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?

What's the tie-breaker solution?

Flip a coin?

I think ita's quora point is a good one. This is a fluid community. And I think people have different levels of conviction about different stuff. It's democratic: If you don't show up, you don't get a say. That's freedom for ya.

P.S. Australians have to vote?!

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.

This is my biggest question/fear right now. When we reword, we're asking for a consensus somehow and potentially making the original proposer and/or others feel that their input didn't count, just like we are now.

Also wrt to:

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 if only one person cares?

What if only one person cares?

Okay, quorum is two, then.

edit: I take that back. If I want to set up a "Look at Orlando's feet" thread, and no one opposes the idea, then yeah, I should be allowed to do it.

But, you know, someone's going to oppose it. Because it's really dumb.

And it's very hard to find pictures of his feet.

What's the tie-breaker solution?

Porn at thirty paces.

What's the tie-breaker solution?

Rap battles. (Beatboxing optional.) What? Like Buffistas shouldn't settle issues through rhyme?

What if there's more than one issue on the table. I.e. voting on a Connor is HOTT thread and voting on a Gunn is HOTT thread, and then somebody mentions that Allyson's asspicking thread is still undecided. Are we limiting discussion and voting to one issue a week/52 issues a year?