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BINDING VOTE: Re-vote on an old issue: RESULTS FINAL

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Axordil
Post subject: BINDING VOTE: Re-vote on an old issue: RESULTS FINAL
Posted: Fri 22 Jul , 2005 6:07 pm
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The vote is now open!

We have had 230 active users in the past 60 days, which means after the calculations we need a quorum of 41 for the vote to be officially binding.

PM your votes to Administrator, please. If you would like to help us keep track publically of the number of people who have voted by posting when you do, feel free!

RESULTS: The membership determined to leave the thread as is, but to change the disclaimer. The votes were, on the question of the disposition of the thread: 22 to leave the thread locked and on the board, 18 to delete it. On the question of the disclaimer, 33 voted to use the new proposed disclaimer, 7 to use the current one. For details on how the instant runoff winnowed results, please see the relevant posts farther down this thread.

********************

Dear Members

The Binding Vote committee considering the question of whether the disposition of the “My Presence on These Boards” thread (AKA the wilko thread) could be brought to the membership for a re-vote has determined that it can, according to Paragraph 2 Article 7of the Charter.
Quote:
A binding vote cannot be held for a proposition that has been defeated by an earlier vote during the past six months unless a genuine change of circumstances justifies holding an additional vote. It is the responsibility of the Committee to determine whether the proposed vote is allowable.
The committee considered whether members would be voting under different circumstances today than they were when they voted the first time and whether a significant number of voters would have voted differently if today's circumstances had been in effect when they voted the first time. A majority of the committee felt that in this case a genuine change of circumstances does justify holding an additional vote.

The changes of circumstance that were considered were:

1. The fact that during the discussion preceding the first vote the person who started the thread expressed a desire that the thread not be deleted, and this was persuasive for quite a few people; he has since changed his mind after seeing the effects of the thread being left visible and would now prefer to see the thread deleted. It is possible that a significant number would change their vote now that they know that wilko has also changed his mind.

2. So much content has been deleted from the thread that it is nolonger useful as an historical document.

3. The membership was inadvertently misinformed as to the effects of leaving the thread visible. There were two factors to this: First, it was suggested that what outside parties imagined to be in the thread was worse than what was actually in the thread, so that if we wanted to heal wounds, keeping the thread around might be the better strategy. Second, we incorrectly assumed that the parties involved had already seen what was in the thread, whereas they had not (they had only heard about it). As it turned out, our assessment of how inflammatory the thread was and how it would impact particular members was incorrect.

HERE IS HOW THE PROCESS WORKS

All registered members may discuss and vote in this thread.

The complete text of the ballot follows.

Before voting, we continue the discussion in this thread for ten days.

Dating from the last grammar edit of the ballot wording, that means voting will open on August 12 and run through the 22nd.

At the end of the discussion, the vote opens and remains open for ten days, two weekends inclusive. The vote takes the form of PMs to the Administrator account.

BINDING VOTE BALLOT FOLLOWS

This is a two-part ballot. Please PM your votes on both parts to Administrator.

QUESTION ONE
The first part is an Instant Runoff Vote (IRV) ballot. Please rank the following four choices according to your preference for the action to be taken on the thread.

A) Leave the thread as is. No board-sanctioned action will be taken on the thread beyond possibly changing the disclaimer (see Question Two).

B) Replace the screen names of individuals indirectly referred to in the discussion with the anonymous placeholder ***** (real-life names have already been removed). The disclaimer may also be changed (see Question Two).

C) Replace names as in B) above, and then move the edited thread to Deleted Thread Storage. Only Rangers and the Mayor can access files in this area. The disclaimer may also be changed (see Question Two).

D) Delete the thread (the thread will be removed permanently; it will not be moved to Deleted Thread Storage). According to the Charter, a thread may be deleted by boardwide vote if deemed necessary to preserve the peace, security or continuance of the board.

My ranked vote for Part One:

1)
2)
3)
4)

QUESTION TWO
The second part is a simple poll, and is dependent on the ballot above. If option D) on Question One is selected by the membership, this question becomes irrelevant. Pick one:

A) Keep the current disclaimer text:

This thread was active during the upheavals on TORC and here at board77 in the first few months of 2005. Please remember as you read that many posts were made in the heat of the moment. Also, please note that this thread is no longer active; the board has moved on from these events. However, the members of board77 have decided that to delete these threads would be counter to our principles of transparency and openness.

B) Replace the current disclaimer text with this text:

This thread was active during the upheavals on TORC and here at board77 in the first few months of 2005 and many posts were made in the heat of the moment. The comments in this and every thread represent the feelings and opinions of the individuals who posted them and are not representative of the viewpoint of the board as a whole. Keeping threads from the period before the board opened is not an endorsement of their contents, but an attempt to operate according to our stated principles of transparency and openness.

