There are a couple of good suggestions within the
close the recently created Premium Deals forum thread, which I think are worthy of a separate discussion as they are of much wider interest.
Announcing votes
Originally Posted by
tom911
But whose responsibility is it to alert the members of any particular forum? I've posted links before when I've seen a topic being discussed in the Talk Board forum that might be of interest to users in an individual forum, and I've seen other members do the same thing when OMNI changes were afoot, alerting members in that forum. I don't think FT has any rule spelling out "who" has to alert the members in a specific forum. In this case, you could have been the member to alert others in the existing thread when you saw the discussion here. There's just nothing in the rules that requires the forum moderators or Talk Board members to bear that responsibility. Any member can take on that task on and post the message. Maybe it's something the new Talk Board would want to create policy on.
Wasn't there a decision a few years ago that all Talk Board motions/votes-in-progress would display as a banner across all the forums of FT, much like the election banner I've seen this week (mine doesn't appear today but I have seen it a few times this week)? Did that banner not appear to alert all members they were considering a motion and voting on a new forum? Wouldn't that be adequate notice if it appeared?
edited to add: Here's the motion the Talk Board passed in 2011 requiring the notification across all forums:
On 16 May 2011, the TalkBoard passed 9-0:
Moved by bhatnasx and seconded by SkiAdcock:
D. Public Notice Procedures
i. Once a motion has been put before TalkBoard for a vote the Vice President/Secretary shall post a new thread in the public TalkBoard Topics forum announcing the vote along with the voting end date as quickly as feasible.
to a revised section 4.D.i.:
D. Public Notice Procedures
i. Once a motion has been put before TalkBoard for a vote the Vice President/Secretary shall post a new thread in the public TalkBoard Topics forum announcing the vote along with the voting end date as quickly as feasible. Once that thread is posted, the TalkBoard Vice President/Secretary will submit a request to the FlyerTalk Host or representative to create an site-wide announcment of the vote with a link to the discussion/voting thread in the TalkBoard Topics Forum. The Announcement will be available until either voting is completed and a decision is made or the voting period ends.
Voting yes: bhatnasx, Cholula, jackal, lucky9876coins, Markie, nsx, SkiAdcock, Spiff, UA_Flyer
Stand-down period before voting commences
Originally Posted by
tom911
The Talk Board needs to come up with something better. If a member doesn't regularly follow the Talk Board forum, and the site-wide announcements aren't getting out before the voting concludes, maybe there should be a period of time that you can't vote so members can participate in the discussion. For instance, introduce a motion and require at least 5 days before the voting can commence so members can give feedback.