Mal ,'Safe'
A thread to discuss naming threads, board policy, new thread suggestions, and anything else that has to do with board administration and maintenance. Guaranteed to include lively debate and polls. Natter discouraged, but not deleted.
Current Stompy Feet: ita, Jon B, DXMachina, P.M. Marcontell, Liese S., amych
Tops, there are 200 Buffistas who post with regularity. There are 1000 Buffistas. That scares me.
In practice, though, there are also less than 200 voting Buffistas. I've never been a vote counter, but from the numbers, it really looks to me like the voters are the contributing members of the community.
I don't like that lurkers can vote.
What about someone who reads the threads religiously, but is too shy to post?
IIRC, when someone had to post the list of people who'd already voted on one of our ballots to solve some technical glitch or other, there was only one name I didn't recognize. So I don't think we have a huge problem of non-participants skewing our votes.
I acknowledged they don't seem to vote. I still don't like the potential there.
I'd like to think that we don't have a huge problem with anything right now and that this whole discussion is purely theoretical, inspired by some interesting ideas in that article.
Would posting once count, Cindy? How recently would they have to have posted?
And what if all they post is "Wrod"?
And does it count more if they post "Porn!"?
What? It seemed like a Buffista sort of question...
I'm sorry if I'm sounding flippant about this. I think my point is that coming up with a system to determine who can vote would be orders of magnitude more destructive to the community than any theoretical benefit it would bring (I say "theoretical" because "undesirables" voting hasn't appeared to be a problem yet).
I'd like to think that we don't have a huge problem with anything right now and that this whole discussion is purely theoretical, inspired by some interesting ideas in that article.
I think it is, Jon.
But, you know? I'd rather have this kind of vaguely-touchy and unsettling discussion now, rather than in the middle of some crisis. If we're going to talk about it, do it when it's not currently loaded with emotion and affecting decisions right away.
But I'm kind of an academic and I love to talk theoretically, so perhaps I'm not representative. I know that for a lot of people these are emotional topics.