Just something for people to think about...You just took a vote on how people wanted to vote. Nowhere on the ballot was a question that had anything to do with preferential voting. So how do you ask people what they want, and then do the vote a different way anyway? Doesn't seem fair.

do the vote a different way anyway?

Different from what? We haven't decided how to vote on things other than to say we wanted a majority, which apparently, folks took two different ways. For those who thought "majority" meant "half plus 1", we need to have a way to reach that majority. Preferential voting is one way to achieve that.

What would you consider fair, Denise?

We are driving people out of Bureacracy by becoming bureacratic. The whole reason I voted for voting is so that we wouldn't be driving people away from decision making by having long, hard to follow conversations.

This is me. I voted for voting and I'm pretty much on the verge of swearing off any participation in future votes because I am sick to death of this thread and all the debate. I don't like it and I don't want to read it. But I feel like I'm supposed to in order to be a "good community member" or whatever.

Though that sense of obligation is fading fast.

Denise is right if you assume that when people voted for "majority" as the criterion for a vote to be passed, they were implicitly voting for "everyone gets one vote, and that's it".

I can see it as a valid argument, in that they were all, no matter what the confusion over the m-word, presumably voting for the simplest system, with no further discussion needed.

But, we are so damn close now. We've had the vote. Every question got a majority, there's no confusion or ambiguity over what Most Buffistas Want.

The only remaining question is over Minimum Voter Turnout (previously refferred to as you-know-what).

What are the nominations for MVT which we might want to vote on?

I can only recall two, from Hec.

Ten and Sixty-Five.

Sixty-five was because it was about half the people who voted this time, right?

Ten was what a lot of people were thinking about? Correct me if I'm wrong.

If we don't have people desperate to introduce other numbers, then we don't need prefs voting even now.

I'm kind of with bitterchick, I was all gung ho about things way back on WX but then they took a turn for...well they took a turn I wasn't equipped to handle.

At this point I've forgotten why we are discussing the rank the votes vs a run off.

I think we are in serious danger of people getting seriously burnt out and frustrated, not exactly on the issue but the process.

Yes, working on a concensus worked before, but we are trying to get to a concensus now (right?) and we can't get there.

Can we just call another vote and explain in plain language the difference between the two and let everyone who wants to vote between the two choices. Or is that what we are trying to do?

What would you consider fair, Denise?

Seems to me, that if the only point of contention right now is what people meant by simple majority, why not just take a vote on that. One question...two possible answers. If more votes go to "the larger number of votes" then that's how it should be done. If more votes go to the percentage of votes having to be bigger than the other percentages combined, then that's how it's done.

Can we just call another vote and explain in plain language the difference between the two and let everyone who wants to vote between the two choices. Or is that what we are trying to do?

Each motion passed.

One motion which passed was the one which said that a "simple majority" was enough for future votes to pass.

It turns out some people didn't understand that term as 50%+1 and thought it just meant "biggest number of votes". That's an unresolved problem so far.

The one remaining thing to vote on, which we always thought we'd have to vote on anyway, is "how many voters does it take to make a vote valid?".

Sixty-five was because it was about half the people who voted this time, right?

Yeah.

Let's go ahead and have the discussion about minimum voter turnout. I'll set up the strawman: I think we should offer a choice between 10 and 65. 10 because it is a simple round number set fairly low and encourages voting even if only a few people are interested in the topic. 65 because that is roughly half of the our first voter turnout, and I prefer that half of the most active and involved posters think an issue is significant before it passes. In any event, the number is arbitrary if we don't want to make it a percentage of registered Buffistas or a percentage of active registered Buffistas. I think 10 is a decent Low Minimum Turnout number and 65 is a good working Higher Turnout Number.

Another possibility would be to have preferential voting on the subject offering several choices in increasing increments: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 etc. I am against preferential voting because I think it is complicated and somewhat contrary to the loosey goosey nature of the board. I am, however, willing to try preferential voting on this ballot and see how people respond.

Ready, set, discuss...

I'll second Hec's nomination of a vote on 10 versus 65.

I think 10 is too low and 65 is too high.

I think that the loosey goosey nature of the board, while great in principle, is what made some feel that decisions were being made by "whoever happened to be around at the time" or "whoever was left standing" (something I see happening now, by the way), and that that wasn't working.

I think a choice of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, determined via a preferential ballot is simple and fair.