HAHAHA!!!!!!!! First the FAQ, tomorrow the OED! t /irrationally pleased

I will add Doblerize to the FAQ ASAP. I will also happily htmlify the page of voting rules if someone writes it up.

In the calmer light of day, I do wonder if the POV that means we can re-examine the war thread also thinks that any and all previous decisions are up for re-examination, and if so, why that's not potentially deleterious.

ita, I'm glad you asked this question. Some issues should never be re-examined even after a moratorium - i.e. the location of the Phoenix Board, the Stompies, etc. Some issues can easily wait the moratorium period.

I've advocated taking each old issue on a case by case basis. The old issues I've seen brought up as examples for re-examination are all new thread suggestions: a tv thread, a politics thread, and a movie thread. None of them have been brought back on the table, but I'll address my opinion on these and any other related new thread suggestions.

All these threads have one thing in common - they can survive a moratorium of 6 months. In 6 months we’ll still have tv, we’ll still have politics, and we’ll still have movies. I don’t advocate bringing up discussion on these or any other non-urgent new threads because it will be deleterious and detrimental to our sanity. In addition, the movie thread already exists and whether or not a thread can be uncreated is a whole new topic which doesn’t have to be delved into here. But that can also wait the six months.

The proposed war thread is an urgent topic that will suffer tremendously if it’s put on hold for six months.

ita, you also asked earlier why we feel a decision wasn’t fairly reached. Without rehashing what I’ve said earlier I’ll try to answer it succinctly. As one of the 34 posters who weighed in on the issue last time, I can honestly say I did not know my post was going to be used as an unofficial ballot that would close discussion on the war thread issue for a period of 3 or 6 months. I don’t think many, if any, of the other 33 posters knew that either. So regardless of the merits of the thread - and quite honestly I still haven’t fleshed out my own opinion on the matter, originally I was against it, last night I was for it, and now I’m not even sure - in light of it getting the requisite seconds I think it behooves us to give the community at large a fair chance to weigh in on the matter.

Now the same argument can be used for all the other old issues, but all the other issues lack the fundamental ingredient that makes the war thread a much better candidate for re-examination - urgency.

Final note: when I say the way this thread is being treated is unreasonable I’m not saying that anyone here lacks reason, and I apologize if that was implied in any way.

Cereal:

And since everyone's commenting on the site arrangement, I just want to say it's brilliant.

But don't you think Discussion should be right under Bureaucracy, instead of have BABB between them?

t ducks and runs

I can honestly say I did not know my post was going to be used as an unofficial ballot that would close discussion on the war thread issue for a period of 3 or 6 months.

Here's the scoop. We didn't do things by ballots back then. We did them by loose consensus.

I grew up attending Quaker meetings. In practice, "consensus" didn't actually mean "everybody agreed". What happened was that people discussed, and then rediscussed, and discussed some more, and EVENTUALLY the clerk of the meeting said "It seems to me that the sense of the meeting is X." At that point, attenders had two choices: shutting up and allowing the sense of the meeting to go forward, and standing up and saying "I do not agree."

Everybody had a nuclear deathbomb for consensus. It was established (if unspoken) that a polite person didn't use the nuclear deathbomb very often, and never did so lightly. A lot of the time you fell silent simply so that the meeting could go forward. Consensus did not mean "Everybody present agreed." It meant "Everybody present was willing to allow the decision to go forward."

So, the way this decision was made was the way that the Buffistas have made negative decisions before. Somebody raised it. We talked about it. It became clear that far more people opposed it than approved of it. Everybody fell silent and moved on to something else.

The war thread is time-sensitive, but it is also, in my mind, a decision we have made. If I am right, and we did make that decision, then reconsidering the decision simply because it is time-sensitive means that our discussion moratorium never holds. I voted in a discussion moratorium because I was tired of having to rediscuss issues, and because historically if you rediscussed an issue enough you got your way.

umm ... what Betsy said.

So, the way this decision was made was the way that the Buffistas have made negative decisions before. Somebody raised it. We talked about it. It became clear that far more people opposed it than approved of it. Everybody fell silent and moved on to something else.

Without being patronizing, I want to say that this sums up your position very nicely. You've convinced me, and I'm dropping my objection to no consensus being reached. I'm not agreeing it was a fair method, or a fully representative method, but I am agreeing that a decision was reached on the issue.

If I am right, and we did make that decision, then reconsidering the decision simply because it is time-sensitive means that our discussion moratorium never holds.

Here I'm not on board. A moratorium can hold quite well on issues that are not urgent or time-sensitive. And no matter what moratorium we vote in, there needs to be a way to break it should such an urgent or time-sensitive issue arise. We can't build an ironclad moratorium, or we will be shooting ourselves in the foot.

I'm not agreeing it was a fair method, or a fully representative method, but I am agreeing that a decision was reached on the issue.

Well, exactly. That's precisely why the whole voting thing was proposed and is currently being discussed.

I didn't vote on the War Thread before, I'm not sure why now, either I had zero interest or by the time I was ready to throw in my vote the decision had been made.

However, either way, I knew that the decision that was going to be made was pretty much going to be final. I'm pretty sure the topic had been brought up before, but I think that was the first time it had come to what was at the time our formal decision making process.

Wolfram, frankly I'm getting annoyed because it seems that you don't actually care about the ramifications of what revisiting old decisions would mean or that you don't care about any decision except the War Thread issue.

From my point of view it looks like you want a War thread and you are going to do anything you can to get your way no matter what and you don't have the community's interests but solely your own interests.

A moratorium can hold quite well on issues that are not urgent or time-sensitive. And no matter what moratorium we vote in, there needs to be a way to break it should such an urgent or time-sensitive issue arise.

I can see some merit in this. For example, when I read the Natter archive for 9/11/01 and following, it was amazing to see how many people in NYC, DC, etc. were able to get through to people on the internet in cases when telephoning out wasn't working. People posted that so-and-so was okay, CaBil was keeping people updated on the news, and so on and so forth. If--Heaven forfend--something of that nature were to happen again, an emergency information thread would be of incredible value.

Not to sound callous, but I don't think that events are at a point where I would feel that a war thread was necessary. It's something I'd reconsider if it became apparent that this was something that was going to go on for several months or longer.