To me it seems messy. a) Buffistas could talk forever with no limit and b) what if I voted and then someone changed my mind.

Ditto.

I like the idea of being able to add another day or two onto a three-day discussion period, but not voting any sooner than that.

Also? WHIP!!!

I think the intent of the discussion is at least to change some people's vote. And the proposal may change in the interim.

Yes, and yes.

What about a week for the issue, in total; 4 days' discussion followed by 3 days' voting. That way, unless there's a holiday weekend, there should always be both weekday and weekend access to both discussion and voting.

It's not that I'm wedded to a week for each, in spite of my earlier protests. But I'm against making either time period only a day or two, and even more against cutting off discussions early with an apparent early consensus -- I worry that it'll be too easy to say "do we all agree? okay? let's start voting" when there are only a few people around.

Also? WHIP!!!

Gawd, y'all are so porny. I'm shocked!

I worry that it'll be too easy to say "do we all agree? okay? let's start voting" when there are only a few people around.

That's exactly the problem we've been having already. "OK?" "OK!"

Consider the ending discussion early proposal tabula rasa'ed. I see why it's a bad idea now.

I like the four and three.

I like a discussion thread, at the end of each discussion is a post that discussion is closed; instructions to vote (by the person that proposed it, or the person who's tallying?), announcement of tallyer, end date (board time) of voting period, and that post repeated in press.

Then the voting starts (and no re-voting, which I see as a risk of the continued discussion).

Voting ends (post added to discussion thread).

Voting is tallied (post with results and duration of ban discussion on this topic goes into Press and discussion thread, and linked to by Nilly).

This I could live with.

I dislike quorums. Quora. Whatever. I think if only three people care, they should get their chance to change the world. If I don't want stuff to happen, then I'll cast a vote.

What's the tie-breaker solution?

What's the tie-breaker solution?

Thumb wrestling.

instructions to vote (by the person that proposed it, or the person who's tallying?),

Since I'll be much surprised if the actual questions are the same as the original suggestion, I don't think the original person will necessarily be the one. My gut feeling is that wording will need to be hashed out in-thread anyway towards the end of the discussion, although that could raise issues.

instructions to vote (by the person that proposed it, or the person who's tallying?)

By the proposer, I think. Jesse and Nilly have done us a big favor by volunteering to do the vote counts; I'd hate to see them have to write up each proposal as well. The proposal should be in a fairly standard form, but I really think it should be the responsibility of the person who thought the issue was important enough to call for a formal discussion and vote in the first place.

What's the tie-breaker solution?

Duelling.

Whether or not the position changes, someone needs to restate it before voting starts. I just want it to be clear whose responsibility it is, so that moment isn't left dangling. The proposer, the tallyer, brenda m, whoever.

What about a week for the issue, in total; 4 days' discussion followed by 3 days' voting. That way, unless there's a holiday weekend, there should always be both weekday and weekend access to both discussion and voting.

I concur with this. The only reason we were talking about a week for discussion and a week for voting was to make sure that everybody that wanted to discuss or vote had a chance. Also a week is a clean sort of marker. A week is a long time really because the discussions themselves can be very intense and active and cover a lot of territory in three days. (We've already come a long way since we were at WX.)

Also, by the time we open the Supreme Court thread, the issue will have already been kicked around a bit in Bureaucracy.

I think the main thing is to be conscious about patterns of board use - which is, a lot of people don't post on the weekend, and a lot of people only post in the evening after work or dinner. Four days would cover anybody who is gone over the weekend, and anybody who uses the board regularly would be able to participate in the discussion and voting.

We'll never be able to fully accomodate everybody's business trips or life crises but this would be fair considering the way people do use the board.

Is there any broad agreement about putting a time limit on this discussion so we can say, "That's enough let's vote"? Three more days of this talk? End of the week? Next Monday? Sooner?