I understand "no preference" as, "favor a decision on this, but don't feel strongly which way the decision should go." It's basically a way to help reach quorum and make sure the subject is off the table for six months.
Maybe it was needed more when we were still developing the basic rules (formal and in-) for the board, and a poster could easily believe that it was more important to decide something than that the decision go a particular way. I think there should be some way to express that point of view, but I'm willing to listen to arguments that we don't need "no preference" any more.
I'm also willing to revisit what the quorum should be. But I'm reluctant to base the number purely on the number of registered posters, simply because a number of people have left over the years. Also, the list of registered posters includes sock puppets that shouldn't be counted as potential voters.
On the question of raising the vote minimum, maybe we could get a list of vote counts and see what would happen if we raised the cutoff to (randomly) 72.
Or just see how many threads would not have been enacted if we drew the cut-off line at different places.
We might also think of pegging that number to a percentage of active participants on the board, or total board membership or something that isn't as static as 42.
Maybe it was needed more when we were still developing the basic rules (formal and in-) for the board, and a poster could easily believe that it was more important to decide something than that the decision go a particular way. I think there should be some way to express that point of view, but I'm willing to listen to arguments that we don't need "no preference" any more.
Right, which is why I thought it was useful for spoiler rules, as in "This thread is happening, we need spoiler rules for it, but I don't care if we whitefont or not."
I'm also willing to revisit what the quorum should be. But I'm reluctant to base the number purely on the number of registered posters, simply because a number of people have left over the years. Also, the list of registered posters includes sock puppets that shouldn't be counted as potential voters.
This is where those posting counts that ita used to do would come in handy.
Hec's idea on pegging quorum to the number of active participants is interesting. To play with it (because I'd say I'm intrigued rather than supporting so far), a big question would be to define "active." Maybe those that have posted at least once in the last month? Or the last full calendar month, if that's easier for the tech-inclined to get a reliable number? Pegging the percentage fairly high because lurkers don't count as active posters, but they can register and vote.
There have been close to a hundred votes on some issues, so I think it's fair to say there are at least a hundred active posters.
I just went back through Press announcements and the number of votes cast in some past votes (there should be a separate word for this) were: 65, 77, 93, 92, 59, 69, 49.
I did a quick scan of the past 10 votes (which appears to be all of them since April 2007) and the average number of votes cast was 72.5, max of 93 and min of 49.
Maybe that's where I got 72 - with the average number of votes.
So if we pegged it as high as 72 and eliminated No Preference, then only three of the last seven threads would've been enacted.
I had been talking about vote counts over in Bureaucracy and, in my mind, somewhat conflating the idea with our quorum vote. THey are separate things but related, I think.
One possible idea, I think, is to decide that a vote must pass by more than a simple majority (60%, 70%) and not worry about the minimum vote total. I don't think the minimum vote amount has ever factored into a decision so it seems irrelevant. However, requiring more consensus before creating a thread might prompt us to work for more consensus and/or be more creative in our thread creation proposals.
Waits for someone to bring up preferential voting
Takes can opener from Frank, so he can't open any more cans of worms.
