We have allegedly 67,722 members and nineteen vote? That is 0.003% by my calculations. Anything that poorly supported needs a quick, painless death. Surely bobtomay deserved much, much more than eight votes!!
Surely iWhat is not suggesting those nineteen voters make up all our regulars?
I'm more or so commenting on that there is more involvement from regulars in the nomination process. I'd really like to see a few more nominations from newer members who had a positive experience from another member in the community.
Something that puzzles me today. You see the amount of guests who visit the forums during peek hours of the day -- around 2200 guests. But we'll only have about less than 50 registered members during anytime of the day. Even these 2200 people don't feel compelled to register at Mac-forums, but they are fine just being a visitor.
I'm just curious... I've been nominated for the last.. 4 months or so, and everytime the poll comes around, my name is never on it. Any reason why? Do you pick the "top 4" or something similar?
I don't really care, I'm just curious!
Without going into detail, one of our main rules that we look to first is our background check, not only nominees, but also the nominators themselves.
As a member with "lower standing" (not sure how to word this any other way) in the community, I think I can explain this. There is a sense of intimidation for those who have not been members for a very long time. These individuals may think things like, "why should I vote?" and "I'm new and probably don't have the 'right' to vote". While I can't speak for all individuals, I know I experience this feeling when I'm new to a community. Perhaps a solution to this would be to emphasize that the MOTM program is open to, and should have the involvement of, all the members of the community regardless of how long they have been a member of the community.
All of the previous statements are conjectures. Perhaps I'm just trying to speak on behalf of the "new people". That said, I would be confident in making the claim that if we could see who voted in the last MOTM poll that the population of voters would be dominated by or completely composed of individuals who are established members of the community. This is where I see the problem lying. Solving the dominance of established members in the MOTM poll will make the process truly welcoming to the whole community. I don't really have any good solutions to this problem right now but I believe that if you solve this, you solve the apathy in the MOTM polls.
We'd definitely love to have our newer members be more involved in our motm program. However, it's up to them, how involved they want to be in the community. Some newcomers will post a thread, get a response they are seeking, then leave for an indefinite amount of time. Others will stay and learn for a bit. But at what point do they finally start looking into the other forums, seeing what the community is about, and then have an active role in our community. How do we make this happen more? We do try to make our community a very friendly environment and put a damper on any situation, where someone would feel timid in being active from others' actions. But those situations are pretty non-existant and mild, from what I've noticed over time.
