I would personally like a giant vat of ice cream.

Just sayin...

I would prefer an Electoral College system. It works amazing for the USA, why not for IC?

ideally the voting change would be implemented at the same time as the rules change but im tryin to be somewhat realistic even if my idea of peoples choice is novel

Plus, if you had to set up a tracking system for a developer who you thought may use his developer powers to gain an advantage... you'd have to ask... the developer... to develop... the tool... to make sure he didn't develop a cheat.

Prison guard: "Hey, I'm going to grab coffee.  Here's my gun.  If prisoner #1 tries to escape, shoot to kill!"
Prisoner #1: "No problem!  I'll watch him like a hawk!"

No DP , election related . sorry ..

However, with a view towards the future of IC, we have done a few things.

To start with:
At the end of last year the mod team set themselves some goals and precedents that neded to be met.
We needed to get rid of the lag that was plauging the game. To this end we required a better server. This has been done.
We needed to get rid of the old interface, so with the devs a new interface was created.
We needed to be more transparent in our dealings with the community as a whole, including listening better and communicating our thoughts better.
We needed to have a more stable mod team and try to cover 24/7 help in #mod. So to that end we have selected an active mod team/ fmod team.
And there are more goals that we set and are working towards.

All changes need time though, and when dealing with volunteers you can't order them to do it within a few weeks. All the volunteers get for their work is a VIP for a few months/year and thats it.

At the moment we ( the mod team ) choose our mods/fmods by those goals. We choose them to cover 24/7 in #mod and to have an active stable mod/fmod team. We discuss everything and try to be as transparent as possible. Yeah, we can see that the rules need to have an update too, however there are a few things for us to update. Let's have the guide ( for example ) updated first or get a fair sentinel tag ( example ) and/or a beginner gal/VIP gal ( example ).
Priorities indeed.

Our developers and mod team did a lot of behind the scene work over the last few months after the server change ( goal 1/done ).
We need to have the interface where we can do our work without it taking TONS of time. Example:
Before the server change it took a mod 4-6 minutes to remove 1 topic from a fam forum.
Now it takes 5 seconds to remove a whole page.

All that time demotivated a lot of mods in the past, leading to some resignations. Our mods in the past did a lot of double/triple/etc work because they could not see what the other mods were doing. That's changed with the new interface. Like arby says, with the new interface everything that we do is logged.

In regards to the 24/7/365 active mod/fmod team thing. Keep in mind that we as community have to work with volunteers and we can't order people around. In choosing new (f)mods we set ourselves those stipulations; that they are active, nice and experienced. Ex mods would be nice because they know the job (personal; when possible not too rude a mouth and a good example for the community).

Yeah our rules could use an update here or there; maybe like kollop says some more rules are needed and others may need to be removed. Thank god our community in #mod has changed a lot and their attitude is helping our game. We have had to change those too this year.

Priorities though.
In my eyes we better do it step by step and make sure it's done right before starting a new thing. It's not just my opinion, it's an opinion of the mod team as a whole. And it has worked well this year, like you can see and should have noticed.

Amending rules to stay on topic a bit... hmmm... like I said, yeah we have to update/change them here and there. Our guide from 2008 I would like to update soonish first though and other small priorities, like fixing year old bugs (when we still have them). A beginner galaxy and/or a VIP galaxy has been on our communities list a long time already too. A good working sentinel tag and a NW rule what works with our present player base is also a high priority.

I ( personally ) and I think our mod team / developers / stefan too do see that we still need to do A LOT of work this year, and the rules will be on that list soon too.

About the elections. In my eyes you only have free elections when you have free nominations too. We as a mod team could make a list which you could vote from but it's a dream in my eyes. If that were to happen then you/we need to have nominations too. And I probably WILL say Yes to elections in the future when all goals are made/done.

p.s. The thinktank was made as a pool for ideas and solutions. When a lot of those ideas/solutions are worked out and/or posted we closed the tt because of inactivity/demotivation/etc indeed. Ideas/solutions have still been worked on this year however, has should be clearly apparent.

*note Thank you Gwynedd for editting

That about sums it up IMO.  Being a mod is a lot of work, most of which goes unnoticed by the community at large.  It's not really as simple as letting the community vote new mods into place, because the community doesn't have the best insight as to what makes a good candidate.

The job of a moderator is not analogous in any way to a position of public office.  Democracy is not a good model for this.  They are more a combination of project managers, public relations agents, and customer service representatives.  Those kinds of positions aren't filled by a democratic process, they are filled by interviews with "co-workers" who understand the job well enough to judge whether or not the candidate would make a good addition to the team.  It's more like a privately held company than a democratic government.

That said, FORUM moderators do a very specific task that is directly related to the medium in which they would likely be known to the community.  This in my opinion, is a good case for a democratic process.  People who are active in the forums would be good candidates to moderate those same forums, and the people who read the forums would be the right people to judge a candidates worthiness for the task at hand.  For the record, this isn't the first time such a thing has been proposed.  We've just never been able to figure out the right way to do it.

I think perhaps a compromise would be to instate some process for the playerbase to elect forum moderator candidates, who will be presented to the current mod and fmod team for evaluation.  If such a person proves to be a productive and competent member of the team as a forum mod over an evaluation period, then they could be considered (emphasis on considered) for promotion to modship.  Of course, this would depend on factors such as what timezone spots are actually needed.  There's no use having 5 active moderators in the same timezone.

I do agree that the overall process does need some more structure.  I think though that voting players into modship is not the correct solution.  Forum-Modship seems like a good "testing ground" and labor pool for potential Full-Mods.  Perhaps our focus should be on that instead.