User blog comment:ThisIsLucid/Practically a banning note, but what the heck!/@comment-27838637-20170125133026/@comment-27838637-20170125155109

I've compiled a bit of a list of pro's and con's for the return of the voting system.

Pros:

- The Community Gets More Involved: Not much of the community care about PotM anymore. Nominations aren't really read by anyone except the admins, and even then we aren't fully certain how the admins go about choosing a winner. Bringing back voting gives the community a say in what happens and as a result PotM will become alot more popular.

- The Authors of Nominated Stories Care: We might say 'thankyou so much' when a story of ours is nominated but really that's only a pleasantry. We don't really care about the nomination other than the fact somebody thought it was good enough to nominate. After that we don't really get any feedback on our story until a winner is decided and when we do it's really only "you won" or "you didn't win" which is pretty underwhelming for anybody whose nomination doesn't win. Using a voting system draws more attention to the stories and authors can recieve feedback in regards to how many votes they get as opposed to a simple no-feedback "didn't win". It also opens up more opportunity for comments and reviews on nominated stories because more people are actually inclined to read them.

- It's a bit more Fair: If the voting system isn't abused, the winner of the story is more likely to be deserving of the win. I don't know how the admins decide a winner, but it feels a little unfair to have a winner declared behind the curtains when for all we know you could be pulling a name out of a hat. Whilst I'm sure that's not the case, it's still a valid point. If votes are used, people are more likely to see how their story compares to others, and we can all see a clear winner was decided. It also gives admin stories a better chance at winning because of obvious political reasons. (admins are less likely to declare their own story a winner when only admins are voting).

Cons:

- Sometimes people can cheat

 In Conclusion: 

There are faults in every voting system, but they can be fixed. I think the pros far outweigh the cons in this scenario. If the admins decide that voting is too much of an effort then I think we the people deserve a better explanation by the admins as to why a story won. Maybe even a criteria checklist or even if the admins drop a small comment on each of the nominations to let them know how they fared. But even then I think a voting system is still a much better idea.