While pondering the power of this games guardian angels the gm's it reminded me of the great council of Venice which basically held the ideal we're better than you so we make all the decisions. I'm not saying that gm's have the attitude in the least, but the easily spotted flaw in this governmental system is this: since the council made all the decisions and all decisions were made by the council the only way to get in this council was to be voted in by it's current members, so of course there were plenty of under the table favors being exchanged. So i ask, who makes sure that the gm's don't accept bribes, only accept people that they favor since they are the only ones that vote? Are we simply to take what we are given? Has this always been the governing system?, is there done sort of fail safe ensuring that the unworthy won't have power?.

A few things.
The way that the Gms vote is in a way that everyone has an honest opinion. If one person was bribed and said yes on an otherwise unlikely candidate everyone else would still vote against it. In this way you'd have to bribe the entire Gm team as well as the Gm leaders and probably admins too.
Bringing me to my next point.
If anything seemed suspicious it's super easy for an admin to jump in and check everything out.

Now, your claim about it being a system to prevent the "unworthy" from ascending to power.

That's essentially what the system is. Applicants are accepted based upon their aptitude to be able to do the job they're applying for. If it's not in everyone's confidence that they'll be able to handle the job they don't get the position. The way you wrote it though, using the term unworthy, makes it sound so much worse and attacking. Think about it though. Isn't this what every company does when employing people? Every sports team?
It's just the way you're looking at it.

Lastly, "power".
This is an internet forum. You're making it sound like it's a country run by dictators. The moderators and staff are provided with the tools necessary to do the jobs they have been chosen for. If you think of it as power then that's fine for you. I'd think of it more as responsibility however but each to their own.

Feel free to discuss if you wish. This is an interesting topic.

Usually the "unworthy" abuse their "power" and are thus demoted, am I correct? What other reason to bribe your way in than to gain some sort of power? The briber would be looking for power, and would use it to his advantage, which is power abusing, which would get you kicked out (I think)

I believe that the system is set up so that truly good people are accepted in - ones that wouldn't accept a bribe. That cycle would continue so at any point in time there are intelligent ad trustworthy people always in "power."

Plus, if you had to bribe your way in, you probably aren't apt to do the job properly and will be kicked out eventually.

They'd also be fired into the depths of oblivion.

Pretty much what emo said, our voting system is in place to ensure dumb shit like bribery doesn't happen.
and...

Yeah, this pretty much applies. If there's any kind of anomaly it's easily picked up on.

I mean, ofcrouse you do get the odd bribe offer, but what usually happens is word spreads around the gm team and we all have a good chuckle.

If we're talking about the gm's only, we're probably the most democratic of all positions.
And we all have our own feelers out in pretty much the whole of the community so there's rarely a "worthy" applicant that we don't know about.

Knowing the GMs, most of them would accept the bribe and still vote "no". :D

Also, I've personally only received one bribe attempt. :(

Really now? so any incident that happens is immediately noticed and dealt with? In that case there's nothing to fear then. I used words like power and unworthy for that's all i can think to use, yes it's just an internet forum but it's still a governing system so the power is with the higher ups as in all governing systems. I mean you gm's and admins keep things running smoothly because you all have the abilities that only gm's and admins do. As for unworthy perhaps that was an inappropriate term shall we say un qualified?. Regardless it's nice to be re-assured that the community is in good hands I've always had this question nagging at me, it's an efficient system, thanks for the more than satisfactory answers.

You can rest assured that our GMs are competent enough to deal with whatever devious things you've thought up the right way.
GMs aren't ass-cheese with power -- they were chosen because they can do their job responsibly.

I think some people put GMs on too high of a pedestal. They don't really do anything that keeps the community in line. The closest thing GMs do to that is in-game moderation, which believe it or not is not too much of a demanding job. Not as much as the forum, anyway.

The gm's mystery to me, of course i can grasp the basics keeping order server sitting etc. but i personally don't know the the degree of difficulty involved. Hearing you say that box, helps put things on perspective though, and after reading a post by Hyde i see that gm's much like every other player determins how much impact they have on the community.

If you attempt to run the internet democratically, which is more or less doable (albeit several control factors would be necessary), you'll come to find that it's a popularity contest, especially in communities with primary age groupings like Toribash. It also turns out that popularity and competence have little to no actual correlation.

In more plain terms, dictatorships thrive on the Internet due to an inherent lack of bureaucracy, a necessary minimum level of competence required for Darwinistic survival, and because there is not usually an outstanding reason to do stuff at the whims of the large public base, or at least not in any reason where it's because they asked for it rather than it would be a good idea to give it to them. If that makes sense.