User blog comment:Webly/New Proposal- Wiki President/@comment-1874924-20121113030740

Conceptually, I like the idea of a President, simply because there are times when the buck has to stop somewhere. The devil is in the details, though, and the details here strike me as a little too "devilish", so I must vote No on this proposal in its current form.

Long story short, I really don't see what we have to gain by giving a President as much power as you propose to. Sprink was our de facto President for the better part of three years, and I think that model worked well--by his own choice, he was more Admin Plus than an actual President. In the event of disagreements, there was some tendency for people to defer to his judgment out of respect, but nobody was obligated to do so.

Webly, you suggest that a non-admin could be President, but I beg to differ. If the President would be overseeing all bans, I don't think a non-admin could do that effectively, since admins are the people who have the power to impose bans in the first place. There is something to be said for standardizing ban lengths, but we don't need a single "ban overseer" to do that.

I also don't see how having a President would give the people more say than they have now. The "people's representation" vote does have merit, but I see no reason why that couldn't be recorded directly as opposed to having a President act as middleman. That said, I could certainly see empowering the President to break ties.

Furthermore, I don't like the idea of making the election resemble a politcal campaign, since we presumably don't want the President to be political. Having candidates say what they would do if elected isn't a bad idea, but that's something I intend to ask all admin candidates in future. After all, we want administrators who will actually administrate, as opposed to people who mainly just want the title.

Our current system allows any admin to call for a vote as needed on policy matters. What do we gain by putting all that on the shoulders of one person? (And if the admins would still be able to make policy proposals, then the requirement for a monthly Presidential proposal serves even less purpose.) To make matters worse, I think that having to put out a proposal blog every month is liable to be more work than you realize. As for proposals to liven up the wiki or draw more traffic, anyone can do that, and they don't even have to be an admin. (Jkl9817 was a non-admin particularly known for this.)

Lastly, making the final vote a secret ballot is just asking for trouble, especially if you happened to be one of the final two candidates. That would be a textbook example of a "conflict of interest", and this wiki doesn't have a history of secret-ballot voting in any case. I also don't see the point of escalating the voting eligibility requirements from one round to the next. The requirements should be constant throughout.

Bottom line: There is some merit to having a President, but I think the current proposal is setting Presidency up to fail.