Dear forumites,
Today is a special day. The users, the community, the forumites, the people.
You. Today you have achieved something great. You have elected two representatives to voice your concerns and to take action on your behalf. Many willingly took upon the responsibility and picked up the torch, offering themselves up as candidates for the position of
Community Representative and with that, their will to do the very best for these forums. And through it all, Duuring remained dedicated to the forumites right to chose. I thank you, Duuring, for giving us this opportunity.
I am proud to be one of only two who have been elected. But the contributions of the other candidates should not be forgotten. Many did their best to ensure a good and fair election. They should be respected.
Together with my American partner
Junedragon, I intend to make this forum a safer, freer and better administrated place. To do this a number of things must be changed. Some officially, by moderators, staff and rules. Some need to be changed by you, the forumites. You have done so much already! This election was important and a display of the forums will to govern itself. But there’s yet more to do, together. Change can only happen if we all work together to achieve a better, safer forum.
One of the first and most important subjects must be the
freedom of our users to ensure continued creativity of the regimental and the modding community.
Our proud forum broke its previous record for most users online in the hours up till the release of Iron Europe, the well known mod for Napoleonic Wars. Not before or since in the history of our forum have there been such a huge number of users actively following a thread or a board. The modding community is therefore vital, not just to Taleworlds and Warband. But also to Flying Squirrel Entertainment and Napoleonic Wars.
To further encourage the modding community here, we must continue to expand what is allowed and supported on this forum. People have felt pushed off, not just by rigid rules, but also by the toxic opinions and stances taken by certain reactionary members of this community (more on those later).
It must be put to a stop.
In an active attempt to mend the issues with openness on the modding stage, I have myself developed a mod with the rest of MSH to further expand the limits of what is possible. Not just within the game (although this is very much true), but on our forums too.
I hope we can break the user record again as well as encourage more to take an active role in the modding community, this time with the announcement of my new mod
“nApoleonic wArs!111”. (developments can be found on our
Twitter )
But sad as it is, there are more concerns than just furthering the creativity of our users.
The ruleset on the forum will have to be looked through and it’s points reevaluated. Some additions to be made, possibly some existing rules than needs to be edited or outright removed.
However, something more depressing than outdated rules has come to light recently.
During the recent elections there have been a worrying tendency in the threads relating to it. Many have been actively hostile towards the candidates who tried to establish a good democratic culture on our forums through running for CR in the first of hopefully many elections.
They have been slandered, defamed and insulted. Their legitimacy have been questioned, their right to personal respect ignored.
If these are the conditions of candidacy, how are we to ensure good candidates will put themselves forward in the future? No one wants to be subjected to slander campaigns and ad hominem attacks.
Therefore, I swear with God as my witness that I will do my very best to ensure fairer, freer and more open elections in the future. But how?
I promise I will actively try to put an end to aggression against other users, especially those proclaiming candidacy for the position of CR. The tendency of endless hostility against other users, regiments and CR candidates must end. We must stand strong and fair to protect our forum and newly founded democracy against those who wish to harm it.
These are some of my plans for my term. I hope you will all do your very best to make our forums a better place.
And once again, a big thank you to Duuring and everyone who took and interest and voted. It’s thanks to you that this is possible.
-Mekkil the Graet, CR and Spokesperson of MekkilsSuperhaus.
