Wow, a nice interesting discussion you have here, must say completely political and in a party thread! On actually about how parties are deleterious to the game.
Now, to Strider:
I think you are confusing a few things all together. First, you have a strong bindings with the previous demogames. You were used to the way they were run and you just don't see any alternative to that. This might be fortunate because most of the other demogames were a relative success. At least, there were many of them and the forum was never completely deserted. On the other hand, that must be unfortunate because it does not mean that this game has to be run similar to the other previous games. Now, you just have to live with it imho and don't get mad about it. We'll see how it would go, would be a peculiar development.
Another and important aspect of power and voting: There is a discussion where not all opinions are equal. First, there are stronger and better players out there and they suggest more reasonable plans and provide more evidence-based explanations. Of course, everyone is free to speak and make suggestions. When the thing comes to voting on officials and plans, each vote is equal to the other votes. Let's say there is a strong player who is offensive in his nature and many people around are not satisfied with his communication manners and vote against any of proposals backed up by his opinion. Not because they don't like his opinion but because they don't like him personally. Same goes for a weak player but who is polite and constructive and on good terms with everyone. He suggests stupid moves but who cares, probably the game would be won anyhow, so majority votes for him and his plans and the game goes on. I'm not implying that previous versions of the game had been dominated by very weak strength-wise but communication-skilled players albeit to some extent this can be considered true by some people. I'm thinking that this kind of situation would be a rather unpleasant one. First priority of all citizens should be taking care of the gaming process and keeping it as funny as possible. That is actually one of the reasons for the generally low difficulty levels of the single-player demogame. And this is also understandable.
A rather observant user can tell approximate player strength of each citizen rather rapidly judging by participation in other parts of the forum and nature of their comments and suggestions. So, here comes the discrepancy which must be somehow resolved. IMHO, there is nothing tricky about it and another imho, political parties and citizen groups greatly help to resolve these discrepancies. There is a job to be done for everyone and the benefit to be made for everyone during the course of this game. I fail to understand how existence of parties might interfere with job and benefits of discussion. On the contrary, it seems that this struggle should stimulate the job to be done better.
Now, to the point of new citizens having trouble adjusting themselves with the game and being elected. That is a very peculiar point imho. It seems that actually most of the elected officials for this term are new to the demogame apart from few. Would they have been elected otherwise without political support? I seriously doubt that. I have already posted that and not hiding my opinion: I'm sick and tired of lurking all the previous demogames which were run by all the same people with occasional dilution from citizen pool just to make sure there is certain level of representation. You want it to continue this way? Sure, it might be more comfortable, knowing what is going to happen and how it would turn out.
Another thought about not enough discussion of actual gaming process and too much discussion of politics and stuff of life. It seems that with a new game and hopefully a new attitude towards the game, things had to be settled and things had to be settled right and not wrong. What you think you are trying to do is to preserve the spirit of previous games and keep the current game organized at to how you think you want it to be organized. So, by doing this you are actually participating in the political struggle instead. The only reason for any type of political struggle is gaining power either directly or through increasing influence.
These are my brief thoughts and hopefully they can be met with positive attitude and not a negative one.
