I like it Jesse:
For those not over on WX on the weekend:
Many administrative issues came up. A lot of it was venting. We came up with a list of issues/solutions, and then realized that we have no way of coming up with decisions that people can be happy with. We try to for a consensus, but sometimes it ends up being whoever is left after people get tired of talking making the decision.
It was proposed that
a) We vote for important proposals
b) We have a thread that is open a specific amount of time for us to talk about the proposal.
c) We have a specific amount of time to vote
d) Once something is voted on, we close that subject for discussion until 6 months or a year has passed.
Allyson's post is more detailed:
Why not a So It Is Written, So It Shall Be thread for community decisions?
Ex: Bill Buffista wants an asspicking thread. Betty, Brooke,and Bob Buffista all think that's a great idea.
Joanie, Jackie, and Julie Buffista think that idea sucks.
So, Stompy says, "We will open discussion on Asspicking Thread, now. The discussion will last for one week, and end on March 3rd, 8PM GMT, in the Supreme Court thread.
At that point, people can philibuster til their heart's content, until March 3rd, when a Mr.Poll announcement is made, and people can vote for another week. Votes are tallied and the decision is posted.
In short, what Sophia said.
t two cents
We should first discuss (with a goal of deciding on) only our decision making procedures and process. I think this discussion should involve both determing our ideal decision making process, and if need be, what we'll use as a work-around if there are tech. or other resources needed (but not immediately available) to put our procedures in place.
I think only when that is done should we then discuss the actual issues we have. Once we get to issues, the first issue to be addressed should be which current board practices and events are making the board go wonky and how can we help (e.g. archiving old threads, threadsucking, searching, refreshing pages, thread combination, huge influxes of posters at once).
I only think ENUF, whuffie
[editorial and object lesson: which I hate - see and that's why issues should be put aside until after we know how to make decisions and implement them)
, registration wait periods, Supreme Court thread, and what our community's purpose is, etc., should come last, and only if people are interested in resuming the discussion. It may be we just needed to brain storm and lose this place for a day to realize that it's internet Nirvana.
t /two cents
Oh yeah, and we do have to decide how we'll agree on what's to be voted on yes/no.
Oh, I was "what Sophia said"ing her earlier post, but also like the one at 10:00:33am. I also like Jesse's voting procedure. When we have issues, we can give them a number and a short (one word if possible) name. Post the issue in Press and tell people to put vote in subject line and confirmation in the text of the email. That way it'll be easy to tally, but there will also be proof of how someone intended to vote, if that someone thinks they botched their vote.
I love Allyson's Supreme Court thread proposal.
I think votes@buffistas.org is a good idea too, but someone needs to volunteer to count the votes.
I love the idea of email voting. Tallying will suck, but if the vote is in thesubject line, it gets easier.
I do wonder if requiring emails might limit voting to people who have stronger opinions -- it seems slightly more cumbersome to address and type an email than it is to check your choice on a poll. But I think a trial run would probably let us see if that's the case, and an automated email form like the one at [link] would also alleviate that problem.
I think votes@buffistas.org is a good idea too, but someone needs to volunteer to count the votes.
I did. It's just that there might be a day or two lag between voting and counting sometimes.
someone needs to volunteer to count the votes.
Still not caught up, but I'd love to be able to help with that.
The fact that my timezone and weekend-schedule are different than the majority may be either helpful or damaging to this, I'm not sure which. [Edit: x-post with Jesse, whose offer it is]
Oh yeah, and we do have to decide how we'll agree on what's to be voted on yes/no.
Oh-- yes/no votes are the best.
I was thinking that we should maybe do a modified Robert's Rules?
If there is enough (how do we define enough) discussion of something in Bureacracy, we can create a thread for it in "So Mote it Be". Then we can discuss. When it time for discussion is over, we would have to post the actual question to be voted on. I think we can be flexible and not have it be EXACTLY the same as the question we started with.
For example:
I could propose that we start talking about non-whitefonted spoilers in Buffy and Angel.
Some people support me.
We start talking about it and through the course of discussion, agree that this is silly, but we would like to be able to cross-pollinate between Buffy and Angel threads for things we have already aired.
So the vote might be:
White-font stuff from the other show in the opposite thread for 1 week.
Which isn't the original question, but is something that came up.