When is it a consensus? 2 people agree, 3? When?

With a VOTE you know.

OK-- we are not going to argue about what makes a consensus

We know we can't agree on it.

That is why voting was proposed in the first place.

Anything we decided by the old method can be revisited after the time alotted (provided Betsy's proposal passes) or if the proposal doesn't pass it can be revisited.

cart befre horse here.

Am I the only one who thinks reasonableness should be a necessary factor here?

See, I take issue with what you consider reasonable. We can't simply make a decision to reopen the War Thread issue without it impacting other decisions that we have made. You want us to make an exception for this one thread. Well, what about the person who really wanted a TV thread and feels that, since this community has been much more focused on pop culture than political debate, an exception should be made for them as well?

You seem to be all "rules need to be flexible" but you're not the only member of this community and we need to address a larger issue than just this one thread that you want. As other people mentioned, theoretically, revisiting this conversation means we can undo things as well. It could all turn into one big mess and we need to consider that before we open ourselves up to it.

People need to be more flexible than the rules.

I further propose that we shorten the sidebar slugs thusly:

Bureaucracy 1:
Administrative discussions

Better Board:
Tech support and site development

Debate Club
If it's proposed in Bureau, it gets discussed in detail here.

There's just not a lot of room in the sidebar. I think there's room in the FAQ and/or in the header WITHIN the Voting Discussion thread to explain the minutae of the rules and procedures.

We can be cute and snarky and witty everywhere else.

OK-- we are not going to argue about what makes a consensus

We know we can't agree on it.

That is why voting was proposed in the first place.

Anything we decided by the old method can be revisited after the time alotted (provided Betsy's proposal passes) or if the proposal doesn't pass it can be revisited.

If we can't agree on what makes a consensus. how do we know what we decided by the old method?

If we can't agree on what makes a consensus. how do we know what we decided by the old method?

If something was proposed and discussed for some length of time, then either action was taken on it or a decision was made not to take action.

What exactly are you finding unreasonable?

First, I propose a re-opening of the war discussion considering we're in a war. The active posting group (APG) felt this issue had been previously consensed (is that a word) by posting the 23 nay - 9 yay - 2 eh - opinions previously weighed in several weeks before the war. The APG also wants to close discussion for the to-be-voted-in closing period of 3 or 6 months. So basically a decision discussed by 34 posters who had no idea of the ultimate effect of that discussion (and I was one of them) should now be rendered moot for an as yet unspecified period of time. That's unreasonable.

Second, even assuming the APG allows this issue to move to discussion, since the issue hasn't gotten a fourth second, and two other related issues have come up and gotten fourth seconds, and because the APG has consensed that only one issue at a time can be discussed, even if a war thread gets a fourth second (and it's been less then five hours I must add), it won't be discussed for two weeks at the earliest, and won't be voted on until three weeks from now. So the relevancy of the thread I'm even proposing may be stale and moot by that point. And that's assuming a third issue isn't railroaded through before the war thread gets a fourth second. That's unreasonable too.

You might say I only feel it's unreasonable because I want to see the thread happen. You might say I'm confusing irrationality with failure to agree with me. So I'm asking those of you who can be objective on this - does it make sense for an extremely relevant topic to be tabled indefinitely the way the war thread has without any recourse to the active posting community at large?

This is like the issues that never get scheduled to hit the floor in Congress - no matter how much or little merit they have, they never get heard. Do we want to run the board that way?

The same way it was known the old way. Either, as some suggested, the loudest and longest decided it; or, because people's minds were changed and/or more people agreed with the final decision that was implemented. They're the same thing from two different perspectives.

If voting hadn't been implemented, the war thread would have been considered dead until someone else brought it up. Voting has been implemented, but that doesn't negate the effect of the earlier decision just because this is the first thing that's come up that someone wants to overturn.

So I'm asking those of you who can be objective on this

Care to define that list?