The 'Shroom talk:Issue 203/Poll Committee Chairperson Election

Election Process

This page is where members of the community may make nominations and vote for candidates to oversee the Poll Committee for the next year. The rules for the election process may be viewed on the election rules article.

Voting starts on Saturday, February 24th, 2024 at 00:01 GMT.

Candidates and Voting

Candidates post their campaigns and receive votes here!

MightyMario

Hi, I’m MightyMario! I’m running for Poll Committee Chairperson in order to obtain some useful leadership experience. I am almost always on time with deadlines, and I am friendly toward fellow users.

My goals as Chairperson:

1. Ensure that polls are up on time.
2. Make sure to listen to any and all criticisms that my committee may have and improve upon them.
3. Create polls that everyone will enjoy voting in.

I look forward to potentially being on the Poll Committee, I love this community and I hope we can make some great polls together!

Votes

1. Hooded Pitohui (talk) - I have full faith in Ninja Squid and Goombuigi, and admire the thoroughness behind their presentation and considerations. They have some interesting ideas, as well. However, I also have seen enough of MightyMario's work to know he puts in a good effort to give back to the community, and he is willing to listen to advice and criticism. I trust he'll be open to the ideas presented by Ninja Squid and Goombuigi and even to working with them if they're interested in joining the PC, and I trust he'll be open to ideas to further streamline the PC's work. All that said, in the interest of seeing new blood use the Poll Committee to get experience leading and participating in projects, andwith an eye towards simplifying the PC experience, I'm going to give MightyMario a vote.
2. Shy Guy on Wheels (talk) - Per Hooded Pitohui. MightyMario's heart is in the right place, and I believe he cares about making sure the committee has a good term. Plus, it's great to see new people in these leadership position.
3. ClawgripFan9001 (talk) - I agree with everything Hooded Pitohui said here above. I have faith in MightyMario, and I believe he has the recipe for success to lead the Poll Committee throughout its next term. Plus, it's important to have newer users gain the necessary experience for leading projects such as this.

Ninja Squid (talk) / Goombuigi (talk)

Booyah! It is none other than your 'Shroom basement dweller, Ninja Squid (talk). Obviously, I think you should already know by now what I'm here for, otherwise, why would I be posting this in the Poll Chair Election if running wasn't part of the plan, right? Well, this is exactly why I am here. Today, alongside my running mate Goombuigi, we are starting our Ninja domina- whoops, sorry, I meant my campaign for the position of Poll Committee Chairperson! Yeah, forget whatever I said prior. ;-)

In case you are out of the loop about me, here are my past credentials:

• Director of The 'Shroom (2022)
• Statistics Manager of The 'Shroom (2018-2022)
• Poll Committee Chairperson (2019-2020)
• Poll Committee member (2016-2018, 2019-2022)
• Awards Committee member (2021-2022)

Like I mentioned prior, my running mate for the position of Vice-Chairperson is none other than my ninja assistant Goombuigi. Goombuigi has been a member of the Poll Committee in the past and is one of the newest members of The 'Shroom Staff as a consultant behind-the-scenes. I already had many opportunities to work with him, such as with the Ultimate Location Battle and The 'Shroom Mafia 4, and as both candidates for the 2020 'Shroom Director Election, so I know we're going to be able to coordinate well together. Like I said above, Goombuigi also has previous experiences with the Poll Committee, and I think with my own experiences as both member and former Chairperson of the Poll Committee, I will also be able to provide Goombuigi with good leadership experiences, which is why I have the confidence that he will be a good person for the role of Vice-Chairperson.

Before moving forward with our plans for the year, allow me to turn it over to Goombuigi for his own introduction!

---

Greetings, readers! My name is Goombuigi (talk), and I'm running for the position of Vice-Chairperson of the 14th Poll Committee, alongside Ninja Squid. I joined the community in March 2020, and have since become a writer for The 'Shroom, a member of the Poll Committee during its 11th and 12th term, and participated in various events across the community.

The Poll Committee was the first community position I was involved in, back when I had only been around for a few months, and it made for a good "gateway" position. I'm running for Vice-Chairperson because, as of now, I don't have much in the way of leadership experience, and I believe the Poll Committee would likewise be a great gateway to gaining experience in that area; and I'm always looking for ways to be involved in the community. I believe that I am a strong candidate for this position because I'm passionate and dedicated to projects that I pursue, and my prior experience in the Poll Committee has prepared me well for this position. I'm confident that Ninja Squid and I will make a strong team, as we have collaborated on several projects in the past, such as The 'Shroom Mafia 4 and the Ultimate Location Battle, and have worked well together.

