Context

Due to the bear market conditions, translators guild has experienced to some degree, candidacy, apathy in regards to people submitting their applications for most of the major roles in the guild. This resulted in most of the roles having only one or two candidates, one of which in most cases being a previous role holder. This resulted in two situations:

1. only one candidate ran for the positions and received support in unanimity.
2. when more than one candidate ran for the position, the previous role holder received majority support.

Problem

The pattern of candidacy and voter apathy created, created by but not limited to the market conditions that we found ourselves in S5 and S6, proved to be redundant in regards to time and human resources (i.e the energy of the role holders responsible of organising the elections and the time the whole process took)

Solution

Across other guilds it has been noticed a different approach to a similar issue: Soft consensus on role holders

Approach Instead of organising elections by having a week of applications and a week of voting, check if the role holders are interested in maintaining their position and have only one week of soft consensus voting on maintaining their role for the next season. This approach is expected to minimise the time spent on preparing the elections and help direct the efforts of the role holders but also voters towards more productive endeavours.

Conditions

1. In order for a role holders to maintain their position through soft consensus they have to receive at least a 70% of the votes in their favour.
2. A role holder cannot be kept in their position as a role holder through soft consensus for more than 3 seasons in a row, if they want to be in their position for longer, they will have to candidate for the position
3. If a role holder does not want to maintain their position, elections for their role will be organised
4. If a role holder does not get 70% confidence, election will be triggered. If nobody else wants to run for that position, and the role holder is still interested, the role holder will have to run normally for the role.
5. A role holder, if found of acting in bad faith or neglecting their duties during their run, can be openly contested and if found responsible their term terminated on the spot. If this happens, they won’t be eligible for running next season based on soft consensus.