Ladle/Guidelines/Voting

=Ladle Voting=

The decision-making process for Ladle-related issues was sketchy at best before the voting system was in place. Previously, community members might make a forum poll or some complaint thread and people would argue a point. Very little was ever accomplished and every change was a challenge to authority of sorts.

At one point, people began to question the nature of the Ladle rules themselves and the authority for which they had been created. It was clear something needed to be done. By February 2009, just about everything related to the Ladle was in question again. A discussion of rules broke out, but this time it was about not just what rules we should have, but how to decide on them as a community. Lackadaisical pointed out a vote from Ladle-16 where the teams successfully decided on settings. Eventually it was decided to try out a quarterly voting schedule using the previous method from Ladle-16. The first quarterly vote coincided with Ladle-21 and was used consistently with great success. 

The process was simple and went smoothly for a long time. Every third Ladle, a discussion thread was created to talk about Ladle issues. Ideas were argued thoroughly. One week before the Ladle sign-ups close, a voting thread was created. The thread contained the choices for teams to vote on. Only teams signed up could vote, one vote per team (if you had a large clan with 2 teams, that meant 2 votes). Voting closed when sign-ups closed. Note: occasionally situations arose where emergency voting was needed and the previous Ladle teams were used. This system shaped Ladle Fortress into what it is today. However, quarterly voting was suspended in January of 2011 due to irreconcilable differences (some felt there was too much tampering with the tournament and others felt voting was a chore).

Votes no longer happen quarterly, but because the voting system proved to be immensely helpful it is still used when problems cannot be solved through discussion alone.