It's not a matter of, "Will this please the most people?"

The (One) problem is, that's not what we're doing now. What we're doing now is "Will this please enough people?" I'll admit it: I've voted yes on ballots I didn't really care about.

Yes, we have passed every television thread we have gone to vote on in the last few months

To me it's obvious that we have measures in place to keep thirty new random threads opening.

I would disagree with the latter in part due to the former.

It seems obvious to me that the supermajority of people want a poll. This is not 12 Angry Men here. We should just get on with it. I want to save what capital I have left for when we fight over the results.

The (One) problem is, that's not what we're doing now. What we're doing now is "Will this please enough people?" I'll admit it: I've voted yes on ballots I didn't really care about.

Well, I think this is one of the problems. We shouldn't do that!

Right now, we're not broken, right? The board is okay today. Nobody is trying to fix something that is wrong, just improve something that could be better. And that improvement might break the board, because that's how change is, things you think will be fine sometimes aren't.

For me, this is relatively simple: we have been talking about television since day one. We have created separate threads for television that caught our fancy in a particular way, but never made a provision for talking about television generally, which was fine.

The one difference in the way I see that statement is that we were created to talk really about one fandom since day one, and often we digressed. Once those shows that fueled that fandom died down, the whole board has been a whole series of digressions. And the question of being a general TV board, seems, to me, like a huge shift in focus.

Specifically -- alter the six-month moratorium so that it kicks in regardless of whether or not the 42 person quorum is met.

I don't like this. It seems like it would make it way to easy to shut down discussion for six months with a narrow focus proposal that has minor support.

Interesting point. Do you have an alternate suggestion? I'm really starting to think we need to eliminate No Preference voting, but if the elimination causes another problem, it's not a great solution.

Maybe a secondary quorum, then? Where a majority (or perhaps even a supermajority -- 60 or 70%) of a given vote needs to be from interested parties in order for a thread to be succesfully created (or destroyed)?

Because I really think a big chunk of the current angst could be solved if we have more confidence that a particular thread proposal passes (or fails) because of genuine, sustainable interest.

My gut SA

Without commas, it first read like you named your digestive system after me. I am honored.

I think that's a big change in culture, but a small change in structure. It's more of a long term investment in how we garden around here.

I'd agree with that.

I would disagree with the latter in part due to the former.

Well, I was using the context of your example to define my argument. The television threads we did pass bear little relation, in my opinion, to your example of threads that might be passed. Having a nonfic thread is not the same thing, to me, at all, from having a "survivor dvds" thread, and I think the comparison is unworkable.

But I would rather move on and get to polling. For curiosity's sake if nothing else, though I think there is value to be had in the polltaking.

I think that there are a lot of assumptions being made about how the board is used and those assumptions are based on the posters experiences.

Which is why I think we really need to see some hard data on how people use the board so we can stop using vague terms like majorities and minorites and core users and start saying things like:

300 people actively use the board. Of those 100 use Natter, 100 uses Bitches and 60 use both threads. The rest don't use Bitches/Natter at all.

I edited this becuase I realize my math is wrong.

And maybe we can ask how many people vote on issues so we can say something like out of 300 regular active users 90 vote on polls. Then we'd know that 210 people don't vote and that only 90 people are making these decisions.

We have had votes won by 50 votes and we've had voter turn out around 80.

Maybe we have 100 active users and so 80 is still a good voter turn out but not as small if we had 300 active uers.

But right now, we don't have any kind of numbers so it's hard to gauge any of this.

The one difference in the way I see that statement is that we were created to talk really about one fandom since day one, and often we digressed.

I disagree, because I think we were created to talk about television, and the creation of the thread enabled the fandom to develop. But it's possible that I'm arguing semantics, and the point of where we came from isn't as important to me as where we are now.

And the question of being a general TV board,

Mmm, I still don't understand this. In what way would the creation of new threads about/for television make us a television board? We're a culture board, who happens to talk television a lot. But to me there doesn't seem to be any more inclination to talk television than Harry Potter or theremins or fanfiction. The only difference to me is that we're changing the way in which we talk television here. It's not changing the entire tenor of the board to do so, because it was already there! Along with a bunch of other stuff that we talk about.

Having a nonfic thread is not the same thing, to me, at all, from having a "survivor dvds" thread

We have a Veronica Mars DVD thread. We still have a Firefly thread. Nevertheless, the hypo is not about the types of thread that get voted in, it's how we might have a lot of threads even if we ultimately want to preserve a large thread like natter.