2301

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Deleted posts

« on: December 08, 2013, 10:34:50 PM »

They wouldn't hide it so other users couldn't read it and have a passing opinion on the matter. I just found that a strange course of action.

I agree, and I apologise for taking the action I did. I've been pretty stressed out the past week by the fact that I'm suddenly running this place and people are depending on me to make the hosting side of things work and haven't had much sleep as a result. I hope you can bear with me if I've seemed short or irritable.

Hopefully things will stabilise soon. We should have some better-defined rules in the next day or two.

2302

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Deleted posts

« on: December 08, 2013, 10:12:58 PM »

On the old site, nothing was ever deleted. this is different. we haven't got a set of rules. Are you going to be deleting posts you don't like on a regular basis?

This had nothing to do with me not liking your posts. I don't particularly like the post I'm replying to now, but since it's appropriate for the thread, I'm replying to it rather than deleting it.

2303

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Deleted posts

« on: December 08, 2013, 10:10:07 PM »

The posts were moved into a non-public forum. I didn't want the thread to be derailed into a discussion of EJ's ban, and you didn't have enough content for me to move it to S&C, so into Quarantine they went.

why not CN?

Do I need a reason to not do something? You could as well ask why I didn't move them into Flat Earth Information Repository.

2304

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Deleted posts

« on: December 08, 2013, 10:08:54 PM »

The posts were moved into a non-public forum. I didn't want the thread to be derailed into a discussion of EJ's ban, and you didn't have enough content for me to move it to S&C, so into Quarantine they went.

2305

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Zetetic Council

« on: December 08, 2013, 08:11:33 PM »

I'm happy with this. Will you oversee it as you have abstained from its inclusion?

You can explain the rules and we'll get on with it.

No problem. I'll explain how preferential voting works once we have a list of nominees.

As an aside, I see no problem with self-nomination, nor multiple nominations per person. The election will whittle down candidates based on public opinion; you don't need nominations for that.

2306

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Zetetic Council

« on: December 08, 2013, 07:53:01 PM »

Then we can make a thread, give everyone 5 votes

For preferential voting to work properly, you'll want people to be able to vote for the entire list of candidates in order from 1 to n.

If and when you end up deciding that this is the way you want to go, I'm happy to explain and/or oversee the electing process if requested.

2307

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Zetetic Council

« on: December 08, 2013, 07:38:23 PM »

The people who are here. Give everyone a vote. They are the people that suppoerted this new forum and they are the ones who are helping to build a new society.
We have no noobs. We have no trolls (you just banned the only one). Lets just vote. Whatever will be.

That's a reasonable argument. Let's do that.

I'm going to duck out for now, as I've steered the discussion more than I intended to. I'm happy to act as mediator for the election, given that I have both a reasonable knowledge of voting systems and a lack of interest in being on the Council myself. Let me know if you want me to do so, but it's your choice.

2308

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Zetetic Council

« on: December 08, 2013, 07:32:40 PM »

Ok, work something out and tell me what happens. This is getting ridiculous.

If I can't vote, I can't be a part of organising it either for the same reasons.

I don't agree. There's no reason you can't be part of the discussion. I'm not an official member either, but I'm happy to accept that I don't get a vote this election as a result.

If you would prefer to decouple this Society from the old one and define an "official member" in some other way, I'm all ears, but I don't see an easy way to define that.

If a zentic council is formed, doesn't that essentially mean a few society is being formed?

Yes, which brings us back to the matter of how to define "official member" for the purposes of this election.


I don't like this way of defining voting privileges any more than you do, but I don't see a fairer alternative. If somebody can come up with one, I will be more than happy to listen.

2309

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Zetetic Council

« on: December 08, 2013, 07:27:14 PM »

So now I can't vote on the election.

Why should you be able to vote in an election pertaining to a Society you aren't a member of?

2310

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Zetetic Council

« on: December 08, 2013, 07:25:09 PM »

I'm not on the list of official members.

