That being said, if voting on the grandfather clause scares that many people, then I'll go on record as having no objection to its permanent withdrawal.

Sure you're not just saying that so you can bring up the War Thread again? t tries to duck t fails miserably t runs away

My question is what determines a decision being made, vs., "It was mentioned, but we never really talked it into the ground until our eyeballs bled reached consensus, it just wasn't at the top of anyone's list so we moved on."?

For example, I think the Will of the Buffistas is pretty clearly anti-war/politics thread, but I think it's more mixed on general TV/Alias/ME graduate studies.

Like Nutty said, anyone who brings up changing the buffistas name is going to get creamed

Today, yes.

Two years from now? Could be a proposal to be called Bronzers. Secondsies and Twenty-fivesies could happen. And the last haggard, battle torn Buffistas, they shall not have the energy to fight it.

This proposal really falls under, "Who are we, who do we want to be?" for me.

The rules you make now will effect Buffistas five years from now. The community could burn out and only see four posts a day in each thread, and then newbies come in and take over, and all you have to govern are memories of what the old-school Buffistas long ago decided. The benefit of those decisions is that the old school folks have been there, done that, squabbled over every last gerund.

The Bronze was around for 5 years, and still, every couple of months, a battle would erupt over the four post per hour rule, which was designed to A) Conserve bandwidth so folks with dialups could participate without crashing, and 2) sort of force people to use their post time in a more wise manner, since you had to wait at least 15 minutes before posting again, it allowed you time to compose

And, occassionally, there were so many newbies who thought that rule sucked, that they would chatspeak the day away, regardless. And there wasn't enough oldbies to choke the weeds, after a few years.

We're thinking about this in terms of six months. I think about board communities in terms of six years. Tis why I'm anti-change, mayhaps.

Sure you're not just saying that so you can bring up the War Thread again?

I'm sure. I hope you're kidding, because I've remained silent on this whole Grandfather thing for weeks, even though getting it to a vote was the fastest way to discussing the war thread. And withdrawing it is the same as passing it because no "old issue" can be discussed without this vote, or after the moratorium period.

The community could burn out and only see four posts a day in each thread, and then newbies come in and take over, and all you have to govern are memories of what the old-school Buffistas long ago decided.

If we're only getting four posts a day in every thread then I for one won't really care what happens here. There won't be a community to save. I'll be sad about it, but my sadness will have arisen from the lack of participation not the newbies coming in after the fact.

There won't be a community to save. I'll be sad about it, but my sadness will have arisen from the lack of participation not the newbies coming in after the fact.

That's a fair response to my exaggeration.

I hope you're kidding

Er, I was so kidding that I'm kinda sad that you needed to ask. Is it not clear from the context? Do I need to start using more emoticons or something? Sorry. Will try to avoid the jokey next time.

We're thinking about this in terms of six months. I think about board communities in terms of six years. Tis why I'm anti-change, mayhaps.

I'm anti-change for similar reasons.

Sorry Burrell, my bad. I've just tried to avoid doing anything to in any way promulgate the war thread position, that it hit a nerve.

That's a fair response to my exaggeration.

And that's a fair response to my Friday-afternoon-reading-everything-literally-mindstate. ;)

This proposal really falls under, "Who are we, who do we want to be?" for me.

In the grand scheme of things, does this belong in the "who are we..." conversation? Maybe. But I think saying that makes its purpose much larger than was intended. It was (I thought) originally just to ensure were weren't tossing recent semi-decisions just because we decided them, rather than voted on them. It was a stop gap proposal when there was some insisting (which then died) that we re-discuss a war thread.

Why such stop-gaps themselves are suddenly necessary probably does fall under "who are we...". But I don't think we need to complicate Betsy's thing with it.