And I may blab on for fifty posts in a five-hour period, but that five-hour period may be someone else's dark time, and they may want to have input.

That said, I wonder if three days of discussion followed by three days of voting might not be enough?

I would recommend that at the very least the voting be initiated after a day or two of discussions and run concurrently to help minimize the sheer quantity of posts on the issues. IJS.

I don't want to lose my franchise because I'm on a business trip for a few days.

That said, I wonder if three days of discussion followed by three days of voting might not be enough?

I think it would be enough, but we might want to consider holding off starting the three days if we're, say, going into Thanksgiving weekend or something, and a large number of people are going to be going dark or dim.

I wonder if three days of discussion followed by three days of voting might not be enough?

That might well be enough, with the understanding that weekends and holidays don't count. If we go with one week discussion/one week voting/no concurrent discussions, we could only decide two things a month, which seems like it might easily lead to a backlog.

Another possibility would be letting voting overlap with discussion of the next issue, but that runs the risk of confusiong people ("Wait -- they're TALKING about "Connor is Hott," but I'm voting on "Gunn is Hot"? WTF?")

You know, perhaps once an issue has been identified, each of us should refrain from posting more than once on the issue. Unless we want to reverse our position, that is.

That way we avoid a lot of thread backup, and we don't just engage in a lot of meaningless agreement between people who already have made up their minds. Which might also be a good reason why a seperate thread would be a good idea for discussion of issues. You could then back and forth an issue to your heart's extreme in Bureau, but you would only be able to make one sustained plea for your position in the official discussion thread.

Sometimes I worry that when 10-15 posters post 150 times between them that it appears there is more support for or against a position than there really is.

Not even sure this suggestion is managable. But just thought I would throw it out there.

I don't want to lose my franchise because I'm on a business trip for a few days.

You could just as easily lose it if it went to vote because you get sent out of town just as a 7 day discussion period expires. I've had the flu during elections. I was on bed-rest during a pregnancy too late to get an absentee vote during elections. I buried my father the day our school committee voted on closing my son's school. If we try to cover every contingency we'll first of all fail, but also risk going nuts. If a vote is close and someone comes back and says, I wasn't here, I'd rather let the person submit a late vote.

Sometimes I worry that when 10-15 posters post 150 times between them that it appears there is more support for or against a position than there really is.

That's why we're going to vote. The discussion volume won't count in the decision-making.

Sometimes I worry that when 10-15 posters post 150 times between them that it appears there is more support for or against a position than there really is

Well, that's a good reason to hold the vote. That, and there might be a plurality of people who say 'yea' at one moment, but that the majority, most of whom are asleep at that moment, would still say 'nay'. So I think that, post-voting-impplementation, it will be fine to have 300,000 posts (okay, not) debating a topic with endless circularity, as long as the voting constituency at large knows that it's the vote that counts, not the discussion.

[excessively wordy x-post with my woman Jesse!!]

No, I understood that, Jesse. Maybe I did not phrase what I meant very well.

I just meant that for people who don't hang in Bureau a lot, perhaps it would be easier if there were a thread were they could go and quickly run through everyone's postion without having to wade through hundreds of posts.

perhaps once an issue has been identified, each of us should refrain from posting more than once on the issue. Unless we want to reverse our position, that is.

Disagree. First, because I don't think people repeat themselves (much); second, because I think refining and developing viewpoints through discussion is important. I also think it's important to be able to defend your position.

As for the idea that too few people are posting too much and it's obscuring issues, my only response is a snotty one -- no one is forbidding the other 750 people posters to join this discussion, or preventing someone who wants to say their piece and leave from doing that.