a president can and the only reason the position is even considered prominent is because 2 moderators held it. Moderators are the real president, and only they can appeal to juggle and get the changes we want to see. Everything has to go through the moderators as is, and everything must be done with their approval. The president is an unneeded middle man that serves no purpose. If we cut it out today we would notice no different as max is the real face of the site and is the one who makes all the real calls. By cutting out the election, we are cutting out a position that serves no purpose while mitigating the harm and spam that comes from the elections. All in all, the presidency is pointless.