With increased tensions between mods & users of late, most recently the resignation of slow, I wanted to add to the discussion on how to ease the tensions between moderators and players by giving my suggestions on changes I believe make the site more representative for all parties involved. I've dubbed this The Smorlicious Plan (lol)

Suggestion 1 - Create Referendums

I don't mean polls, I don't mean petitions, I mean honest to god anonymous referendums that give the player base a 48-72 hour voting period on which they can vote on important issues on the site.

In its current state, EM is a benign oligarchy* with a few democratic features. Often times the mods make quick decisions without the community's consent, which is often seen as unfair and not representative of the community's opinion The only true way a player can hope to influence change on EM is through the forums where they can voice their own opinions and hope that the mods listen. This is the only form of power the EM players have when it comes to decisions made by the mods.

For example, a better way the merge of lobbies that occurred a couple months ago could have been handled was that we left the decision up to popular vote/referendum. The mods were considering on making a new tier system that would have changed training so that training players streamed into comp lobby. With this came a huge outcry and intense debate, a petition, and change was made over night, leaving many comp players frustrated and blaming the mods when in reality it was training the mainly forced the change.

Adding referendums on certain decisions give players more power over what happens to them and their lobbies, and so it gives them a voice. That said, only players with above a set number of points between 1000-10,000 should be privileged to vote in ref.

Suggestion 2 - Edit how reports are handled

It's ridiculous how many reports there are. Handling reports is only one job of the moderators, not their entire duty. It's simply unfair how many they have to handle. To this, I suggest changing the policy of how they are handled. I think if someone is reporting another person, the other person should comment on the report and state their defense. If they do not do such, then I think the mods should just give them the report being filed against them without bothering to check if they actually did the offence or not. If you can't be bothered to write your own defense, then the mods shouldn't waste their time making sure the report is handled with care, because obviously you don't care enough to write back. If it is obvious the person filing the report is doing it out of a grudge or mal intent, they should receive a violation instead for wasting mods time. Likewise, if it obvious the person who comments and gives their defense is clearly lieing (forcing the mods to look into their case), they should receive double violation for again wasting mods time. I think this system will make players think twice about reporting and doing wrong in games. *I realize this is not perfect, but I think this can work if we edit in the right way

Suggestion 3 - Crack down on mod corruption

I support most of what the mods do, but nothing infuriates me more than when a mod, the person who is given power to determine over reports, breaks the rules and gets off scott-free or with little consequences. If a mod breaks the rules, they are not suited to be in a modding position on em, and should be demodded.

That's all I have so far. :PP I realize not everyone will like this, so I'm open to other people's opinions on what can be done to make the situation on EM better.

TL;DR version,

S1 - Allow Referendums to happen on certain decisions S2 - change how reports are handled so the burden of proof is on the reported person. S3 - get rid of mods that break the rules.