Well after reading the couple of hundred messages attempting to formulate the perfect polling process all I can say is, "Don't you wish you'd given them a politics thread?"
Now, after another 900+ posts and 4 days spent trying to formulate the perfect polling process, I repeat, "Don't you REALLY wish you'd given them a politics thread?"
My two cents: This whole issue, or set of issues, began when the board broke and the Buffistas sought refuge back at WX. At the time, the breaking of the board itself, celebrity postings and outside links to those postings, unpleasant and trollish behaviour, and thread proliferation were all raised (or re-raised) as problems or potential problems, most of which were interconnected. The debate about these issues raised some other concerns regarding the decision making process, specifcally decisions being taken when larger, more vocal segments of the Buffista community were around which left some others feeling left-out/over-ridden/out-shouted.
So in the last week or so we've discussed the decision making process, polled the Buffistas community, concluded that most of the active members favour a voting process to make decisions about serious issues or changes within the community, and calculated a figure for the 'active members'. Now we need to figure out how many of the active members are needed to be fairly certain that any change or policy decision is really necessary and also a way of deciding things that have more than two possible answers.
At this point I would just like to add that as a person who has spent 5 years studying politics at a tertiary level, has worked in government at both state and federal levels, was part of the constitutional convention, and is an Aiustraiiiliiianiii citizen born and bred, even I ended up confused and cranky at various times in the past fifteen hundred or so posts. I therefore have nothing but sympathy for all those who are not particularly politically inclined or for whatever reason have been upset by much of the discussion of the last few days.
This is in no way meant to be disrespectful of the many well-written and erudite posts on voting procedures, democracy, community values, and such, nor is it meant to be patronising or critical towards those who ask questions or air their feelings of disquiet, but is only meant to acknowledge that in this on-line, not physically-in-the-one-place-or-one-time, community meeting board, straightforward, logically progressing debate is not always possible given that people can jump into the debate at any point and with any level of lead-up knowledge.
I would also like to add that ALL of the aforementioned problems/issues/concerns, as well as the ones that have been raised in the last few days (eg. numberslutting and Wrodding), come from the same root cause as most societal problems in real life, population growth. Like most things I guess, an in-joke such as numberslutting within the active component of a hundred or so people has the potential to become annoying and thread wasting when practiced by the active component of 800 or so people, especially when the practice of it infers inclusiveness in that Buffistas community.
I think I've forgotten whatever it was that I was going to say, but I'll finish by supporting Jon's suggested ballot as it comes across as clearly written, easy to understand, to-the-point, and contains some requisite Buffistas humour.
Sorry for being so wordy but remember that even Greek (birthplace of democracy) politics no longer works as smoothly and democratically as it did when only male citizens were allowed to participate and political assassinations or incarcerations were popular ways of clarifying the discussion.
Edited to contextualise Greece.