SkiAdcock

As mentioned before, it is not the norm for voting to finish in 24 hours. Nor is it the norm for whether a motion will pass/not pass to be done in the first 24 hours. Please don't imply that it is. As someone who voted 49 times I know it's not.

Because it is not the norm, TB technically doesn't need to change anything. However, to make sure there isn't an issue* moving forward TB is pro-actively looking at amending the guidelines.

* Even with a time lag implemented, that still won't necessarily mean that people will notice the site wide announcement or care enough about something that's being voted on to come to the forum to participate. Nor will it change folk posting their unhappiness if a decision is made that they don't like even if others do.

Cheers.

SkiAdcock

koko's potential motion isn't a final one & as I mentioned, we know where he wants to go with it but the wording isn't really going to get him there. It will get changed.

Let's also clarify something. There was discussion in 2012, 2013, & 2014 re: the premium fare forum. The motion wasn't created out of thin air*, and it was even tweaked based on input in the 2014 discussion thread before it was formally made into a motion. If the sitewide announcement had gone up there may or may not have been additional input before voting concluded.

It figures with Murphy's Law that the one time something got decided so quickly that it would turn out to be a hot issue.

* Motions in general (for those not familiar with TB) are not done out of thin air or because TB has nothing better to do. Usually they come about from discussions in the public forum & are discussed both in the public & private forum.

Cheers.

lin821

True, but with implemented time lag, at least TB could justify the final decisions because members were given the opportunities to have their say.

tcook052

I don't need to imply anything as the public record shows that when you include this vote to create the Citibank | ThankYou Rewards forum there actually have been 3 occasions this year of 24 hours or less between formal motion posting and close of balloting. Three times is hardly an outlier and is to me a clear trend of snap voting than seems to becoming the norm.

MSPeconomist

Please be more careful in the words you use. That vote, on the Citi/ThankYou forum, got the requisite six yes votes to PASS within 24 hours, specifically August 20-21 a period of about twenty hours, but the VOTE did not close until September 2, roughly thirteen days.

tcook052

Yes an oversight however doesn't change the fact that despite voting not closing TB still announced a motion and passed it within 24 hours, something that it did 3 times this year according to public record and to me that's a trend and not not the one-off as is being implied happened in the creation of the Premium Fare deals forum.

lin821

Protocols are mostly challenged when the least unexpected and/or outliers happen, which gives us the opportunities to checks and balances then improve.

On top of my head, I can think of 2 things in the past that were not the norm but made us reconsider status quo and later implement in a newer TB Guidelines:

1. Eligibility of TB candidates;
2. Abstain votes.

Neither issue was the norm, but that didn't make it any less important. The most recent Premium Fare Deals Forum motion just highlighted another neglected aspect of current TB Guidelines that indeed calls for attention in 2015 TBers. YMMV.

MSPeconomist

I agree with you. I'm just saying that not everyone on TB has been rushing to vote as quickly as possible. In the three examples, the evidence just says that (at least) six TB members voted almost instantly (within approximately the first 24 hours), not that everyone on TB does this.

In fact, I've been annoyed this year at the pressure to vote quickly versus taking the time to go back and carefully reread the entire thread about the issue and think about it (sometimes printing out the thread in order to facilitate seeing whether the positive and negative comments are from a small group of people repeatedly stating their opinion in the thread versus many different people expressing their opinions) in addition to participating and reading posts as they appear.

SkiAdcock

You do realize that we're in agreement, right? My stating that it's not the norm doesn't mean I don't agree the process can't be tweaked/improved & have said that in both the premium forum closed thread, in this one, and in the private TB forum (even before this thread got started).

Cheers.

kokonutz

Actually, this may have happened a LOT in the past (a motion getting the requisite 6 votes yes or 4 votes no LONG before the voting closed and the final announcement was made).

But relatively recently a new policy was put in place by the TB to announce when the requisite votes were achieved even if the final vote had not yet been cast (the reasoning being that it was cruel to have people continue to bang away debating an issue when the matter had already been settled and we were just waiting for the last votes to trickle in).

So this phenomenon has only been measurable for a relatively short period of time.

Which is interesting. But also moot, as it seems to me that the TB now realizes there is a problem, and the only question left is how exactly to fix it. ^

MSPeconomist

You're more optimistic than I am. I don't think that everyone on TB appreciates the problem.

kokonutz

Then I will MAKE them!!! BWWWWAAAAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

SkiAdcock

Speaking of which, koko I started the thread in the private forum so that we could tweak your potential motion. As I mentioned I know where you want to go with it, but the way it's worded won't get us to it. Since it's your post I can't copy it in the private forum, so if you would be kind enough to copy/paste it into that thread we can work on it. Don't head off for that turkey & pumpkin pie just yet.

Cheers.

kokonutz

As posted in the private TB forum:

Here's the issue: our voting procedures and the public notice procedures are two separate sections of the guidelines.

So the idea of my proposal is:

Someone makes a motion and it gets a second. The President does not post the poll and call for the vote for at least 72 hours. After that, the Pres posts the poll and off we go.

Meanwhile, at the Legion of Doom...

As immediately as possible after the motion is made and seconded, the Vice President/Secretary starts a new thread in the public TB Topics forum with the motion and notes that voting will commence in 72 hours, and at the same time pings Carol to ask her to please do a site-wide announcement.

That leaves 2-3 days between the public and site-wide announcement and the start of voting.

Another option is to rewrite both sections to be a single section that includes all of the steps.

But I think I may be too lazy to draft that.

And here is the coded proposed amendment in case anyone wants to cut and paste and monkey around with it:

And here is how that motion might look:

The TB recommends that the TB Guidelines be amended thus:

SkiAdcock

As I mentioned in the private & public forum, I've got some edits/tweaks as I know where you're going but with wording we're not quite getting there.

Cheers.