And?

2311

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Zetetic Council

« on: December 08, 2013, 07:23:35 PM »

Well you aren't making this very easy.

It's not an easy problem to solve. Let's take the time to get it right.

Picking people we deem to give a shit, or that we like isn't very fair or democratic.

I agree. That's why I think official member status is a good measure to go by.

The old website has a register of all official FES members. Some of them won't be registered on this forum, of course, but if we establish the set of users here who are official members, then we have the set of people who can vote.

It's not a perfect measure, and it means I won't get a vote, but at least it's fair and consistent.

I also think we should have periodic elections of this nature by all official members. I would actually sign up as an official member if we had a Society run by someone who isn't Daniel, and I suspect many others would do likewise.

2312

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Zetetic Council

« on: December 08, 2013, 07:16:13 PM »

Anyone who held an account on the old forum for more than 12 months?

That would exclude you, unless you can prove you ever had an account other than this one:

http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=194682

It would also include anyone who made an account and spammed AR for a year.

No, we can't base this solely on time or posts spent on the forum.

2313

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Zetetic Council

« on: December 08, 2013, 07:12:37 PM »

Great. Make the list and lets get voting.

The first step in my outline was to define the process for electing candidates. This includes the fairly important step of determining who is allowed to vote.

Allowing any forum member to vote would include spam bots, noobs and alts, which is definitely not what we want. I like the idea of restricting the vote to official members, if we can decide how to define an official member on this forum.

Suggestions?

2314

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Zetetic Council

« on: December 08, 2013, 07:09:57 PM »

We are going to have a vote on every single member? That will take weeks.

You don't need to have a separate vote for every single member. The method of electing Australian Senators can be trivially adapted for our use case. It uses preferential voting, so people would vote on a list of candidates from 1 to n, and after counting up all the votes we would have a decision.

This does require in advance to know how many Council members we want. I would suggest starting with five; keep things small until such time as we know they need to grow.

I think we have a pretty good idea already, don't we? Can't we just start with a list and argue until people don't care anymore?

No.

2315

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Zetetic Council

« on: December 08, 2013, 07:05:04 PM »

We're going about this backwards.

Let's first determine how the decision for inclusion is going to be made. There's no point rattling off lists of names until we have established that.

Personally, I would be in favour of election by all official FES members, but then there is the question of if an "official FES member" is different here from what it is on the old site. Once we have worked that out, I would determine what number of votes is required for entry to the Council.

Then, and only then, I would call for nominations, with nominees required to either be official FES members themselves, or else be nominated by official FES members.

Throwing lists of names around the place is not the way to conduct an election.

2316

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Nelson Mandella is dead

« on: December 08, 2013, 06:53:08 PM »

What a load of BS no moron gonna actuley beleive that crud and this obvz based off rascist views (hmm...who might that be?)

Have a week off to cool down some.

2317

Announcements / Re: Permanent forum staff assignments have been made

« on: December 08, 2013, 06:19:39 PM »

Out of curiosity, why gayer? Also 31465

Gayer has proven herself to be a capable moderator on the old forum.

2318

Announcements / Re: Permanent forum staff assignments have been made

« on: December 08, 2013, 06:10:29 PM »

To me that just means they're not taking this forum seriously. It's not a problem per se, but if they decide to just stick with the other forum then you'll have to replace them. And what happens if the other forum starts to pick up traffic?

They have been decent moderators on the old forum, and I see no reason to believe that they won't continue to be decent moderators here. I'd rather not prejudge them based on their posting habits elsewhere.

2319

Announcements / Re: Permanent forum staff assignments have been made

« on: December 08, 2013, 06:05:36 PM »

Regardless, jroa and Gayer are still active. Their heart is not in the split.

Why is that an issue?

2320

Announcements / Re: Permanent forum staff assignments have been made

« on: December 08, 2013, 05:56:35 PM »

But some of these mods are still active mods on the other site.

I wasn't aware there was anything left to moderate.