edit: but we don't need two of them

I think new threads go up for a vote because we have limited bandwidth and that means not all proposed threads could ever be instituted.

There was a guy named Z Man in Worst Possible Thread Names on Table Talk who showed how this could get out of hand:

Z Man - 02:54 pm PDT - Mar 1, 2001 - #2041 of 3532
The Thread

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Z Man - 02:54 pm PDT - Mar 1, 2001 - #2042 of 3532
That's Spread Over

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Z Man - 02:55 pm PDT - Mar 1, 2001 - #2043 of 3532
3 Threads, Thread

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also proposed...

Think I'll Start A Thread For The Hell Of It. La La Laaa

How About Another One

Thread Creation As A Sport

Thread Creation As A Hobby

Thread Creation As A Plea For Attention

Thread Creation As A Desperate Cry For Help

TT also used to have real threads called things like, "I'm bored, is anyone here?" and about 16 variations on "The Insomniac Thread." So I can kind of see the value of using community consensus to decide when a thread starts, especially when our bandwidth is limited.

By board, I mean straight up Buffistas.org. I'd always seen who posts here, and how, and which threads exist for posting in, yadda, yadda to be in the voting purview.

T-shirts, face to faces, charitable donations ... those don't actually involve right *here*. Not about this code, these threads ... does that make sense?

This would be how I would divide it, too. Also, didn't the F2F people have a vote (or possibly several votes) to set the date and place?

Also, didn't the F2F people have a vote (or possibly several votes) to set the date and place?

That raises for me, the main difference between stuff like F2F, charity stuff, etc., and Official Phoenix Business -- the first group of stuff doesn't affect everyone, just a subgroup who opt in. There will be, what? 50 people at the F2F? I don't need to participate in the decision-making process around that. Procedural issues, new threads, and the like, even if I don't actively participate, affect the board which I use, so they do affect me. I think that's the difference.

Jesse's hit the nail on the head, I think. Because if the F2F had an impact on me I wouldn't be all envious and bitter - hey, does that count as an impact?

I agree totally with ita - there's a difference between stuff that affects buffistas.org (the board, the servers, the design) and stuff that affects someor all Buffistas. I also think that's such an obvious distinction - between a social group and a physical entity - that it doesn't need debating. It's like if we all shared ownership of a car. We'd have to vote on what tyres to use, and who got to drive it wehn, but if you wanna have a barbeque for your fellow car-co-owners, then that's your business.

I think that there's a hanging tag in "Quotable" - - because there is white fontedness that doesn't need to be there.

I may want a thread called "Please Search the Net for Photos of Guys I Think Are Cute and Post Them Here For Me." but that would be of interest to, well, me, and use a lot of community resources.

Scrappy is brilliant. After we vote in the Minear thread (not to reveal my biases or anything) I am so proposing a Drool Streaks thread. Just you wait. It'll be oh so popular and the summer will just fly on by.

Yeah, Burrell. I can hear it now.

dh: Cindy, why does the browser's history always show up empty?

Cindy: Um... I'm not using the computer?

dh: No. Really.

So, I've tried like three times this morning to post thoughts on the latest rounds of discussion, and I keep rambling off into pointlessness and deleting.

So, at the risk of not having a point or anything to add, here are the points I keep deleting, in no particular order...

I am one of the people who voted for voting and now regrets that decision. I don't know that the new process is helping us, and I do feel similar to Kat and Allyson, and some others as well, that instead the voting process has merely formalized and institutionalized the hand-wringing and marginalization that makes people unhappy.

I don't know what to do about it.

I think Kat may be right that maybe we just need some moderators.

I continue to feel like an ass for having opposed the creation of a Tim thread so vociferously. I now wish I had not done that. I now think that Allyson is right and we should just create it without having to wait two weeks and talk about it for four days before we actually get around to doing it.

...

I have other thoughts that also probably do not contribute any solutions, but I will post them when I can get those into some coherent order as well.