To be fair, I am happy that I can debate people here, critique people from different angles and get smarter every debate at the same time winning and gaining virtual points. I don't care who wins, as long as they don't ban me for just normally debating.
Election has been over for a week, Airmax is the new president.
Why do many people care substantially about who wins an election on a small website?
Many people want to see an upsurge in activity. The role of a presidency is a new way to gain interest and activity on the website. Candidates like Max and 3RU7AL offered platforms demonstrating plans to advertise and outreach to different social media websites. Also plans like increased debates, voting, revival of forum games like mafia, etc are all different reasons people are excited about the presidency. The president will also get a hand in moderation decisions and an adivory role, meaning we can start heading towards a less strict, more laissez-faire style of moderation over time with a guy like Airmax as president.
I am not criticizing people who care, I am just curious. Your experiences won't change by very much, honestly, and cyberbullying is borderline neglectable on this site(I have yet to hear someone leaving this site because they had been bullied intentionally, and no, willingly-accepting debates then leave with a loss does not count).
Cyberbullying is an issue to like 1% of the sites population. I tend to only hear accusations of bullying from one very loud individual, but most of the level headed individuals don't seem to think there is intense cyber bullying here.
I mean, even without a president, the site is fine. At least the voting system is not broken and the mods are welcome to ban any ad bots. Why do we care so much about who gets to be the president on this site?
Without a president, you are right. The site is just "fine". With a presidency however, the site can be so much better. For example, you seem to note a buzz of activity around the election. Prior to that, the last post in the main page of the forums here was 25 days old. The presidency kicked the site alive, and we have plans to get this site going even further. Most people just want to see this site alive and buzzing with activity.