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?

What i meant was that a consensus is technically every single person agreeing. If someone wants to sit here and srgue that we never made a consensus because there were always dissenters, we are going to be here until the next millenium. If has been discussed previoudly and either action or no action was taken-- it has reached Buffista consensus.

Wolfram, cool it, you're getting to be really, really insulting here.

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.

This. (You know I am so chuffed to be in agreement with bitterchick, but that's like the fifth time in two days.)

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

Madness! Madness I say! Uh, so...this is why we went to voting. And yet, things which were generally agreed upon back before voting (by whatever amorphous methods we used) were still considered done deals. And there seems to be (by that similar eyeballing guesstimate method) some feeling that the most fair and least disruptive thing to do would be to apply the waiting period currently under discussion to issues recently decided under the old consensus method.

The logic being not dissimilar to giving weight to the rule of precedent so that there is continuity and not constant disruption. This is a very worthy value.

Care to define that list?

Oh, I know I'm at the top of it.

If we don't agree that previously-arrived-at decisions are closed, that way lies madness.

Doesn't everyone agree that's so?

All the time you've been here discussing this, Wolfram, you could have been discussing the war. In Natter.