Legend of Zelda Union - Leadership Election

Hello everyone, Thanks for coming out to the kick off of the local elections..

*pause for mild applause*

Thank you, thank you..

As I'm sure everyone has realized by now, the Legend of Zelda Union has been hit by slow times. The local bomb and magic potion industry has been hit hard as the economy has plummeted, and the Rupee has devalued to a fraction of it's original worth, now only valued at $1.21 MKC (Mushroom Kingdom Coins). The leader of our fine union has gone AWOL in the midst of this crisis, leaving only the dedicated members who are reading this sentence right now. That's is right, I'm talking about YOU.

In accordance with Gamespots policy, We will be hosting a small election to determine who the members would like to see as their new leader, but before we do that, The only fair way I can think to proceed is to determine who would like to become leader. 

As the only technically active officer left our union. I will automatically be on the bill.

*** If anyone else would like a chance to run for leadership, please post here. All nominees must be 'seconded' by another member. This is a safeguard to keep random people not from the union from coming in just to get leadership by nominating themselves and then bringing in a bunch of friends to vote for them. ***

Our leader must be someone who actually cares about this Union, not someone looking for some power. 

Leadership is hard work, rewarding work but still challenging and time-consuming. You must be in this for the long-haul for the good of the union. We've had too many lame-duck leaders recently.

I have been an active member of Gamespot since 2003. Yes, more than 6 years now, that's longer than some of the administrators of this site. My first post I ever made in the forums was made right here in the Legend of Zelda Union. I will NOT abandon this union short of my sudden unexpected death (but that won't happen because I plan on living forever).

So, I reach to YOU, the members of the Legend of Zelda Union. Accept me, Lee G as your leader.

~md
(metroid_dragon)

Why thank you, but if you want to run I'll be happy to second you. You've always been an active member of the union and also have officer experience. If anyone else were to do this, I would hope it's you.metroid_dragon

Thanks, but no. I've already decided that I won't be running for leadership.

I haven't been active as of late, so really the only one that deserves being the leader right now is you.

Anyone else?

A 1 man election seems kind of tacky :P

I'll give it another 48 hours, until Sunday, for any more potential candidates to announce their running. At that point I guess anyone else either doesn't want to run or won't be active enough to be leader anyway.

I care about the union, but I don't think I'm leader material and I think I'm to much on and off in the union, so I won't run.waZelda

I respect your honesty. That's what's key here, is to make sure that any leader will be dedicated to the Union. I have no problem seconding another member I feel would be dedicated to the cause.

Anyone else?

A 1 man election seems kind of tacky :P

I'll give it another 48 hours, until Sunday, for any more potential candidates to announce their running. At that point I guess anyone else either doesn't want to run or won't be active enough to be leader anyway.

metroid_dragon

If it makes you feel better, I'll run if only to give you the illusion of having competition. :lol:

:P you're call.

Alright, well it's been 4 days now, so I guess everyone else doesn't wish to run or imo is too inactive to be leader anyways.

I'll send the data to gamespot.

So, any news ? :)

It's been like a week...

Gamespots customer service sucks.

However, they did finally get back to me and tell me that we need more votes. Our active member to total member ratio is rather low so it's tough but I'll do it.

I'm going to create a new poll for the leadership election, but I'll need at least 1 other member to be in the race with me. Do I have any volunteers?

put me on if you actually need a second

but my vote goes to you

Alright, so I'm going to create a poll with these members:

metroid_dragon
SSCyborg
brick_player

Would anyone else like to be on the ballot? I'll give it till' this afternoon.

so do we get to vote in the election and what all do we have to do if we win ?brick_player

Yes, everyone gets a vote, including the nominees.

The winner will have leadership transfered to their account. They will basically be running the show here. Posting updates, refreshing the images would be nice. Overall just get the Union back to the glory it once had and deserves.

There's a lot more to it, but if you win, I'll make sure that I run you through what's needed around here.

Good day! It seems I have returned from a long journey of various obstacles, and other mishaps. That said, the only individual that can hold this leadership position other than myself is metroid_dragon. However, while things in the Legend of Zelda world are still slow, and I haveintentions of moving the site still. I'd like to perhaps layout a plan of sorts with metroid_dragon, in which he can lead the new Legend of Zelda Union, thus allowing me to comfortably lead my other site that is being built alongside the new LoZU. He (you), have proven to be a loyal contributor to the union in my absence, and while I may have been absent for several months, I do acknowledge that, and it should be rewarded.

Aside from that, I'd like to apologize for that disappearence of mine. I became fed up with GameSpot, but ironically, in my time without the site, things have been fluctuating up and down. So, perhaps Gamespot is some weird creepy way of making things in my life fun. That's why I'd like to return as your leader... if you let me. I know the site will still be painfully slow, but at least general topics of discussion can thrive to some extent.

To be quite fair, there wasn't a whole lot of discussion to take part in during my time away considering that the LoZ series at the moment has been stagnant. Even that one piece of news about the analyst's is hardly noteworthy. You can have your opinion about me, but while I have been here as both officer, and leader, I've contributed a lot to this place. Yes, metroid_dragon has done most of the work since I've been gone, but he was among the people I recruited in the new site project. In fact, he was already a part of the host site, before they shut down for rebuilding.

