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.

I am trying to suss out the operational gist of this conversation (i.e. what people want, in a way that can actually be implemented). Here is my thinking:

1. There is a certain trepidation about the idea that something that seemed resolved can be made unresolved. In some ways, this can be good (i.e. reviving a thread proposal that had not won 6 months ago); in some ways, this calls into question every decision ever made, and opens the door for catastrophic change.

Possible resolution: We make it harder to undo changes. The Buffistas cannot become The Mighty Ducks without some more elaborate and mind-bogglingly irritating procedure that nobody wants to actually do. (Or just require a supermajority on undo it decisions, same diff and less aggravation.) This serves to preserve most of the decisions that we have made, but leaves open the option that something that really doesn't work can be undone.

2. I think I see some confusion relating not to the Grandfather clause itself, but to the very idea of revisiting past decisions. Having already ratified the time-based moratorium, we are not now intended to be voting on the rightness or wrongness of the moratorium. We are voting about how to implement the moratorium in regards to time (i.e. things that happened before we started voting).

Possible solution: clear wording of the final ballot that this is an adjunct to, but not a referendum on, the moratorium itself.

Other possible solution: allay the fears of (1) by stating explicitly things which may want to be under permanent moratorium. Although, good luck agreeing on what is and isn't intended to be permanent.

3. General fears about how the rules we write now may be abused in future. It is true that I expect good-faith applications of rules from the existing users. It is also true that that good faith may disappear at some time. Personally, I believe that once the good faith disappears, the community itself is ended or has broken down into smaller communities; so bad faith is a symptom of illness, rather than an infectious agent.

Possible solution: don't know. I can't foresee the coming of bad faith, based on our vast collective monkey-grooming skills. I guess this is a sort of cross-that-bridge-when-we-come-to-it question, for me.

Possible resolution: We make it harder to undo changes. The Buffistas cannot become The Mighty Ducks without some more elaborate and mind-bogglingly irritating procedure that nobody wants to actually do. (Or just require a supermajority on undo it decisions, same diff and less aggravation.) This serves to preserve most of the decisions that we have made, but leaves open the option that something that really doesn't work can be undone.

I like this, Nutty. Our constitution should stand, unless there's a goddamned good reason to change it, and that change should be so freakin' hard that it would take almost a completely new Buffista Community based on Whale Watching and the study of Aramaic texts to have evolved to affect such change.

If that made sense.