My vote for Part Two:

A or B


EDIT NOTE (8-22-05): We received 35 votes by the deadline or 1800 GMT and 6 votes after the deadline.

Everyone please read this post by Jnyusa.


Edited by TheEllipticalDisillusion as per Axordil's request on 8-2-05 at 8:15 PM EST

Edited by TheEllipticalDisillusion as per Axordil's request and Eru's suggestion on 8-2-05 at 10:04 PM EST

Edited by TheEllipticalDisillusion on 8-11-05 at 4:02 AM EST

Edited by TheEllipticalDisillusion on 8-22-05 at 6:21 EST (4 hours and 21 minutes after the vote ended.)

Last edited by Axordil on Wed 24 Aug , 2005 7:43 pm, edited 10 times in total.

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tinwe
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Posted: Sat 23 Jul , 2005 12:14 am
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Myst has been added to the Jury Room group. Have fun kids :).


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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Sat 23 Jul , 2005 4:14 pm
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I would just like to support Cerin's request that the committee's discussions not mention specific people by name. This has been troublesome in the past when eventually something that could be interpreted as offensive was said and the quality of the discussion dropped quickly.

Naming and discussing nonmembers is one of the root problems with the thread under consideration—why risk adding to the problem?

I am not saying that's certain to happen here, but I also don't see that using specific names is necessary to what you're discussing.

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Axordil
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Posted: Sat 23 Jul , 2005 5:31 pm
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Noted and discussed, Prim.


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Sassafras
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Posted: Sat 23 Jul , 2005 8:33 pm
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Is this the right thread?

:scratch

I have no idea any more which thread I am supposed to use.
By my count there are three; this one, Bike Racks, and a Symposium thread on dignity or freedom which has morphed into a quasi wilko-related issues rehash. Oh, four if Jury Room can be included. I can't post there so I will respond very briefly to something Jn. said in the JR thread.

Jnyusa wrote:
Quote:
In the first thread, 35 pages long, 51 people expressed opinions. 45 voted in the poll. Only one person voted to delete the two special threads while keeping the others, but 4 people opted to fill in the threads they wanted deleted, and I don't have access to those PM. If these two threads were among them, they were supposed to fill them in as well. 3 people wanted everything deleted, and 37 wanted everything to stay.

<snip>

In the Bike Racks thread, 22 pages long, 36 people have posted. That's 29% fewer people interested, for what it's worth. The other way to look at it is to say that 71% of the people who discussed the issue before felt it was worth discussing again.

The issues themselves do not seem to have changed - there's transparency/accountability vs. personal hurt.
I'll speak only for myself although I venture to guess that there are several more who hold a similar opinion.

It isn't so much that I'm no longer interested, it's more like I'm burned out. Despite not posting vociferously in any of the 'angst' threads I read everything that is written and try to take all views into consideration.
The sturm und drang that seems to accompany virtually every move on this board is rapidly creating ennui, at least in me it is.

Estel said something in one of those threads which struck a responsive chord in me, (paraphrase) ... I want to enjoy b77 not endure it.

While I can sympathise with hurt feelings I do not, at this point, consider it sufficient motivation to re-vote on an issue (wilko's thread) that was so recently decided. Btw, I am one of the 37 who voted to leave all questionable threads visable.

We are who we are. We said what we said. We take responsibility for our words and deleting some of them now will not alter the fact that they were said.

Okay. So the current issue is "have circumstances changed sufficiently to nullify a previous vote on a particular thread?"

No. They have not.

<sigh>

<How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?>
.
.
.
.
.

Edit: because I can't spell Jnyusa's name properly.

<thwacks self with SoC>

Last edited by Sassafras on Sun 24 Jul , 2005 1:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Axordil
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Posted: Sat 23 Jul , 2005 9:08 pm
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Sassy--

I was going to say that the procedure doesn't nullify the previous vote unless a revote goes against it, but in a way the act of revoting is a nullification, as the previous vote ceases to be binding and the new vote becomes binding. So in a way you're right.

Never mind. :D

On the is this the right place question...yes. We have closed or are closing the other threads related directly to the decision. The Symposium threads are related but not directly so and are still open for discussion of larger related issues (as I see them)


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truehobbit
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Posted: Sat 23 Jul , 2005 10:48 pm
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The Symposium threads osgiliated a bit into discussing a particular problem, but it's to be hoped that they get back to discussing the general problem, which I find extremely important for this board!

For the particular problem we have this thread and the one in the Jury Room.

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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Mon 25 Jul , 2005 4:22 pm
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About the issue of where the committee discussion should be taking place—I think Hobby is right that the committee can discuss in the jury room and that the charter language is about the member discussion after the issue is brought to them (if it is).

