Perhaps you could explain how transplanting the previously HoF list is going to eliminate the concern of bias in voting and the result that will have regarding new users?
That's a straw man. I never claimed that it would eliminate it, in fact I explicitly said that it was impossible to eliminate it. I said that it would reduce it by cutting the pool of old members who are eligible for induction by migrating the HoF itself.
Unless all transplants from DDO who deserved to be in the HoF there were already inducted, I fail to see how transplanting the HoF list is going to eliminate this bias and unfairness that you are concerned about. It may reduce it, but there's still, per your arguments, going to be present members that cause the system to be carried out in a biased and unfair manner?
Reducing it is the point. That's like saying 'killing 80% of the mosquitos won't eliminate malaria, it will only reduce it, so it's best not to bother'.
At that point, as pointed out, why have it at all? It's only going to discourage new members, again, per your concerns. It may be less so, but that doesn't change it will still be as such. I may rejectreje premise that users can't operate without bias in voting, but for purposes and discussion I'm assuming the reverse to be true, as you are.
The point of the HoF, in my mind, is to motivate people to contribute. The people who are here right now are already motivated; if they weren't they would have dropped off when DDO died. Instead, they moved here from DDO. There is a small vocal minority who dislike old DDO and want to make a 'clean break', and a larger majority that probably doesn't care much about the HoF at all and isn't really contributing to this thread.
But the thing is, if we want this site to work then we shouldn't be thinking about either of those groups, but instead about potential new users of the site who will join in the future. Any site this size has to attract new talent and grown, and that's where the HoF has some real utility aside from jacking off over the idea of having your name on a list of 'cool kids'. It's when the new person looks at it and says 'cool, I could make it in there and really feel like a part of the community'. That directly corresponds to their perceived likelihood of getting in, which is boosted by lowering the amount of competition that they face from established members.
So the question that we should be asking is: how would a fresh member weigh the costs and benefits? Would they be offended that the old HoF was migrated? That to me is just absurd. When I joined DDO, I wouldn't give a flying fuck if two years ago the whole community had migrated and had brought the old site's HoF along with them. That is only a concern which exists within a minority of the original site userbase, as it's tied to animus towards DDO, a website that a new member would have no experience with. So the answer is clear to me: I would feel like there was more social mobility if there had been more newer members inducted the last few times.
But I don't think that the right decision will be made here, because the discussion is among current DDO members, and like any topic the people with the strongest views are drawn to it. And those are the people who have some beef with the old DDO, who really want to 'cut clean' and have nothing to do with it. I don't think that most 'DDO refugees' really care either way, and so aren't voicing their opinion in this thread. I myself am pretty much tired of arguing the point right now, because it doesn't really affect me either way and I don't think that arguing will be effective against a strongly motivated, emotional minority. We will probably spend the first few years reinducting people like bsh, tej, and bench because of a fanatic opposition to the 'mixing of sites' when we could have forced the nomination process to look somewhere other than the obvious candidates, and maybe find some talent among the newbies to honor instead.