If I had my way, the site would've been up by now, and myself, metroid, and Gary would've been all present, and running the place smoothly. However, that has not been the case. That said, you're a prime example of what I have to restore among the members here, and that's your faith in my leadership ability. Expect some new content very very soon.

Hey, welcome back.

I see you're still thinking about moving the union, eh ? To be honest with you, I don't know if it's such a good idea anymore. It's been well over a year since the project began and there has been hardly any progress at all. I know that it's due to the fact that you were gone most of the time, but right now, it just feels like too much work for it to be worth it. What does a website offer that we don't have here and will it actually change anything ?

The forums and unions articles are a great place for news, guides, hints, cheats or anything-text based. We can upload our own videos, even downloadable stuff is manageable through the use of hosting sites. We already got all the tools we need to make this place awesome again.

I think it's cool that you're so devoted to the Zelda series that you want to start your very own community based on it, but why does it have to involve moving the LOZU ? This place has a lot of history and personally, I really like it here.

It hasn't been that long, probably half a year? I know, it's terrible, and actually my absence isn't the reason. The people who've been developing the site have been very very slow with things. It's very irritating for me as well.

The initial reason why I wnated to move the union is simply based on the same stuff the drove me away. To say the least, GameSpot isn't as fun as it used to be, and its drawbacks have hit every single union on the site. Each one has suffered loss in activity, even if they're still somewhat active. The idea was to get away from this, better develop our own content. Remember, I didn't intend to completely close the union here when the site was made. I want to give our community the best chance possible of success, and the way GS is now, I don't see that happening the way it once was.. it also hurts a lot that there's been nothing driving new discussion there.

With the new site, its a new beginning, but I love this place as well, and I wish to preserve our following, and the essence of the site... in the forum design there was even a dedication part to it specifically made that I had brought to the designers attentions. So, I still want to follow through with it, and I think others who've left such as Gary, and nuck can understand what I'm talking about in particular as to how crippling GS has become for us here as leaders, and members of the union.

I still think we have a better chance of restoring the LOZU to its former glory here. We already got the members, we just need to motivate them, get them to post again.

Moving to another website means we'll be basically starting over from scratch... And because it's a new website, there's no way we're going to get enough traffic as the LOZU did back in the day for several years, if at all.

One more thing, what you intend to do with the new LOZU that will make a difference ? I mean, if we do the same things we did here, it's just eventually going to end up the same, isn't it ? Could you please explain what will be different about the new LOZU and why it can't be done here ?

We will have control of our own content, and in general of how things are opreated, as a whole. The idea was to hopefully carry a fair portion of our established memberlist to the new site. Some of the benefits of this were the organization, and more flexibility with the forums. Instead of operating with one board, and threads. We can actually have several boards, allowing more discussion, and keeping things neater. Another notable benefit is we're not overshadowed by GameSpot's many glitches, and handicaps, even Link was aboard with the new site, and other previous officers who've left GameSpot, not because of the union, but because of the site. My note on content refers to the fact we'll have solid, comprehensive reviews (sure we have that now), but this will be open to a wider audience. In GameSpot, we're confined in here, no one outside of GS would come to the union as a referrence for inforamtion, and content,but out there, on our own, we have that opportunity. It's not like there's no potential for growth, GameSpot is a big, but still limited community, and it's a requirement to join the site to be a part of the union, therefore a new site breaks that barrier.

If you take a look at what Sentinelrv, and _Sam_ have done, they've become successful in their moves away from GameSpot. The Legend of Zelda Union has established itself enough that we can attract exsisting members over into a more productive, free environment. If it were up to me, we would've had the site going already from when it was first prorposed, and agreed upon, however things take time, and unfortunately for us it really hit us hard. That doesn't mean the same prospect can't hold true now that it's been months later. As I do then, in order for the LoZU, to not exactly regain its former glory, but to truly start anew and fluorish, change must be made. Seperating from gameSpot I believe can accomplish that goal. Giving us full control of content, and activities of the site.

Although the concept behind a new site is wonderful, how many forums or websites have you started? It's near impossible to recruit new members to them who are not in your friend circle without some kind of catch. Something to draw them in from a google search.

I've managed a decent amount of forums, from the inactive to the active;

http://spynets.com/forum/

All the active sites I've ever run were solely because of some aspect that no other site offered. Weather that was a runescape forum and trading board (there was no official board at the time), or an online game, they all had some catch. What will the 'catch' of this new place be? What will draw in random searchers from Google. Zelda-related news and updates won't do it, there are already many established sites dedicated to that.

Although I'll for sure be joining your new site (as well as leading this union), I am skeptical of our ability to draw in new members to an offsite forum. Here at gamespot we have the established name, the existing userbase we can draw upon. We will have nothing like that elsewhere. Online friend circles and trying to steal members from here will only get us so far. It will give us activity at first, but as people who are less interested go inactive, how do we keep new members coming to keep the boards from dieing?

I'm honestly not trying to be a pessiment, but at the moment I'm not seeing anything that would tell me this new site stands a good chance at surviving. This whole plan needs to be re-examined methinks.