'Serenity'
A thread to discuss naming threads, board policy, new thread suggestions, and anything else that has to do with board administration and maintenance. Guaranteed to include lively debate and polls. Natter discouraged, but not deleted.
Current Stompy Feet: ita, Jon B, DXMachina, P.M. Marcontell, Liese S., amych
We've got two proposals: a 10-65 deathmatch, though some are arguing to tweak the numbers a little, and a 10,20,30,40,50,60 preferential vote.
The other option, which hasn't been proposed, and is really very simple, is to simply give people the numbers (voter turnout on the first vote, total registered users, and total frequent users (however that is defined) and have them type it in a little box, then pull the average.
But that'd just muddy the waters again, wouldn't it?
Also, BTW, as far as time off on the issue? Probably a good idea. BUT I'd suggest two days, rather than a week. Turn tempers down, give people a chance to think for a bit, but still keep it fresh in people's minds AND get the damn thing done before Buffy's over.
Gandalfe - the problem with an average is that one person voting 200 could skew the whole vote. Or to generalize more, if you suspect that a majority want a lower turnout requirement than you do, with averaging you have a serious incentive to vote for a higher turnout than you really want. If you suspect a majority want a higher turnout, you have the same serious incentive to vote for a lower turnout than you really want in order to compensate.
True. Well, instead of average, we could go for mean.
Hell, I'd even crunch the numbers, since I'm the fool who proposed it.
Gandalfe - I don't think a mean in this context would be any better. Unless you mean a median, and that would just be random. If we wanted a fair way to process the "everbody enter a number" there is a way - actually a slight modification something Maya suggested earlier. But that is Mathy, and thus liable to provoke wrath.
How are we handling Miracles discussion? Whitefont? Where do it go?
Sorry, my brain's not working as well as it could be right now. I just got an e-mail with some very bad news. Yes, median is what I meant. And, somehow I missed Maya's post.
Allyson, we're whitefonting. Discussion, such as it is, seems to be in Angel or in Firefly.
You know, after reading all of the above debate about preferential voting, I can't help but remembering that one of the complaints voiced in WX was that some proposals got ahead not because they had a majority support, but because those in favor of it kept bringing it up again and again and again until they got what they wanted, and how all this voting thing was supposed to fix that among other issues.
Oh the irony.
The way this conversation has been set aside (for a week, for 2 days, whatever) is a brilliant example of why consensus wasn't working for me. People were discussing - and discussing, and discussing, and discussing some more - a subject and several people voiced an opinion that the discussion was going on too long. Other people wanted to discuss more. Fine. Valid opinions, all. But then two (or three or four) people on the board at the same time reached the decision to shelve discussion. I don't know how many people wanted the discussion shelved, because there was no clear consensus, or a vote, or a plurality, or a majority. And this is why some people felt the system was broken.
Sophia, I think, was talking about abstentions not counting as votes - for majority or for voter turnout. Thing is, a person might not have a strong opinion on an issue, but still want to participate on the board and in the community. She (again, I think it was Sophia) suggested that instead of 'abstain' there be categories such as 'I think something needs to be done, but not this' or 'I think we need to talk more'. I might put forth that another reason to abstain is because, yay or nay, you might just want the issue decided so the talking stops.