I have some suggestions for the admin that could make covens on SoM work better and would like to hear all your input on my ideas. A problem seems to be that covens are dying off and people who would like to join covens are not able to due to inactive leadership. Here are some changes I propose that could make this work better:
If the high priest and priestess are not logged in for 30 days:
1) The coven starts auto-accepting applicants as regular members.
2) Members who have been in the coven for 2 months are automagically promoted to council.
3) Council members gain some of the priveleges of the HP/HPS like editing the coven page, promoting other members, making posts and spells public, etc.
I am interested to hear what you all think! It would be nice to see some of the old covens make a comeback.
Two month promotions does not seem like a very long time, someone who has only been learning for two months could become a council member, able to post spells and articles on the coven page. It may dilute the good items.
I think that this would cause chaos on the site, although I feel strongly about what you say of course, but having an auto accept on will simply overcrowd the covens and without leadership it would just become progressively more chaotic. There are efforts I have seen from council members who do try to keep the covens active, what is also a problem along with covens is not just inactive leaders in some, but also members who join for the sake of status of being in a coven.
On top of that there are many variables to consider when being part of any online group, people are coming from all around the world and we all lead different lives, sure the commonalities of being human that are shared are here, but sometimes events happen which means a member can't get to the coven to be active! This is why most covens will have an absence thread so that members can notify the HP's and council reps. I have seen a few posts on the site already calling for the inactive leaders to be removed and new ones elected, all we can do is patiently wait to see what new site updates are coming out.
As a programmer myself, especially with websites there is a good reason Pet is not often able to be here all the time to talk or respond, which is why we have Mods and they are just as important and even more so capable of communicating these requests to the admin. With programing a site and fixing bugs, many many hours can be taken up spending time getting all the strings of code to work so the features here are not buggy! The system on the site is as fair as it can be, and yes there are very valid point members raise regarding this, I guess all we can do really is to wait and see what happens.
H20, you might be right that 2 months is too short to be promoted. I just don't like hearing about council members whose hands are tied because the HP/HPS abandoned the coven.
This is actually a terrible idea. Auto-Accepting members will cause a lot of problems for the Coven management since Covens will literally be 'chocka' (Full) A lot of inactives etc who only pop on for a day and begin posting inappropriate or unrelated topics all over the Coven.
Also, allowing people who have been in it for 2 months to edit the Coven page? I can see a lot of people being stupid and putting up REALLY inappropriate things on the Coven Bios.
The inactivity of Coven leaders, that one is truly debatable, because there have been times the Coven Leaders could not actually have any access to the website due to their personal lives. The point of a heirarchy system is to keep order and manage problems. It's like a business, should everyone get the same powers and authority - there will be problems.
Whilst some of these ideas are great in the short term, they are however impractical in the long term, eventually you'll end up with more Covens like Spellcasters than anything else.
For those who don't know, Spellcasters is an auto accepting coven with no leadership.
I don't really like these ideas,auto-accepting applicants is bound to cause chaos on the coven forums
The promotion to council should never be that short
I personaly think that if a Priest/Preistess is inactive for 3 month or more consecutivly without reason,then they should be removed and the coven members should choose the new leader,
Weatherwax, while I think you make some good points you also don't need to be rude. I think there could be problems if a bunch of people are allowed to edit the coven page, and the possibility of it turning out like spell casters. I also think members should have to wait longer than 2 months to be auto promoted to council since a lot of members here have to wait years for that.
Where I disagree with you is that coven leaders should be allowed to leave for extended periods. I have mailed coven leaders here about joining and received no response, which is unacceptable. Hierarchy is sometimes a good thing, then again Hitler was all about hierarchy. Sometimes power to the people is the practical solution in the long term.
