In my example above, only a small percentage of votes were NP. Yet that small number prevented the vote from passing.

Hmm, yes, this is problem. I was looking at it from the angle of a large number of NP votes with a small number of YES or NO votes. Is there a way to deal with one without skewing the other.

If you're worried about a 5 Yes 4 No vote passing, then the focus should be the minimum number of those voters, not what percentage they are of the people who voted. For example, along with a quorum and majority, a vote must have at least 21 Yes votes for action to be taken.

Wolfram makes a good point here. How would be go about instituting a minimum action vote number. It shouldn't be skewed for only YES votes since a proposal could be written to take advantage of that where a negative outcome on the vote actual enacts a policy.

Perhaps I don't trust voting, this might have to do with the referendum system here in California.

It shouldn't be skewed for only YES votes since a proposal could be written to take advantage of that where a negative outcome on the vote actual enacts a policy.

Along with a quorum and majority, a vote must have at least 21 Yes votes or 21 No votes for action to be taken and/or for the issue to go to moratorium.

It could be written better, and I'm not sure 21 is the right number, but the gist is there.

This looks like a more complicated way of getting the same result as not counting No Preference votes towards the quorum.

Perhaps I don't trust voting, this might have to do with the referendum system here in California.

Let the record show that ND for one welcomes our new insect overlords.

Frank, if you'll point out what sort of definitions you're using for "active poster" then maybe I can get you stats.

I just meant those breakdowns of who X number of posts in a given thread every month (or time period - it might have been by the life of the thread). Thinking about it further, I'm not sure how useful it is since I think it was mainly Natter that was being looked at.

Although those stats were always entertaining, so I certainly wouldn't discourage throwing them out anyway. But as far as usefulness goes I'm not so sure.

I get the idea that looking at active posters we could get a better idea of what should constitute a quorum.

edit: but yeah if we only look at Natter I probably won't appear to be an active poster. I'm usually hundreds of posts behind.

I get the idea that looking at active posters we could get a better idea of what should constitute a quorum.

Which is funny, because that's how we wound up with the 42 quorum to begin with -- we looked at some number for active posters, took a vote where everybody could pick a quorum number, and averaged the results.

Maybe that's what we should do then, gang: Hold another vote where people can pick a quorum number, and re-average the results. It's almost guaranteed to come out higher.

Maybe, to prevent too much gaming of the system, we should put in a minimum (the old quorum number of 42, perhaps) and a maximum (Our historical high voter turnout? Our best guess at number of active posters?). And when the results are tallied, before we run the average, we drop a certain number of max results and min results. Maybe half of each?

In the original discussion about the turnout numbers and etc., Sophia put together a summary of the arguments, and I think they are all pretty much still the same: Sophia Brooks "Bureaucracy 1: Like Kafka, Only Funnier" Mar 15, 2003 10:51:05 pm PST

At this point, I don't know if we need to re-do the vote number question. On the one hand, most ballots have had more voters, so why bother. On the other hand, do we want to ensure that a greater number of people weigh in on any given issue? Would making a higher number just create more agita on ballots that don't meet the minimum, and is that worth it?

I'm still planning on putting "Should we get rid of No Preference?" as a ballot question.

I'm kind of torn. We've tossed a bunch of ideas that I've considered before as well, but the more we talk about it, the more I think we should just leave the system alone.

I've particularly been in favor of getting rid of no preference, but with the points raised in this discussion, I think needs to be qualified -- there are clearly some (rare) issues where the No Preference option is kind of needed, or at least beneficial, and not having it might be harmful.

Maybe eliminating No Preference for thread creation questions only? That's our primary use of voting, so it eliminates it on the questions we most deal with, but doesn't prevent it from being an option in other cases where a No Preference option might be warranted.