Oops. My spelling error - I was pulling it out of a hat. I'll leave it, because it's funny.

Just as funny as the time (very stoned) I wanted to listen to Simon & Garfield.

I am so sick of seeing things put up for a vote that it isn't even funny. I no longer enjoy visiting Buffistas much. But that's my ish. Clearly Wolfram and others are liking the whole voting thing a lot more than I am.

Wrod.

I think that a lot of stuff is getting proposed now because the system isn't totally clear yet, and most of the stuff getting proposed is to clarify it. I think that once we go through the whole thing once or twice, it'll settle down a bit. (I hope.)

I seriously doubt it.

No, really.

We've opened a stupid fucking door, and I think it was A Big Mistake. Eh, who knows. Could be what's up with the world, but Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the Mailman, peeps, I feel like I've wandered into bizarro land at times. When JET suggested whacking the whole "VOTE! DISCUSS! VOTE!" thing, I was all like "HELL YES!!!"

Ref. his post. Take a moment. Think about it. Realize that people are shrugging and taking off, and understand that this whole "We're almost there!" sounds a lot like tilting at windmills that REALLY MIGHT BE MIDGETS.

I suppose I'm speaking as one of the people who has felt driven out of this thread for one reason or twenty -- most of them being my own inability to handle bureaucratic minutiae:

I no longer enjoy visiting Buffistas much.

To be honest, this has been part of the reason why I've been mostly gray for the last few months. Not the whole part by a long shot -- there's the job, family ill health, the massive website sprawl I maintain, my inability to keep up in 95% of the threads...

But the bickering. Um. Dude. I've been gray so much that newbies think I'm the newbie. (Oh, the humility!)

I've been trying to threadsuck Bureaucracy as often as I can, and when I do I'm just startled by the... negative and hostile tone, I guess. Likely it's the 7-hour-thousands-of-posts gulp, where half of it consisted of people asking other people to chill out that is coloring my perception.

I care about this community. I get a little upset when there's infighting. But it's not the end of my world when I don't get my thread, and it wouldn't be the end of the world if some of the lesser-used threads I frequent were combined.

I tend to think of the greater community good. The Buffistas were here before I got here, and they'll probably still be here if I decide leave. Having said that, in this thread I've sensed a proprietary attitude toward this community that I find disquieting. I want it so I should have it" shouldn't be a valid defense when this many people are involved, because we are a we. We need purposes, benefits, pros and cons. Will it break the site? Will it bring in trolls? Will it really hurt for people to skip war discussion in natter like Hecubus-in-a-dirndl skips cat talk?

If a significant portion of Buffistas wanted something, it usually happened. If a significant portion did not, then it didn't. That was how it was done in the past, and it seemed to work well enough from my naïve perspective. I guess I was another Buffista who didn't realize we had a lot of members who weren't in favor of the process that was in place.

This post edited for clarity and a tendency to ramble.

I am just throwing things out here-- but is there some way we can take away the process and still have te vote and the closed discussion.

It seems to me the 2 things people were dissatisfied with that the vote was supposed to fix were long circular discussions where no real consensus was reached and some Buffistas feeling ignored and rolled over to get that consensus. And in fact, one of the reasons I wanted voting was to end other peoples' frustration and they seem to be the same people who are frustrated by voting. So maybe we need to deal with our consensus process and figure out someway to figure out how a consensus is reached.

I really felt that it was bad in here beginning with the discussion of new threads not with vting. trying to iron out voting just gave people something to argue about more often.

However, somehow we have moved the endless circular discussion to crafting a ballot.

It seems like tere are 2 things voting could help, and they are things that I and I thing other people were irritated with/frustrated with-- closed discussion and clear decision. And the other stuff really doesn't matter.

Perhaps we don't discuss crafting the ballot-- perhaps the proposer crafts the ballot and if we don't like it, we say no.

When we get past this voting stuff, all I can see are simple yes/no questions.

I think the reason for the voting system was because people felt that the consensus thing wasn't working too well. We need to recognize that there are situations where consensus will work, and others where it is just causing a lot of fighiting and bad feelings. I'm going to propose a rule of thumb:

If consensus isn't working, let's turn to voting.

For a perfect example of the breakdown of consenus see the voting thread for the PV/runoff discussion. That's why I moved that we vote on the PV/runoff issue, to get a firm decision on it without all the rancor. Many people felt that we shouldn't vote on it until we tried it, but others feel that we shouldn't try it at all. So I ask again that somebody provide the final second and we queue this issue before people get too insane.

I'm not looking to create a backlog of issues for discussion. In fact, in a previous post I suggested putting the PV/runoff issue on the moratorium ballot with a minimum of discussion, even though that's technically not the way we do things. Can we get a consensus to bend the rules and get this issue out of the way?

I was reading the posts from last night in posting, and I see why the ballot never got posted. I also made a previous suggestion to post the ballot without PV and if one doesn't get a clear majority we'll fight it out after the fact. The ballot shouldn't be delayed. Let's post the ballot by 12:00 noon without the PV option, and (if we can get a consensus on this) let's put the PV/runoff option as a separate question on this ballot, or otherwise let's queue it for discussion as the next issue (pushing ahead of moratorium on old issues discussion).

Will post this in voting discussion too because it's extremely relevant.

Perhaps we don't discuss crafting the ballot-- perhaps the proposer crafts the ballot and if we don't like it, we say no.

I think that's excellent. I have proposed two alternates in Lightbulb and made an announcement in press. Should I move them and/or delete?

Perhaps we don't discuss crafting the ballot-- perhaps the proposer crafts the ballot and if we don't like it, we say no.

I thought that was what we were going to do all along; or at least that was how I understood the whole proposing process.

Frankly, I'm beyond irritated that we voted by some ridiculous margin to stick to the 4 day/3 day schedule, and then couldn't even stop bickering over the ballot. I haven't seen anyone arguing for why 4 is a better choice than three. Just about "I'M GOING TO POUND IT INTO YOUR HEADS LOUDLY AND REPEATEDLY THAT I WANT IT ON THE BALLOT." The arguments for one side or the other haven't even been addressed, and we've already thrown over holy mother process.

Fuck that noise. Proposer makes the ballot (my ballot would say: 6 moratorium? Y/N. But I'm not the proposer.) and if you don't like it, vote no. Better yet, don't vote, so it won't get a quorum or whatever abbreviation it was we spent weeks bitching at each other over.

We're losing people over this shit. Not just from bureaucracy, from the community as a whole. And we're losing a lot more people from the process discussion. People who I'd like to see have a voice in what we do, but who are too exhausted or disgusted or angry to be in here at all.

Fuck that noise. Proposer makes the ballot (my ballot would say: 6 moratorium? Y/N. But I'm not the proposer.) and if you don't like it, vote no. Better yet, don't vote, so it won't get a quorum or whatever abbreviation it was we spent weeks bitching at each other over.

That's what I just propsed and announced in press. I agree. Want to check it out?

Yeah, we x-posted, Cindy. Yours was a hell of a lot calmer than mine....

So maybe we need to deal with our consensus process and figure out someway to figure out how a consensus is reached.

A consensus should be clear and obvious. If it's not clear or obvious then it doesn't represent the will of the Buffistas and it shouldn't be used. That's exactly why we have voting. I think it's a mistake to try and explore what makes a consensus too closely.