How many Alliance players regularly (daily, weekly, monthly) have their voices heard here, in the public forum? Does anyone want to guess?
In total, what percent of the Alliance shows up here to voice its opinion, even once?
Disregard any thoughts of this forum generating or even facilitating a democracy.
You, my friends, are the vocal minority.
We, the owners, are among you, but all of us together? We are still not the majority, not by a long shot.
There is but one vote that truly matters, and that is the one each player makes with his or her feet, each month. If they decide to keep coming, or if they have decided to leave, they have given us their vote. We campaign every event to keep them, and sometimes we succeed. We rely on our staff, our ears, our observations and our instincts to figure out what the Alliance needs, what it wants, and sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we get close. However, we often miss the target.
The opinions of all our players matter, but gathering all those opinions is not yet, and might never be, possible. Informing every player enough to adequately equip each of them to make rules decisions? What a wondrous day that would be, because it would mean we've somehow miraculously gotten everyone to read, and more importantly, understand all the rules. It's hard enough getting ourselves to read and understand all of the rules.
In short...we're trying. We keep on trying.