One thought though…
Given my own interests and abilities, I would love to have a site where serious critiques of bad math, science and statistics can be exposed.and discussed in a serious manner.

Therefore, my compromise – I grant you a license to copy and paste the post. The requirements are, in short, you credit A. Cat as either the author, if you use it as-is, or as a contributing author if you add to it.

Obvously, if you or anyone else set out to set up a news bureau, I’d like to know about it.

Best I can do.

Mew

Thanks!

Lets say you used a standard like and dislike system. You could set it up in 2 ways(maybe more).

1. Is that only topics that got a certain % of likes and certain threshold of votes move to the next stage.
2. A certain number of topics are picked(lets say 10 at first increasing up to 50) and the ones with the best %’s will go to the next stage.

Which means that essentially voting could start early and remain open and since like and dislike % will generally follow the averages then you wont really have to worry about ones moving all that much anyway. Nor would discussion be made endless because after a certain period of time further discussion would unlikely be able to significantly impact like and dislike numbers that much(most people don’t change their mind on something they dislike or like).

A deadlined vote would work to though.

But at least an idea occurred.

Thanks for all your input.

But at least an idea occurred.

Thanks for all your input.

You raised the issue of a place for donors. I presume this means donations to the causes we’re pursuing? At that point, wouldn’t I have to look at forming a PAC or some sort of non-profit? (Forgive my ignorance; I’m a theoretician by academic training, and these sort of practical details fascinate me, but I am often ignorant of them. But I’m learning!). Might it be simpler in the beginning for us to direct donations to people/organizations/causes and self-fund for the sort of things we ourselves would do, assuming they are really inexpensive to do? Your thoughts on this would be much appreciated.

It got me to thinking: per the thread outlay mentioned, we could have a perpetually open one. A ‘suggestion box’ if you will. We site leaders can look at it, and anyone else on the site can, and if the issue is important enough to us, we can just stick on to the agenda. If not, there is the general agenda-setting meeting, where members/guests/contributors can bring it up in front of everybody, and put it to an eventual vote/recommend process. (Also, please note that for the site mgmt to add an issue to the agenda will involve some process, so that it doesn’t give the appearance of snubbing members’ concerns or opinions. For instance, if it an issue all mgmt agrees on w/o hesitation, something related to Obamacare, it is highly unlikely that the membership in general would oppose adding it to the agenda. If on the other hand, there is considerable difference of opinion, we will put it up for a vote, along with all the other issues.)

What we could do is vote again at regular intervals on the issues from the previous polls, which didn’t make the action list. Or even leave the poll thread open; as the situation changes/goals are accomplished, issues which were earlier not regarded as top priority become so.

What do you think?