What's the advantage of discussing policy changes through a supreme Court thread rather than keeping them in bureaucracy, but adding a time limit, email voting, and "so mote it be"?

I think the advantages are:

1. Other bureacratic matters won't get lost during the discussion time. It will make us more likely to discuss one thing and one thing only

2. Mental disassociation the bureacracy thread, which it seems a lot of people avoid.

Sometimes I feel like we don't get consensus so much as we decide which ever group spoke last, gets to make the decision.

Which is what I think leads to many bad feelings. Hence this conversation! YAY!

That doesn't work for all browser/e-mail clients, FWIW (especially people with web-based e-mail). Also, 48 hours lets things get lost on a weekend.

If I'm getting votes, I'm doing it via web-based email, for the record. If Nilly wants to take it, I don't know what her email client situation is.

Polls will be implemented. An e-mail form can be implemented. But I think the effort to send an e-mail is little enough that those who care, can do it.

Right on. How hard is it to send a short message to a single address? Not that hard. And it takes no coding and no server space.

Possible issue:

• How many votes decides an issue

Do we need/want some sort of quorum (probably only of voting Buffistas, not all Buffistas as lots of registered users don't post), or do we want to go with simple majority?

I tend to think quorum will quell dissent, but I don't have strong feelings on either.

• How long to vote?

On this subject, should we allow campaigning during the voting period (assuming it's a few days) or will that just open up more doors for dissent to flow through? If we have a discussion period prior to opening up a vote, would that suffice, or would it feel like censorship?

As a corollary to Sophia's second point, seeing a sudden burst of posting in "So Mote it Be" would alert people to the fact that something was being discussed. If there's a sudden influx of posts in Bureaucracy, it could be anything from alerts that a new thread is needed soon to hashing out some unpleasantness in a remote part of the board.

(I just want to make sure I didn't miss any steps.)

That sounds right, although Allyson's original proposal was for a week of voting time, and I'd rather see it stay there. I don't see any real advantage to shortening the time (I mean, really, we all know Connor is Hot, we don't need the thread, like, yesterday!); on the other hand, there are plenty of things that can easily keep people away from a computer for two days.

I would also prefer a week of voting.

(No support for my easy-count-ability two-email addresses proposal?)

Cindy, the reason I proposed some long-ish time for voting is so that everyone who wants to, can vote. And some proposals will be niche-y enough, I imagine, that not that many people will care enough to vote. I'm thinking about some quorum threshhold, but I don't know what it would be -- 50 votes?

How many votes decides an issue

This may depend on what the issue is. For example, a completely new thread has to involve everyone who might use it or not want it to exist; naming the new Bitches thread only really involves Bitches.

(No support for my easy-count-ability two-email addresses proposal?)

I think it's a good idea, but I think that the "how" of the voting can wait until we figure out more of the procedure.

Most of our recent polls have drawn just shy of 100 votes. However, we have almost 800 registered users, so only a minority of Buffistas vote.

What I don't have a sense of is how many active users we have. ita, do you know? And how would you define "active user"? (I'd say anyone who posts at least 2x/week on average, but that ignores lurkers)

Anyhow, I agree we should have more than a majority required to win on major decisions. 60% would work for me.