Wait. I thought the voting process was going to address PRIMARILY thread creation. Now we want thread creation to be a separate procedure?

No. WE do not want thread creation to be a separate procedure. I suggested it as AN EXAMPLE of something that we might want as a separate procedure. I learned my lesson last time. I will never, ever propose anything again.

FWIW, I do think the voting procedure is overkill for thread creation. I think it has great value for discussing how we run the board.

I know, askye. this is why I'm making the points that I'm trying to make.

This whole thing has turned into an unhappy, hurty thing for a lot of people - exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to do.

I want you and Allyson and Steph to not feel stupid when you come in here. It makes me unhappy when you and they feel dense.

I want Burrell and Cindy to not feel like the room is full of seriously crazy people when they stop by.

I want Bureaucracy to not make people cry any more. Voting was supposed to make people less unhappy with the process that we had. In some ways, it has made people much more unhappy than ever before.

I want that to stop, because I want my Buffistas to be happy, even the ones I disagree with completely and think should be locked away where they can't infect others with their dangerous thoughts.

And now maybe I should step off for a while. I wanted to make some points, but now I'm just talking myself in circles and making the waters just as muddy as everyone else.

ita, 12 was top-of-my-head. I'd be happy with 5, seriously. (Edit: or 50.) But I'm pro-proliferation in general -- as long as the bandwidth is okay, I have no problem with a juggling bologna thread, if that's what people want.

But I remember the process of starting threads through discussion. It sucked out loud -- people changed their minds and it was very hard to get a read on the Will of the Buffistas and the term "bullshit consensus" started getting thrown around. If, say, 42 people had to agree on a thread before one was started ... we're talking hundreds of not-that-interesting posts to wade through, and the possibility no decision would ever become clear.

I'd rather avoid that, even if the voting seems rather overkilly.

It's not the number that's the problem for me. It's the methodology.

I don't see any problems with a vote, barring the week delay. And I can live with that.

It's not the number that's the problem for me. It's the methodology.

I don't see any problems with a vote, barring the week delay. And I can live with that.

Yes.

And we've never even used the process for its intended purpose. We've only used it to further bog down the process.

We need to try it before we chuck it.

Here's what we did: We actually did decide that at least 42 people had to care enough to show up to vote yea/nay on thread creation, and that at least 22 of those people had to vote yea, if we were going to create it.

That's all we were doing - and we detailed ourselves to death in the doing.

I think I'm agreeing with you, ita. What I was trying to say was, in theory, it would be great if 12 people agreed they wanted a "GUnn is HOTT" thread and a Stompy created it.

In paractice, it doesn't work, and it doesn't work in ways that annoyed me much more than voting.

That said, I really hope the grandfathering is he last procedural vote unless an extreme situation arises.

Here is something I am noticing-- the tendency for one thing that one person says becomes a "everyone but me thinks...."

To me also, voting was primarily for thread creation. That is the only concrete reason I had for wanting it. I didn't want to have to keep following the thread and figuring out if I thought that enough people thought we should have the thread. Since some people care deeply about anti-proliferation, we really need to be able to see that a preponderance of the Buffistas want the thread by counting. Barring someone actually going through and counting people on the thread-- we do it by a voting interface. That is all it is. All the other stuff-- the anger, the frustration, that is at the nitpicking. If we were talking F2F, I don't think this would happen at all.

Here is something I am noticing-- the tendency for one thing that one person says becomes a "everyone but me thinks...."

Yes. This.

Also very much related to that is for people to see a conversation in here and react as if the topic of conversation was about three seconds away from becoming unalterable LAW, somehow.

This comment, BTW, is not directed at Cindy, or Burrell, or anybody. I've seen a number of people do it, and it makes me wonder why people are having that reaction.

Not to single out Burrell, but her reaction this morning really surprised me. We were just discussing something (and quite frankly, in all the process stuff, I'd forgotten that voting was primarily for thread creation), but coming in here and seeing people talking about it as maybe not working, she got sort of exasperated.

I personally would have prefered if she had chosen some other way to react - a calm reminder that voting was specifically for thread creation, and we haven't had a chance to test it for that purpose yet.

But this is the real problem - so many people come in here, and rather than simply trying to engage the argument, they react as if the barbarians were at the gates.

Again, I'm NOT singling Burrell out here, NOR do I have any wish to dictate her reactions to things.

It was just a convenient example of what I'm trying to understand - how has this place and process gotten so frustrating for everybody.

I think a large part of it is people over reacting to the things that get discussed in here. But were like that, as people, in that we have all kinds, including people who react big. Can anything be done about this, short of forcing people to turn into emotionless automatons?

I'm not sure it's always overreacting. Sometimes it's undercaring, at least in my case.

The "you're going to go over this AGAIN????" reaction is greeted by me stepping away from the thread. Silently. The effect of saying "I'm out" helps point out the effect, but I'm too lazy for it.

Because, really, there are things I don't care enough about to even read another rehashing of.

What it's really boiled down to is that we should all strive to be more like ita.

IJS.