Yes, most of the lengthy arguments here are good... but there was always the problem that members pose to each other. All it would take is someone like me to say something bad about a clan, and people would immediately be predisposed to thinking a certain way. I'm of the mind that everyone should deserve their fair shot at running a clan. I'm not talking about setting up polls, because that's really not very fair at all. A member could play this game for years on end, from Singapore. Because Singapore is 12 hours off from the US (which seems to be where a substantial amount of our members come from) that entire section of the community might not know this person or their clan at all. Then, the members being stupid and never listening to what I say, just vote "no" instead of doing some research. Or, even better, they start little underground groups that just vote "no new clans" on every poll. Or, best yet, the new clans "ally" with each other and suddenly a number of people larger than the older members of the community will zerg rush the "yes" option, and they get in just because they told everyone to vote for them.
I am fully against giving that kind of power to the people now... I was getting fed up with the way polls operated and the Council only served to further press that conviction. I'm sorry for those of you who did the voting properly, but you are outweighed by the sheer number of users that didn't.
This system works like it does in most every other game. You pay a fee, you get to make a clan. You call it what you want, you do what you want about members. The community knows which clans it should respect and which are less worthy of that. I'm sure you'll come to understand why this is done how it is... a community growing like this one can't be managed like it was before.