Nutty - You can send me your document and I can work on it and we don't need to even mention it here until a beta version is all done.

I propose "Firefly 3: Big Damn Zombies, Sir."

Hee!

Yes!

Allyson, quit hogging all the fault! I'll take my half too, and I apologize to the board for any recent handwringings I might have caused.

Don't forget to share, you two. There's plenty of fault for everyone to get some.

Well, as the one who asked some specific questions of Allyson, and seemed to stir this rutting kerfuffle up again, I think I have a portion of that blame coming my way. And as a newbie, that racks up bonus mileage (or something).

Okay all, I'm going to be really honest here, and it's embarassing.

I don't understand the language you use.

I don't understand what a quorum is.

I didn't understand what preferential voting meant until Kristen explained it to me in about eight words all under two syllables.

I don't understand the language used in the proposals.

I don't like to vote because I don't know whether a YES vote means that I want something, or that I don't want something.

You're speaking 72 IQ points above me.

And i am so tired of feeling stupid. It makes me angry, embarassed, and pissed off.

And i am so tired of feeling stupid. It makes me angry, embarassed, and pissed off.

WORD.

When proposals are made, with their user-complainants and the heretofores and the whatnots and wherefores, I get confused. If I can't understand the proposal, I figure I won't understand the ensuing discussion -- then I look in Lightbulb to make sure, and yep. There's a lot of posts I don't understand. So I don't follow the discussion, and I don't vote because I don't understand the proposal or what I should be voting for.

I'm a college-educated professional, so I don't think it's that I'm stupid.

It's frustrating. I still don't understand what the grandfather proposal does.

I'm sorry, Wolfram. I shouldn't have used you as an example. That was rude.

Me too, Betsy. I've felt bad all night about snipping at you, and this is the first time I'm gotten back to a computer to apologize. After this post, I'm stepping back from right hand threads for a few days for my sake as much as everyone else's.

There's a lot of posts I don't understand.

And this. I'm a law school grad and I find myself having to read some of the voting mumbo-jumbo over and over and sometimes it still doesn't sink in. So count me among the educated and stupid people too.

See y'all in the lefties.

I still don't understand what the grandfather proposal does.

Right now, after we vote on something, no one can bring up the same topic again for six months. This was one of the main selling points of having voting -- that old decisions wouldn't be continuously revisited. The grandfather proposal extends the "six-month-rule" to decisions that we made before we started voting on things. For simplicity, Betsy proposed that no old decisions could be revisited until Sept. 20 (six months after she first made the proposal).

That doesn't mean that all old decisions are going to be revisited on Sept. 20. Just that they can't be reviewed before that date.

Is that more clear?

The grandfather proposal is ... odd.

If we discussed a topic--the war thread seems to be the most often-used example--and it was dropped by agreement, but never voted on, it could be brought up again for proposal. So can anything that was decided by general agreement before voting was standardized and formalized.

By grandfathering in all decisions made before we voted, it means none of those things can be brought up for the period of six months' moratorium. If we choose not to grandfather in everything the board ever decided those decisions can be challenged, brought up the same as new topics, put up for a vote, and possibly overturned, even if they are already in practice.

Did I get that right?

xpost with Jon, who said it better.

FWIW, both "quorum" and "preferential voting" were so confusing to the rank and file that (a) we spent hundreds and hundreds of posts trying to explain to each other what they really meant and (b) we abandoned using both phrases back in February or so, because they were only getting in the way.

It's entirely legit to be confused about what something means; I went ahead and made a fool of myself this afternoon by misinterpreting something and blundering into a completely different issue from what was on the table. And then I asked what was going on, and then I figured it out, and then I felt stupid.

If we are willing to ask, and keep asking, and keep asking, the talk will get back to comprehensible-land eventually. This is the first time I've heard a complaint that the proposals/ballots are phrased in a confusing way -- it's good to keep in mind, for proposers and ballot-writers, so they'll avoid writing a ballot that's so confusing everyone just votes it down or just doesn't vote. But it's hard to know that someone is confused if nobody admits they're confused.