Specific Policy Change Proposed:
Abstentions for individual candidates be allowed during promotion voting for JS candidates to operational staff only. Junior staff candidates can have no more than 1/3 of the staff participating in that round of promotions abstaining, as well as at least 60% of those who do vote for them to vote yes (as is standard) to gain promotion to operational staff. Abstentions remain disallowed on promotions to Moderator and Administrator. The removal of the sentence "Abstentions are considered a "No" vote unless the user in question abstains from all voting, in which case their post is ignored." from the Promotion Procedure Document.
Justification for Change:
Staff as an organization has changed since promotions were first done. Both the site and staff used to be a far smaller, far closer entity, and when the procedures that we now use for promotions were first implemented, not knowing someone who was up for staff was a serious red flag. This is no longer the case. Few, if any, staff members are familiar with the entirety of all junior staff for all teams, a list that constantly changes with little warning. Many teams operate largely out of sight of non-team members, and many staff outside those teams are unable to accurately judge a proposed junior staff member's fitness for their position, through no issue or infirmity of that member of Junior Staff. This is a particular problem for teams such as Tech and Internet Outreach, which conduct their business out of sight (or beyond the understanding) of many members of staff, even engaged ones.
This leaves a voting staff member with two options, either placidly accept a Team Captain's recommendation with little or no further input, which many staff have an understandable wariness of doing, or be forced into voting no based not on the candidate's fitness or lack thereof, but on the voter's inability to accurately judge the candidate's ability, through no fault of the candidate's own.
The current justification that "anyone who's voted into operational staff should be known to all voters" is simply a far less reasonable expectation than it was in 2010 or 2013. I would call it, insofar as opinion can be false, a blatant untruth at this point in the site's history. One needs only read through promotions through the past few years to see engaged, active members of staff voting no on immensely qualified candidates and actively pointing out that they would have preferred to abstain.
Due to the sensitivity and relative ranking of the Moderator and Administrator roles, I do not believe allowing abstentions would be appropriate for those candidates. Moderator and Administrator are roles of incredible trust and prominence, and should and do come exclusively to people who have proved themselves as operational staff/moderators over a long period. If this period of activity has not been great enough to earn a solid yes and not an abstention, they deserve a no.
As this has to do with promotions, I would prefer only operational staff and above leave their comments.