These are my credentials:

• writer for The 'Shroom from Issue 157 to Issue 185 (April 2020 - August 2022) and from Issue 201 (December 2023) onward
• staff consultant for The 'Shroom from January 2024 onward
• member of the 11th and 12th Poll Committees (July 2020 - June 2022)
• member of the 2021 Awards Committee

---

Our goal for this year is to create a fun, relaxing and engaging experience with the Poll Committee. All we are expecting is a great collaborative effort from our members and to create some good polls for the wiki's main page. This should be the main focus of the Poll Committee. Why would we need more stuff than that when we can strive at making this a fun experience?

Here are some details about our planning and intentions for the year:

Poll Committee size: We would be looking for at least five members to join us this year. This number may seem low at first, but the reality is that we don't want this to be a limit, per se. Therefore, we would like to look for five more members that would be joining the committee, and open the door for additional members to join us through the year if the need arises.

Change the expectation of the poll system: One thing we would like to strive for is not expecting our members to come up with a complete poll for our nomination process. In the past, members were expected to at least create a poll with a question and several options. We would like to scratch that necessity. Even if it was not exactly a requirement, so to speak, we would like to erase that level of expectation entirely for the next term. Essentially, we want to create a more collaborative-effort environment when it comes down to the creation of the polls.

So, say, a member comes up with an idea for a poll, but they aren't sure about its execution - we want them to open up a discussion about a poll idea they have and have us, the Poll Committee, all put our heads together about what could be done to make the idea a reality. We want to remove those barriers to the creation of the polls to be as creative as possible. We plan on making a "New Poll Incubator" thread for such discussion, in which members would be able to toss around ideas for new polls, and other members could build on these concepts.

Expanding the rotating leadership system: We plan on keeping the rotating leadership system that Hooded Pitohui (talk) introduced in the 11th Poll Committee, on an opt-in basis. We would like to expand the system to allow the particular member in charge to post the poll(s) during their period in the MarioWiki Poll Discussion forum thread, and to update the poll ID for the main page (if they have a wiki account, though it is not a requirement - if the member doesn't have a wiki account, the Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson will still demonstrate that part of the job and offer assistance as necessary). While all administrative duties, such as creating the poll in Crowdsignal, would continue to be performed by the Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson, incorporating the aforementioned two tasks in the leadership system would involve members more intricately in the poll creation process, and would be of help if they would like to lead the Poll Committee themselves later down the road.

Potential PC collaboration effort: This is a potential idea that will entirely depend on the mood and interest of the Poll Committee, but that we still wanted to address. As our goal is to create an engaging experience, we are interested in the potential of the Poll Committee doing fun collaborative work outside of their tasks - something that would feel in a similar vein to our traditional April Fools poll project, that is built mainly with the input of the entire committee.

For example, the Poll Committee could create fun Fake News sections such as News Flushes or Clogged Pipe, or funny stories with the polls thematic in mind for The 'Shroom that all of the committee would create together with the goal of making this both a creative environment and something that could create engagement between our members.

---

That concludes some of our objectives for the year! We haven't mentioned the poll schedule and the Poll Committee Discussion section, since we don't plan to make any significant changes to them - polls will be published biweekly, and Poll Committee Discussion will be rotated monthly between various committee members, as was the case before. You may also notice that we omitted to talk about another staple of the Poll Committee - Awards Analysis, and there is a reason for that. We would want this project to be a decision that will be made collectively, rather than a clear goal and expectation from us to the members of the Poll Committee.

Our goal, as we said prior, is to make sure that the Poll Committee is something fun first and foremost. The reasoning behind this decision is that the Poll Committee is often seen as a good first step at gaining and learning experiences with community projects, and we would rather make that our focus this year by keeping it with a lower-scale goal in mind, thus making it less of an heavy burden regarding the expectations for our future members.

Thank you for your time and for considering us!

Votes

The Shadow Prince (talk)

Hello, I am the Shadow Prince, and I have some plans to make this Committee healthy, fun, and productive in terms of our interactions with each other and the rest of the community. I am running because with my work ethic and character, including honesty, kindness, and willingness to take and improve on criticism, I think I could make this committee a positive experience that would leave no one out. By leaving no one else out, this means that every other user would have about as much of a say as I would, which I will explain in my policies section. Much of my role this decade was in Elimination with a large variety of games for other users to play, and just like then I followed deadlines and worked to accomodate other users based on their preferences in order to keep the games going, and tried something different creating a ranked-choice voting game, I would take deadlines seriously as chairperson, take into account both what would make users inside and outside the committee feel comfortable, and both listen to and come up with myself new ideas. With plans to avoid a drought of polls without excessively pressuring members, make it possible for users to be treated fairly so no one recieves treatment worse, or better, than in line with their conduct, and make it possible to make different styles of polls, I think I would be only part of the entire Committee's excellent group effort to get material accomplished.

