Cause a while back we decided we wanted formal structures to make policies and rules and whatnot.

Like I said, I disagree that this was the intent when we created the voting procedures. Have we used it in this manner yet?

a sockpuppet hijacking the conversation

Conversations come and go here. They run their course and then end. It's the nature of the beast.

We used it to decide whether/how to ban posters anbd what to ban them for.

I'm not certain the voting thing was ever meant to suss out what's "best for the board," and using it as such is what's striking me as dangerous precedent.

What dangerous precedent? We already established guidelines for disciplinary actions and booting peoples ages ago. We ceased to be a bullshit consensus board when we established the voting procedure.

If Wolfram wants to start a discussion about posters using song lyrics in tag lines and says it bugs him, that's okay--even though I always use song lyrics.

As long as it's not the milkshake song, or getting anything started...

I do appreciate citations on tags.

yes. We used it to decided when people would get warned, suspended and banned.

the entire voting system was set up out of discussions with people getting frustrated that the board was so large now and trying to discuss things only as a way of reaching a decision was never-ending and nowhere going.

My personal perspective on it was a few people trying to actually discuss things, several more people posting over and over their same point or the way they would like the decision to go.

Question for the people who have created and used sockpuppets: did you know that sockpuppets annoyed some people, or is this news to you? I'm just wondering.

Totally news to me. I didn't create Clovis' log-in, but once it *was* created and I had the log-in information, I did use it once or twice. I never suspected that people were bothered by it.

Conversations come and go here. They run their course and then end.

Trudy, do you feel that posting as MARCH is the exact same thing is saying "Hey, what are the good restaurants in West Hollywood?" -- another conversation that will interest some people and that everyone else can scroll by? Because that's what I'm getting from you, and I wonder if you can understand that it does not feel that way to the people who are annoyed by sockpuppets.

We used it to decide whether/how to ban posters and what to ban them for.

Thanks, Robin. I wasn't sure. It had seemed all thread creation and the like to me.

What dangerous precedent? We already established guidelines for disciplinary actions and booting peoples ages ago. We ceased to be a bullshit consensus board when we established the voting procedure.

I don't know. Did we have even a significant minority of people speaking out against booting people, or against certain offenses and whether or not they should be bootable?

Knowing us, the answer there is probably a resounding YES.

I just.... the "if the majority of people vote to ban sockpuppets, it should happen," argument it VERY strongly smacking of the type of thinking that's turning the US into Jesusland right now, and I really dislike that this is now creeping into my board.

I don't have a good grasp on my rebuttal, and maybe I'm wrong, and maybe for just those reasons alone I should just shut the hell up and piss off already, but I'm a little mule-headed.

We ceased to be a bullshit consensus board when we established the voting procedure.

You know, the vast vast vast majority of those consensuses were NOT bullshit. They came out of earnest discussions and people aired their feelings and shared and we evolved and stuff.

Now if we're going to vote on every little thing that bugs someone? And then have gripe-fests in our Live Journals? Eh. Tiresome. Un-fun.

Someone asked if it people who made sock puppets that "thought about that it bothered some people." No, not particularly. Any time I post in any form the question I ask myself is "will this crack up ___" or "has this point been made" or something proactive like that. It's not "oh dear, who might I offend if I say this."

If people feel some sense of unease because of "unknown" posters (and we're ALL at some point unknown) that can easily be aleved by a disclaimer in tag or bio.