It's been pretty useful to us so far. We've had a very active council that's been responsible for most of the improvements in the clan in the past two months. Voting is just a mechanism we use to make sure that we don't screw up and kick out a good member who just had a bad day.
Personally, these forums are nigh-useless anyway outside the Clan League Thread (and a few others like that). If I pulled a Colonel tomorrow and started spamming the forums, the voting mechanism would at least guarantee that someone would stop and think about whether a one-time action of spamming the forums (4 whole threads!) so significantly outweighs my participation in the clan.
So I'm going to set down my pitchfork for now. Colonel is an idiot, but the forums weren't a scenic environment without him anyway. If I were the Falcons and had reason to believe that I would benefit significantly from his continued membership in the clan (e.g., if he's the only guy with the time to create their inter-clan games), then I too would hesitate before kicking him out even if it lost me the title of "respected clan."
I've always held that the game itself matters vastly more than the forums. The forums aren't even that big a part of the metagame.
EDIT:
Even better. Here's a concrete example of why we have a voting system:
Genghis and Loli (and probalby a few others) are accusing me of operating an alt and using it as a forum troll. That easily meets the criterion of "spamming the forums." (
https://www.warlight.net/Forum/100480-night-night-busted)
Guess CORP should boot me, then. Or maybe, just maybe, there's a mechanism by which they can delibeate over whether or not these accusation are true and whether or not (had I used an alt to troll the forums) it would be bad enough of an offense to kick me from the clan.
Voting/Council systems are very useful when you're trying to distribute management or handle cases that aren't perfectly open-and-shut. Yes, they have drawbacks with players like Loli, but they at least let you verify that certain actions need to be taken and are in the best interests of the clan.
Edited 7/17/2015 23:07:54