on the one hand this is me

if you're just people watching, it's freaky to walk up to the person and say, "hey, can you move a little to the left? It's easier for me to be amused by you if you haul your ass out of that sun glare."

On the other hand I feel uncomfortable saying I speak for board culture when I am still such a newbie myself.

Bureaucracy 5: Buffistas is perverse.

if you're just people watching, it's freaky to walk up to the person and say, "hey, can you move a little to the left? It's easier for me to be amused by you if you haul your ass out of that sun glare."

On the other hand I feel uncomfortable saying I speak for board culture when I am still such a newbie myself.

Extreme newbie (posting) here, but I'm confused by the hostility toward the lurkers. They were asked to vote. Their opinions were solicited. It was said if they didn't vote, then what did they matter. I fully expected those who lurked on a regular basis and read these things to vote.

The only question for people not posting, or not posting for a listed reason, question #4, elicited all positive responses. The lurkers love b.org.

Question #13, that contained the negative responses and comments, was lurkers and posters combined. I can only identify one negative response coming from a lurker. The comment about this seeming to be a closed community. Doesn't mean it's bad, just that is what it is.

The most negative comments of question # 13 (like comment 3 or 40) seem to have an insider voice. They imply they participate in other threads besides the social ones or one pointed complaint that sounds more personal than coming from a lurker.

I may be completely wrong, but I think the negative comments were coming from within the community of posters not from the lurkers. I would hate for the lurkers to be the scapegoats if that is the case. I think the lurkers identified themselves when they were offering an opinion and I think it was mostly positive or "go team buffistas."

And yes, I realize I pick really weird things to champion. Save the lurkers.

I predicted that some of the core comments would ping some of the lurkers. I don't know. I understand the point of view that active posters should have more clout than lurkers, but it doesn't really go with the current voting system. If you're going to make decisions according to the results of a vote, then a vote is a vote, you know? You can't start weighting the votes based on whose they are.

Well put.

I still maintain that if they have said anything ever, they are no longer lurkers. The lurkers are the ones with no impact other than hits. Not just posting, to me, but shaping and affecting in other ways delurks you. Donations, votes, poll responses.

The former lurkers surprised and delighted me. Even though I can't identify who said what, I can't unread what I've read.

From reading the comments on the comments I'm not getting the impression that there's irritation with the lurkers, but I am getting the impression there is that impression.

If it makes any sense.

From reading the comments on the comments I'm not getting the impression that there's irritation with the lurkers, but I am getting the impression there is that impression.

If it makes any sense.

Yes, this is what I was trying to say. The lurkers were not irritated with the board or trying to change it. They said positive things. But the negative comments, or comments suggesting change are being attributed to lurkers, and I don't think that is true.

Now that it's quoted (helps me read) I see I stopped a layer short.

I don't think posters here are as irritated with the lurkers as other posters here think they are.

It's so past my bedtime.

I don't think posters here are as irritated with the lurkers as other posters here think they are.

I think I connected the last few comments with the poll and that was my mistake. It was a separate conversation of lurkers voting. I made the leap where there wasn't a connection. Sorry.

I don't feel hostile. Umbraged, sure. As was pointed out above, one post calling us cretins is not indicative of the feelings of most humans here, or they'd have moved on long ago.

One post questioning the idea that we should care about lurkers' opinions about how we organize our discourse isn't indicative of how most people feel, either. If it was, lurkers wouldn't have been invited.

It's not like the voting system came down the mount with Moses. We could trash all of that tomorrow and go back to Gang of Sixteen. Or try something completely new.

We're not locked into any sort of rules here, actually. The people creating all the discourse that entertains the lurkers could suddenly all become miserable enough to let the collective fizzle out and die.

I'm thinking that we'd not let something like that happen. If enough people who actually post the entertainment felt the board was starting to blow, we'd make whatever changes were necessary to keep us together and afloat, and it wouldn't matter if 1000 lurkers suddenly voted that the little monkeys in the box should dance faster (I don't mean that with any sense of hostility, I'm just bringing in monkeys for monkey sake). The people talking, to me, weigh more than the people who don't. A lot more.

Lurkers opinions don't matter to me, not a jot. Those opinions did matter to lots of other people. It's Bureau, where we torture each other with opinions.

I'm shocked at the idea that lurkers are voting, it's something I don't remember considering when we hammered out voting, but I think if the day ever came that a vote counter saw that 60 votes came in from people who don't post, and 2 votes came in from people who do, they'd sound the alarm that something strange was afoot at the circle k.

I mean, seriously, would we create an entire thread for lurkers to stare at white space? I just don't think it'd happen.

If anything like that was occuring, we'd surely toss the votes and figure something else out.

Right? RIGHT?

ION, I'll never be a good ambassador.