I thought thread stuff was admin and therefore exempt from voting?

It's just thread-naming that's explicitly exempt, Deena.

okay... I still see a problem with it. We have an average of 100 posters voting (don't know if it's the same 100 every time or not). If we vote to close, say, Unamerican... what if 80 posters who don't post in there vote yes because they don't think it's important and only 40 who do post in there vote no? (Say the others are all without computer access or don't follow this thread or whatever.) That hardly seems fair. IMO, it's better to go with discussion here for that kind of thing.

But I think that the participants of the thread should have some degree of self-determination.

A degree, sure. But the responses seemed to indicate that only the people in the thread (and the admins) had any say in what happened, and the rest of us could go jump in a very large lake.

Anyway, I'm probably being oversensitive. It's been a really long week. Most of us, I'm sure, did not understand the extent of the community, and no one's going to take anything away.

But I think that the participants of the thread should have some degree of self-determination. What if a group of Buffistas started to press for no smut in the Fanfiction threads because it offends them, even though they don't read the thread? It's hardly fair. I would never presume to contribute to decisions in the Bitches thread, because I not in there and I don't know what the community is like, nor what their standards are.

Look, thread creation, existence, and eventual archiving affects all of us because it takes up bandwith and there's only a certain amount of threads we can comfortably hold. So for content of threads, look to the posters, but for existence it's really up to the community at large.

there's only a certain amount of threads we can comfortably hold.

Is this true?

Deena, I'm having a hard time explaining this, but I'll try.

Let's say we have 40 people who really, really want a thread on Monkeys, and 80 who don't see the point of it. Under consensus, the 40 might get it by wearing the 80 down. Under a vote -- and thread creation was a main function of voting as we visualized it -- it's proposed, seconded, goes to a vote, and fails. The 80 (who don't care) have outvoted the 40 (who do).

Now let's say we already *have* a monkey thread, and the 80 are saying "Why is there a monkey thread? I do not like it. Let us get rid of it." and the 40 are screeching "Noooooo! Do not hurt my precious monkey thread!" If it went to a vote, the 80 would squash the 40 like bugs. If it were talked out, the 40 might wear the 80 down (just as they did to get the thread in the first place, the filthy Monkey-lovers.)

Now, in an ideal world, people would abstain from votes abotu threads they don't use. I agree with that. But I think our rules for creating and deleting threads have to be consistent.

Isn't that the basis for the anti-proliferation camp?

Well, more posts do fill the database faster, but there are also some community/personal comfort issues, Wolf.

Look, thread creation, existence, and eventual archiving affects all of us because it takes up bandwith and there's only a certain amount of threads we can comfortably hold. So for content of threads, look to the posters, but for existence it's really up to the community at large.

I can see this argument, Wolfram being applied to thread-sprawl, but not to the constriction of active threads. If we're using the bandwidth for good, we're part of the community, and there's a demand for it, why cancel a thread for the sake of saving some bandwidth? It's that kind of logic that gets shows like Firefly cancelled. Shouldn't the board be responsive to the needs of the community? Isn't that why we moved to a semi-dedicated server? Are our bandwidth problems really that dire?