Experience: I may not be the best known user on the site but I have experience with editing minor mistakes on pages (can thank the Random Page feature for that), and getting a few articles featured namely Coin Rush, Hotel Mario, and Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury. I also was able to pass the proposal to eliminate nicknames for characters that were not canon from being on their wiki pages. I was on the 12th Poll Committee from 2021 to 2022, and was able to get very much done pushing myself very hard, with eight polls and two 'Shroom sections for the Committee.

Policies/Goals:

• As chairperson, I would allow creators of polls unlimited attempts to choose which image they want for each poll, assuming that they are within reasonable time, and that users did not keep repeating the type of reasons that previous images were rejected for being inappropriate.
• I would allow the creators of polls to post polls in the MarioWiki Poll Discussion page themselves.
• I would make sure that the forum's Poll Committee subforum would be used very predominantly to discuss poll ideas instead of Discord, so that the users who prefer a slower-paced, relaxing feel instead of a more intense one would feel at home. However, using the Poll Committee chat there would be encouraged as well, but strictly not made a requirement.
• I am hoping to have minimum of seven people to join the Poll Committee, so as to increase the scale of fun interactions. I would not have a limit on what number of people would be allowed to join the Poll Committee, assuming that anyone who applied had a good record as in avoiding warnings from wiki/forum/Discord moderation or bans. Previous egregious behavior even outside of the Mario Wiki community such as racism, homophobia, bullying, et cetera would also do nothing whatsoever to help one's chances. The current committee had the policy of allowing previously rejected users to reapply with the understanding that if others do not consider them to have improved they will not be accepted, which I would keep. However, I would also expand on this policy by allowing applications for the 15th Poll Committee to be analyzed by every user in the 14th Poll Committee, so even lower-ranking users aside from their role on the Committee would have a say in voicing comfort or discomfort.
• I would make minor changes to the earlier archives as chairperson, so as to correct previous errors.
• I would have a hybrid model of the standard Poll Committee system and the 11th Poll Committee system. So, there would still be the opt-in system designated to giving one user extra power to focus on a poll and create it with other users, but there would be other weeks designated to the consensus-based system where which poll went up would depend on which one had the most votes, so as to have a more relaxed feel. The number of weeks that would be designated to a consensus vote would be one out of four.
• I would simultaneously discourage badgering but make clear that constructive criticism handled appropriately is not badgering.
• I would discourage and if necessary deal with rudeness both in explicit forms like insulting others' ideas or swearing at other users and indirect forms, like intensely patronizing other users or giving veiled insults.
• I would support allowing polls to be manifested as very rough ideas in a thread for discussing ideas without a given form, as proposed by one of the other candidates. However, I would also allow users to post many different ideas at the same time in this thread, assuming of course, they sometimes keep them in the same post/not do so by double posting to an inappropriate extent.
• I would, if supported by the rest of the Committee, have there be a 'Shroom section at the end of the Committee in July that every user would post in, covering which polls not of their own each member on the committee liked the most. This would be made clear to be a thread to celebrate the accomplishments of the Committee as a whole as opposed to a thread about "which users out of the Committee have better ideas than which".
• I would hear out different ideas other members had about different formats for polls than the standard formats used before, and see if they would be possible to be compatible with Crowdsignal.
• To combat facing a drought of polls, I would give users credit for coming up with a lot of good ideas, as well as encourage Committee members to appreciate each other's work, and come up with many ideas myself. Working with other users on the 12th Poll Committee, we came up with enough to make sure the amount of time between each poll was two weeks, with many different ideas that barely didn't make the cut by the time the Committee was over. If we had many different poll ideas more than the number of spots that could be covered by two-week intervals by the time the Committee was winding closer to being finished, I would also open a thread to gauge the consensus on whether we wanted to shoot for one-week intervals, so users would have more opportunities to have their remaining ideas make it to the front page. As your chairperson, I would not mind at all, and would even enjoy, the extra work of using Crowdsignal once a week to come up with new ideas, knowing how much of others' visions I would be implementing.

If I get this title in the election, please PM me on the Super Mario Boards if you would like to be my vice chairperson. The vice chairperson spot would be determined by who I think has both the best combination of experience, work ethic, and character; good judgment and temperament, but also likability and honesty.

Votes

Comments

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