Elections board

[David Bean]

So, is The Sinner not doing an elections board this year? A pity, if not; I had some questions I wanted to ask a few of the candidates, and it's a bit difficult commuting to the hustings from Manchester.

[orudge]

This should now be rectified.

[Fawksie]

Does the Association remind (or inform?) candidates of the existence of the Sinner as regards online hecklings? I fear that most of them won't post of their own volition, given that there hasn't exactly been blanket advertising coverage for the past few years.

[David Bean]

Haha, well done, and thanks!

To be honest I'd be heartily surprised if the Association notified anybody about this - that the only person who commented on it graduated five years ago would seem to indicate as much. That's not to say this can't be quickly rectified, though: why doesn't one of the moderators send a standard letter to each of the candidates by Facebook, encouraging them to come along and introduce themselves, and bring their campaign teams and supporters along? You never know, it might even lead to some of the old Sinner fire being reignited. I'd do it myself, except I'm not a mod so it isn't really my place, although when I come back in September I'd be up for a spot of promotional work to try and help the cause.

[Fawksie]

Having now read through the Election Rules, the Sinner is mentioned as a forum for publicity. Writing to the candidates is an excellent suggestion, thank you, I'll have a chat with Oli if I can get hold of him.

[Fawksie]

Well, I've found 73 candidates on Facebook, but I definitely think this falls into the category of "unsolicited messages", and if I don't get my account blocked for sending that many messages, I'll probably get it blocked for them being unsolicited... might be better to set up a group and invite them all.

Edit: er, no, can't do that either. I can only directly invite friends to an event or group, but I can supply a dump of the entire LDAP directory, and they'll happily invite everyone in the university via e-mail. I give up.

[DACrowe]

Does the Association remind (or inform?) candidates of the existence of the Sinner as regards online hecklings? I fear that most of them won't post of their own volition, given that there hasn't exactly been blanket advertising coverage for the past few years.

In principle the candidates should be aware of the Sinner anyway. I can tell you, because I drafted a post we never got around to posting, that 'Owen Wilton for Student Association President' was certainly aware of the Sinner. The guidelines for candidates (I'd say rules, but weirdly they weren't exhaustive of the rules in effect during the elections, some of them only being given verbally) explicitly mention the Sinner as a means of free publicity.

[Fawksie]

Aye, I discovered that as noted above.