At least 2/3 of 9 to pass equates, in practice, with 66.66666.....% approval. At least 2/3 of 10 to pass equates, in practice, with 70% approval, particularly given that fractional voting by an individual is not possible. 70% is a higher threshold than 66.66...%.

It doesn't work out that way in real life.

Let's take a look at Spiff's famed "Travel with Furniture" forum and presume it was up for a vote. Let's also say that WHarvey is on record as favoring it.

Without WHarvey on TB, 6 "aye" votes are needed for it to pass -- unless two or more members abstain.

If five vote in favor, three against, and one abstains the vote has only 62.5% in favor and fails. If five vote in favor, two against, and two abstain, it passes with 71.4% of the vote.

Now, let's put WHarvey on the board, have him case his "aye" vote and imagine that everyone else voted the same way.

You would now have 6 "aye" votes, 3 against, and one abstaining. The vote passes because 2/3rds of those voting were in favor.

66.66666...% approval is easier to obtain than 70% approval in real life. Where 2/3rd of those voting must vote in favor of a motion for it to get passed AND where all TB members are voting (i.e., what I noted in my post is where all TB members vote): with 9 members on TB AND where all TB members voted, 6 votes for this motion would be sufficient to get it passed; with 10 members on TB AND where all TB members voted, 6 votes for this motion would be insufficient to get it passed.

In real life would all TB members vote? Well, I'm not sure. Let's see if all 9 vote this time or not.

Don't worry -- even if the vote passes you will soon get your "Legend" status back quickly.

Even without having posted on Omni for the past few years you are averaging 19.12 posts a day -- and already have 62 posts on this one thread, twice my total.

TB voting is based on 2/3rds of those voting. If we take WHarvey as a "yes" vote, it is indeed easier to get the 2/3rds vote with him voting.

Ok, I'll explain where I am with this motion, since we are starting to see some speculation, and try and answer this question at the same time.

When it was first kicked around on the private forum, I was probably slightly in favour. However, the same kind of question that was asked by chexfan was asked privately as well - and I realised I didn't have a good answer. I still don't have a good answer as to why we need to make the change - and I've been waiting to see if any of you guys could come up with a good answer to it, and so far, I've seen nothing to convince me that there is a good, logical reason for doing it. I've seen lots of supposition about what might be happening with newbies (although an inexperienced FTer posted to say it hadn't happened with him, and was ignored ;)), I've seen lots of posts about what people would like to happen - but nothing which answers the basic question of what is this motion trying to achieve.

So at the moment (and to go back to Gargoyle's question) I find I can't vote in favour of it. So I guess I'm opposed to it becase I can't see a good reason for it. It would be a change to FT, and to make a change, I believe one must have a reason for doing so, and not simply be acting on emotion. It doesn't actually matter what the subject is - that is a fairly basic rule for me of being on TB. I'm also slightly concerned that if one poster hadn't been acting as he had, there wouldn't be such a hue and cry about this - and I believe it's bad rule-making to be rule-making based on or spurred on by the actions of one poster.

So currently, that's where I stand. Spiff said previously that he's going to keep reading and hang off on voting - I find myself doing the same (although two pages (and I have 40 posts/page) - come on guys, I have a life too ;)).

I'm not concerned about the impact on my post count with this motion passing. I'm just not a fan of "fixing" something that you haven't presented as being broken AND that can't be addressed by things already implemented on FT.

If "fixing" things that aren't "broken" is something that TB supports, what other interesting motions should we expect just for the sake of doing something?

Perhaps you missed it or perhaps not, but you are talking about some TB members not voting while I was talking about all TB members voting. Where all TB members vote, 66.66666% is easier to achieve than 70% ... even with a wharvey in favor of the motion.

^^ Hopefully more people will come to realize that if something isn't presented as broken that can't be fixed by something already in play then it's probably not worth rocking the boat.

And perhaps you missed the entire premise -- which was that WHarvey would be the 10th member and he would be casting a "yes" vote.

With WHarvey being present, and all other 9 members voting, 6 of them would have to vote yes. Without WHarvey, 6 of them would still have to vote yes.

That in no way makes it more difficult to get the motion passed.

It is only in the case of abstentions that the 10th member (assuming he votes in favor) would have an impact -- and that would be to make it easier to pass the motion.

Guys - what happens if we have a 10th member on TB to the voting patterns isn't particularly relevant to the subject at hand?

(I don't want to have to read through another 3 pages just on this subject alone thanks ;))

Jenbel, you're right.

The entire discussion between GUWonder and myself about what would be the case if there were a 10th member on TalkBoard is simply a diversion (albeit perhaps an interesting one) and really contributes nothing to the main point of this thread.

I think it might well be a good idea if the moderators removed all the posts that he and I made concerning that issue.

Of course, this would lower both of our post counts but a diversion -- even an interesting one -- really doesn't deserve to be counted.

Omni is an interesting diversion from the main thrust of FlyerTalk -- which is to exchange travel-related information. I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that it be removed (I enjoy it too much) but as a diversion it, too, should not be considered in post counts.

IMHO - this thread itself has almost become OMNI and if so, is in the wrong Forum. I think one member has posted already 60+btimes to this thread so it in itself is starting to look like the post padding threads we are in part, hoping to address. ;)

It is not about TB voting practice and rules which has been outlined here a dozen times in ther past, and are well established, and work perfectly well. Off topic discussion of that is just that - IMHO. Off topic.

It is not about Evangelist handles.

No-one has said the TB had finished voting on this. All I said was the majority of TB had voted, and did not say who, or how they voted.

All I am ever allowed to say how I voted which I have outlined.

As Jenbel says reading through pages of total off topic materal does not assist the debate and I agree with her 100% on that.

Why have a member-elected TalkBoard, then? Why don't we just ask Randy and the Senior Moderators what they want?

You've insulted all the members who voted for you by using this logic, Glen.

As long as you represent all the members, and not just what Randy and a few Senior Moderators want.

OZ/JENBEL... I think we have heard plenty from the other TB members reasons that this is for the newbies being able to trust a response in a travel related question. Is that your understanding as well? Since you have voted, it does not matter, but is that what you understood this to be about?

For the life of me, I can not understand why the real problem of post padding was not addressed.