23 people were against, 9 people were for and 2 were undecided.

From m-w.com

Consensus:

1 a : general agreement : UNANIMITY b : the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned

2 : group solidarity in sentiment and belief

Those results were not a: general agreement : UNANIMIY and were not b: the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned - because that would be most of active members. Those results reflect only members who posted on the topic in this thread weeks before the actual war.

No vote was taken and not consensus was reached. With all due respect to bitterchick and everyone else who feels this decision was decided, it wasn't. I don't think every old decision should be up for re-discussion, but I also don't think it's fair to close off a topic that for all practical purposes was discussed for less than two days (most of it on a Sunday) by the posters in this thread.

I'm with Nutty on the need to open the discussion thread.

Call it Formal Discussion 1: We Can't Think of Anything Witty.

Wolfram,

For most of the existence of the board we did things by "consensus" not by the strict dictionary meaning of the word, but by meaning "there's an overwhelming sentiment in favor and none of the opposers are bitter about it."

We have different rules now. Fine. But this one was genuinely decided by the old rules.

Okay, I'm letting someone else field this one. I need a cigarette.

Except, Wolfram, that's how it was done before the voting, and that's what voting was set up to fix, but it was also decided at the same time that we wouldn't go back and rethink the previous decisions.

I don't think every old decision should be up for re-discussion, but I also don't think it's fair to close off a topic that for all practical purposes was discussed for less than two days (most of it on a Sunday) by the posters in this thread.

And, I must mention, under much different circumstances.

It is one thing to codify the new procedure. But to object to the old procedure because it wasn't codified ... that wasn't how we handled things then. We didn't all, 100%, agree on naming the board the Phoenix. We didn't all, 100%, agree that there should be no graphics. We just mostly agreed, and that was good enough for us.

A decision is not invalid because we made it before the new process was in place.

Wolfram, all due respect in return, but have you watched the Buffista decision-making process in action? If the topic didn't have enough steam to be really and truly discussed, then it failed to go any further. If we talked about it for 400 posts, and some said yea and some nay, but enough said yea often enough, then it went further and eventually got created. Witness: the music thread.

And anyway, the large majority at the time were against, and the minority didn't pursue it. That's a decision made, and that means in all fairness that we shouldn't be re-making it just because of changes in procedure now.

I think we should have a formal discussion thread opened ASAP.

The last thread name anyone liked was "Big Whoop" or something? Or you can use mister pointy to try to find something Buffy related.

I don't have a position on war thread/non-war thread.

Wolfram, I think you've missed the point with that Consensus/unanimity thing. That was the old system. I don't think it's right to challenge it after all the trouble we went to to create a voting system for future decisions.

there's an overwhelming sentiment in favor and none of the opposers are bitter about it

How do you know no one was bitter? Frankly, I shut up about it because I'm a fairly new poster and didn't know how things were done/decided on the board. Also because I didn't feel like becoming known as the squeaky wheel.