Hanging Chads in Pro

Right now in Pro the big story is that three squads (Assassins, MMA and Symphony) have forfeited their first regular season match for not voting in the Pro Senate on the number of games the semi finals should be held over (In the end the vote was to make them best of three).

You may of missed this as most of the arguments have taken place not on the league forums, but the comments page on the main website which you can read here and the original post on the Pro forums here.

Now I'm in favour of having a Pro senate and personally I'd support all three leagues using them. Not making major changes unless the squads approve them is a good thing, but you can't force people to vote in this way. Some squad captains are like me and will start 150 post threads on every change the staff want to make, some squad captains will vote when asked but otherwise not care and some squad captains don't vote and are just happy to play matches under whatever rules and conditions the staff make.

Nothing wrong with any of those three positions and you're not going to make people care more by blackmailing them into voting, that's just going to make them hostile to any changes the staff offer. Having a Pro senate is good, offering the players a chance for feedback and to vote is good, forcing them to vote and punishing them if they don't is bad. It's bad for the league (round 1 in pro is now a joke) and it's bad for staff. Nelson has been the best sysop pro have had in a long time, but things like this will lose him the respect of the captains and players.

But wait, there's more. Of the three squads that forfeited their game, two of them (MMA and Symph) actually did vote. But as they didn't post on the thread, only voted on the poll, it counts as a non-vote anyway. Turns out that not only must you vote, you must justify which way you voted to the staff or forfeit games.

Lovely.