The governors, elected by their fellow players who participate in the City Loyalty program, have boards set up where they discuss shard events with EMs. These boards, specific to each shard, are used for the planning of events, story arcs, shard changes and such without overwhelming the EM. The entire governor program is a way for players to help effect change within the game via representatives, I believe this is called "democracy". It is something we screamed for when LB was "killed" by some orc on Napa. We were so adamant about it, some of us on Napa flat out refused to participate with the inception of the Royal Britannia Guard. Ah well, history....
It was through the efforts of the Governors combined across the shards that Yew and Minoc now have Docks.
The Governor Boards within each shard are private, but there is a "general" Governors' Board planted in the root level of the Shards category of our boards. There, anyone can post and make suggestions which the governors will the relay to the EMs.
Governors have a term of 6 months, then re-elections are had. Should new governors come on board, they will need to let the Admins here at Stratics know and we can then make adjustments. Should a governor lose re-election, then that person will be removed from the governor group.