A new wave of criticism! Will it change something?

[DarkLight]

Around 6 month ago I decided to temporary quit the format until changes in the structure (BANs & UNBANs, council, transparency, ...) will be made.
Today by coincidence I received a link to a massive thread with criticism on the council.
Because the thread was deleted in the facebook group as far as I heard, I won't post the link here or will post my further opinion on the different points of critic now.

Just to remember, here some of my posts with criticism on the format structure (mostly banlist related) for those who are interested in my point of view in the past:

Critic on the handling with banlist changes
Suggestions for changes on banlist votes


Another problem I want to point out again is, since my Facebook BAN I saw it's hard to follow whats happening in the format/community, because kinda no one use the forum or discord nowadays for whatever reasons.
In my opinion an independent platform which don't require a log in is necessary to read and follow up whats happening in the community (tournament results/reports, decklists, discussions, announcements, ...).

I will look forward on how this thread of criticism will change the structure of the format, maybe it's worth to start playing and participate in the community again if changes will be made.

[Vazdru]

You refer to https://europeanhighlander.com/?fbclid=IwAR0I6yqc0n7_-vug5x9azw56kmauRdDeUGoVJ12Ex0IpzG3A960UVsrOaGg
My first reply has got deleted somehow, that's why I reposted it today on Facebook. For those who haven't access to it for some reason here the post:
(let us postpone the banned-list-discussion a few days, we working to enchance the transparency of the voting results and possibilities of participation for the community)

As the criticism of the council ist still online (https://europeanhighlander.com/) but my reply to it has got lost somehow I feel free to repost it (see below).
Personally I feel quite sad that many good replies and suggestions of the community to Jo Fra's origin posting have been deleted. I liked many of them – critical voices and encouragement for the current council same way.
According to my point 5 (see below) I would like to know if someone from Austria or NRW wanna join the council currently. I know that there have been some contactings but it would be good to know how many are willing to join. Every serious support is welcome!
If you don't wanna join the current council but would like to be part of a somehow new formed one let me know too. Thanks in advance!
_______________
Repost of my reply to criticism of the council, 21 Sept. 2019:
1
Thanks guys for your effort and your approach to make Highlander a better Magic format. Every input from the community is welcome.
2
Transparency is indeed an issue. We are currently developing a solution for more transparency. I am pretty sure we can introduce the result in the next weeks, no later than the beginning of November. For the meantime: I am Gerry, part of the current council, 44 years old, married, 3 kids, living near Karlsruhe and working as management and tax consultant. I play Magic since Beta especially Highlander and Limited.
One of the criticism brought forward was that we don't have any legitimation being council members. Probably many of you think the same and maybe you are right. I guess everyone is free to draw his/her own conclusions. So why I am council member? Frank Topel has founded the Highlander format as you know it today. You wouldn't play Highlander the same way without his devotion for the format. He wasn't elected and made the rules like he thought it would be the best way for the community alone – at least at the beginning. We've had long and sometimes heated debates in that early days what could be the best way to go, to get his project being successful. After a while my passion for the format granted me a seat in the HL council as Frank asked me to join. That's why I am here trying my best to preserve his ,,heritage" in some way.
Another point of cristism is that the community feels ignored by the council. We've made a lot of surveys during the last years to find out what the community would like us to do. We are looking forward to increasingly use polls and surveys in order to enhance the qualitiy of community feedback. http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=584.135
3
As some guys create the impression that the council doesn't want to cooperate and there would be no willingness to have an exchange with the community and hear their concerns let me clarify a few things:
After Alf Cett contacted us I phoned with him for about half an hour. I promised him to discuss his points in the council, which I did. I've also said, that I am absolutely not against any change at all but that I am personally not convinced by their approach for reasons see below.
Later I was contacted by the initiators of the task we currently talking about.
I offered a face-to-face talk at Halle early in November. I explained that the discussion in the council will take a few days and I want to use the time till Halle to talk about their ideas.
As those guys want to have a system-change in the next weeks they declined that offer as they wanted to introduce their ideas to the community in Halle already. They asked for a Skype-conference which I declined for as long it is unclear if the community wants a change or not.
So they started this topic which is a good thing imo.
4
Reasons why I am not convinced by the introduced approach:
a) An implementation of a democratic system sounds good for all of us as we are all happy living in a democracy. But there are imo unsolved problems implementing your voting system which could be a real danger for our fomat. They had various ideas building a highlander club with a monitoring function during elections and how to avoid fake votes. But this wasn't convincing to me completely.
Some easy questions to answer:
My son is 11, he has a DCI number for 4 years now and is playing kitchen table Highlander? Is he legitimized to vote?
A guy playing only Modern and Standard and doesn't care about our format but would like support his buddy obviously by voting for him. Good thing his vote influences the future of Highlander?
b) An elected council isn't better or worse as the current one, it is just different. It won't make Highlander to a better format per se. Decisions will be liked and cursed by the community like today. Only a better legitimation of a decision doesn't make it better of worse for the community and game-play by itself.
French Duel Commander has a similar and afaik non-elected council which shakes up the format from time to time - but they still have big success -> https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=22442&f=EDH. Imo the relevance of the council is overrated and there are other, much more important parameter for the success of our format.
c) Populism is always a problem. Does a democratic process always lead to the best solutions for the whole community? Have a look at UK (,,Brexit"), USA, Italy and the success of the ,,Right". One told me Magic Players are the smarter people - they would only vote for smart people who wants the best for the format, populism won't be a problem and the guys are respectful with each other....
d) Does anyone really like election campaigns every year which can be sometimes dirty and offending if the atmosphere is poisened? ... this could easily lead to a fragmantation when the moat between the groups become too deep.
e) The council should grant a good working atmosphere, otherwise you should go straight for direct democracy and dispose the ,,council-idea". A quarreling council isn't worth a cent imo. They will hardly find a common announcement, the motivation to discuss and participate and act together as a council – for what a council is made for.
Furthermore there is no punishment for an elected member doing nothing over that year too. We've had candidates wanted to join the council but a few weeks later they stopped playing Highlander.
Furthermore there is no binding for an elected council member voting like he told during such an election campain. Or have I missed something?!
Ok, he won't be re-elected probably but the damage would have been done already.
5
I am in favour of open the council for new members. Communities like Austria or NRW should have the right to send out some kind of representatives like Dalibor for Slovakia or pyythhu for Finnland. If a local community doesn't feel representated by their members they shoud start their discussion within the local communities for a new solution. We would like to support these new and emerging communities in every way and we would therefore like to encourage you to reach out to us with your vision. The council always was and will be an organ from the community and for the community.  

[DarkLight]

I really appreciate the extensive and fast answer.
Maybe some other players or council members can share their opinion here, too.

I can understand some of the points you specified above, especially the face-to-face talk with the initiators of this campaign and maybe some other council members like Maqi (Mannheim) or Dr. Opossum (Berlin) if they attend to the tournament in Halle, too.

I will look forward on the result of the discussion.

At least at the moment I can see that maybe some changes are coming in the future.