Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27575896-20190124185247/@comment-26234016-20190126143445

I have mixed feelings with regards to Townie of the Month. On one hand, I can say that I was around back when User:Rexanator3000 won, the very first time, even if I wasn't an active participant. Feels a bit like a friend that's constantly doing weird stuff, but you can't get mad at them! They're your friend! I had a bit of 'if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it' mentality with the whole thing. But then it did keep getting fixed and slowly, gradually, as more and more people became involved with the thing, there were more and more complaints, which required new fixes, which just made people complain even more. I think if I had to pick one emotion to feel about this whole thing, it would be, "This is an internet contest to determine something that has literally no value, everyone needs to quit getting hot and bothered about it. Otherwise you get to a point where people think that a meaningless contest is important enough to have a poll."

However, we're here now.

I don't want staff to choose a winner.

Here's why:

I'm sorry to say it, but the staff are pretty darned biased and generally not as in touch as we might like to be. Speaking as a member of the staff, if I had to break a tie between a relatively new user who had been helping out a lot or an old friend who's sort of irrelevant, I'd vote for the old friend. And I think I'm a less severe example. I don't think there's a single staff member who joined the wiki in the last three years (2019, 2018, 2017). The honest truth is, we're out of touch with most of the users on this wiki.

Think of a highschool. The seniors are basically only going to know a vague reputation of the freshman, unless the freshman and seniors actively try to get to know each other. While I know three or four new kids on the block fairly well, for the most part my impression of the New Guard of this wiki is formed by staff members reporting in the discord that they banned so-and-so because they got salty about such-and-such and decided to vandalize. While I don't claim to read the minds of my fellow staff members, just based on how we chat about the wiki, there is a general sense that all these young'uns do is spam on the Fun and Games board.

I don't think that this judgement is 100% unjust, either, but that's a debate for another day. My point is that the New Guard probably does take issue with being branded as useless lollygaggers and the Old Guard doesn't, and making the voting population entirely staff assumes that just because someone got to be chat moderator they are suddenly filled with knowledge on the ways of the wiki. Sure, experience is a fantastic teacher, but when it comes to the people who would probably get nominated, we have no experience.

You wouldn't want a bicycle repairman to fix your motorcycle, and you don't want staff and staff alone voting for who becomes nominated.

I do also want to stress my point at the very beginning; that the Townie of the Month contest is a fun little pasttime and really doesn't need this much gravity associated with it. If I had to fix anything, I'd up the edit requirements, but it honest to goodness really doesn't matter that much.