It would just be too confining to try to carry on a linear committee discussion here, and polls would be impossible as anyone could anonymously vote in them.

It's bad enough in the Jury Room when two committees are posting at once.

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truehobbit
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Posted: Mon 25 Jul , 2005 5:22 pm
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Thanks, Prim! :)
Quote:
It's bad enough in the Jury Room when two committees are posting at once.
I've never even thought of this! :Q
Although, if we get more votes than there are committee members, we'll know that something is fishy. ;)
(But yes, it would mean that votes are invalid.)

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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Mon 25 Jul , 2005 5:28 pm
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Hey, I almost voted in Ax's straw poll out of sheer habit. :P

I managed to stop myself, though.

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Axordil
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Posted: Mon 25 Jul , 2005 5:29 pm
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Don't make me get the salmon out. :devil:


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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Tue 26 Jul , 2005 11:36 pm
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With regard to the fact that there was apparently an extra vote in the straw poll (and no, it wasn't me—I still have to click View Results ;) ), I don't think it ought to be necessary to de-Jury Room the charter committee for the next vote. I feel certain the extra vote was an accident and won't be repeated.

One way around would be to make sure everyone reports "voted" and how they voted, and only count committee members' votes. After all, almost all the charter committee votes were openly posted ballots, and that's kind of the idea of having committees discuss where members can read what they say. Ballot secrecy is for when the general membership votes.

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Axordil
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Posted: Wed 27 Jul , 2005 3:52 am
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Prim--

I tend to agree that an open vote is the easiest way to avoid odd tallies.


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Axordil
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Posted: Wed 27 Jul , 2005 5:20 pm
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This would be the time for suggestions on ballot wording, choices, et al!


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wilko185
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Posted: Wed 27 Jul , 2005 7:53 pm
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V in the Jury room wrote:
As for laureanna's last paragraph, while I share some of Jn's concerns about over-explaining, and for that reason would likely not vote for that option, I would not be opposed to including an option on the ballot that included adding that text, if wilko gave his approval.
It has my approval, if there is a feeling it should be included :). I was asked for my opinion on laureanna's full text, and while I didn't "approve" of it all, I couldn't actually object to it being edited in, as long as it was clearly labelled as a Ranger edit.
tp wrote:
Quite frankly, after we vote, I never want to hear about wilko's thread ever again. If people have a thread to discuss it again, I will not be reading it. It's been discussed so far to death that we'd be incarcerated for heinous cruelty to animals the likes of which this world has never seen, if it was a horse.
Amen :D


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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Thu 28 Jul , 2005 4:37 pm
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About the definition of an invite thread:

It never was the thread content that determined that. It was the understanding under which people posted. Threads in the Invites forum were covered by the understanding that they would be deleted before the invitee saw them—that the persons discussed would never have the opportunity of seeing what was said. That was considered to be the only way people would feel comfortable speaking their minds.

Wilko's thread was not an Invites thread. It didn't start in that forum, and the people posting in it were not doing so with the understanding that the thread would be deleted before those discussed could see it.

I also want to mention for new members reading this that the vast, vast majority of posts in Invites threads were along the lines of "Sounds great! I vote yes!" The rule gave people the opportunity to object, but at least for the months I was here reading those threads, there was almost never any objection of any kind. We are not talking about a vast mine of negative gossip.

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Axordil
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Posted: Thu 28 Jul , 2005 4:39 pm
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And since the invite threads of people who were invited were deleted automatically (sorta) when they showed up, only the problem threads were left undeleted when we approached opening.


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Jnyusa
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Posted: Thu 28 Jul , 2005 4:44 pm
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The other thing I would like to add for the sake of new members is that if you came here after the board was opened, that does not mean that you were considered for an invitation and rejected. We stopped the invite process because so many people were coming in that we could not handle the growth, and there were many, many people who were proposed for invites but for whom threads were never started because we decided to wait and open the board instead.

Jn

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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Thu 28 Jul , 2005 4:45 pm
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Actually, there were still quite a few threads for people who'd been invited but never registered. So even the threads deleted before opening were mostly positive.

Another thing I'd want to be sure new members understand is that invites were abruptly shut down for the charter discussion before we could even begin to discuss a lot of people who would certainly otherwise have been invited. So if you never got invited here, that doesn't mean you were voted down—it reflects the fact that the process closed down early.

Edit: Cross-posted with Jn. Yes, there was a long, long, long list of people who would certainly have been proposed if there had been time, and more were added every week while invites were closed, in case the board voted not to open.

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Axordil
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Posted: Thu 28 Jul , 2005 4:51 pm
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The "queue" for invites was a verrrrrry long thread. :) But I am still glad it's gone. :D


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