The 'Shroom talk:Issue 225/Director Election

Director Election

This page is where members of the community may post their campaigns and vote for candidates to direct The 'Shroom for the next year. The rules for the election process may be viewed on the election rules article.

Voting opens on Saturday, December 27th, 2025 at 00:01 UTC. Please do not cast a vote before then.

Candidates and Voting

Waluigi Time (talk) / Sparks (talk)

Hello there, 'Shroom readers! Yep, it's us again! I'm going to assume most of the people reading this know who we are already, but if you're just joining us for the first time, welcome! I'm Waluigi Time, your Director for the last year and staff here on the paper since 2022. In the interest of brevity since this is a re-election campaign, instead of pulling out the resume again I'll just say this - if you liked what we did this term, we plan to keep doing more of that!

Over the past year, we've seen tremendous engagement with The 'Shroom from the community - users who have been around for a bit writing for the first time, new members joining, plenty of new sections starting up and guest submissions being sent in, a successful revival of 'Shroomfest, and two banger special issues that just so happen to be the second and third largest issues to date! It's been a thrill to see The 'Shroom thrive this year thanks to all of you, and we hope to continue this journey with you for another year to give you a space to let your creativity fly and provide fun activities along the way. Before we get into the plans for the year, let me turn you over to my Sub-Director Sparks for some words from him!

---

Hi everyone! In case you don't know me, I'm Sparks, a huge fan of Mario and ponies! I'll also keep things brief; Last year I was The 'Shroom's Sub-Director alongside Waluigi Time, and everything went pretty well as WT already stated. Working with him to bring you all super awesome 'Shroom issues is a very fun and amazing experience, and I'm very grateful to have been chosen for the position.

So… we're going to be running again to keep that positive energy going because, we've got plenty of it to spare! Surpassing the quality of 2025's term will be a difficult challenge, but who said it'd be impossible? I have a great feeling we'll be able to reach new heights for 2026.

That's all from me! I'll let Waluigi Time tell you all about our plans for next term!

---

Schedule and Plans

This is our proposed schedule for the 2026 term:

2026 Term Calendar
January 17, 2026	226		Transition Issue
February 21, 2026	227		Poll Chairperson Election
March 21, 2026	228		'Shroomfest
April 18, 2026	229
May 23, 2026	230	Milestone Special	Lakituthequick's 100th Issue
June 20, 2026	231		Community Awards Dossier
July 18, 2026	232
August 22, 2026	233
September 19, 2026	234
October 17, 2026	235
November 21, 2026	236		Awards Director Election
December 19, 2026	237		End-of-the-Year Awards The 'Shroom Director Election
January 16, 2027	238	Milestone Special	Roserade & Hooded Pitohui's 100th Issue Transition Issue

We have a whopping three staff milestones this term, thankfully two of them happen to fall on the same issue! Lakituthequick, Roserade, and Hooded Pitohui will all be reaching their 100th issues as Website Manager, Fun Stuff Director, and Strategy Wing Director respectively. We'll be forgoing the traditional summer and holiday specials this year to commemorate that instead, so our specials this year will be in May and January (2027). That latter point might sound a bit awkward because it means our second special will be overlapping with the transition issue, but we think we can make this work. To avoid any potential hiccups, we'll be aiming to have work on the staff side (i.e. assets and other staff projects we may decide to do) done or at least close to completion in December. Of course, they'll be heavily involved in the direction of the issues, so we don't have any specific plans for them at the moment. We'll be holding staff meetings in February and September for these.

For those of you who have expressed interest in another 'Shroomfest, we hear you! We'll be running one in the spring, beginning with the release of the March issue. We're also strongly considering the possibility of holding a second one later in the year, but we want to make sure the community is still engaged with the format, and assess the energy of the community at the time since it'll likely be happening not too long after Awards season. Basically, if people seem up for it, we'll be happy to do it, but we don't want to hard commit this early to something there may not be interest for.

Last year, we experimented with pushing out the August issue an extra week in an attempt to have a two week gap between the Awards Ceremony and 'Shroom release, at the expense of one week of work time for the September issue. Unfortunately, because of the way the calendar shook out, this didn't work the way we hoped because the Awards also had to be pushed back a week. While we didn't receive any feedback on this one way or the other, and were unable to get the benefits we were hoping, we're not going to be attempting this again this year - having only three weeks between issue releases just didn't feel that good.

Otherwise, we have two deviations from the usual release schedule of the third Saturday of the month. On the normal schedule, there would be a five-week gap between the May and June issues, but since this year's special issue will be in May, we figured it makes more sense to have extra work time for it. We'll be pushing the May issue back an extra week, so there will be five weeks after the April issue. The August issue will also be pushed back a week to avoid potential scheduling conflicts with the Awards Ceremony, but don't worry, we still have four weeks this time!

As for our other plans:

• Continue working with Ninja Squid on graphical updates - We were very pleased to welcome Ninja Squid back to the staff as our Design Manager this year, and aside from phenomenal looking special issues, we've also seen refreshes of some of the month-to-month graphical assets of The 'Shroom, such as our main page banner and sidebars. There's still more the three of us would like to do, including finishing the rollout of the remaining seasonal sidebars, so we plan to continue closely working with NS to facilitate that.
• Maintain our collaborations with the Awards and Poll Committees - This is pretty much the annual campaign point, isn't it? We'll keep our connections with these fellow community facets through collaborative sections and avoiding schedule conflicts.
• Keep doing the things - 2025 has been a really great year for The 'Shroom, so we don't have any plans for big changes in our campaign. Of course, we're still very open to feedback, so please let us know if there's anything you think we could be doing better!

Thank you once again for your consideration!

Votes

1. Ninja Squid (talk)
2. Yoshi the SSM (talk)
3. ClawgripFan9001 (talk)
4. Someone1234 (talk)
5. Koop (talk)
6. Aomaf (talk)
7. TheUkiki (talk)
8. Hint Toad (talk)
9. Yoshi18 (talk)

Comments

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