Mise: That question is irrelevant, since
1) We don't hold the survey an adequate measure of people's opinion on the matter, and
2) Even if we did, ultimately, the merge is up for the admins decide.
Then why did you bother? Also - were any of the admins participating in drafting these questions? Did any of them participate in the discussions?
Still, as a theoretical question, if people are asked how they would organize the Colosseum, and they don't mention the merging the OTs, I don't see any other reasonable way to read it than that they don't actively support it. There was for example nomentions that the Sci and Tech should be merged with Humor and Jokes. Thus, I presume that none of the repliers actively support that. If someone thinks that the OTs should be merged, I think it can be safely assumed that he'd also write that as an answer to that question.
But if you merged the Science/Tech forum with Humor & Jokes, that would be the perfect place to post Chemistry Cat lols!
Mind you, I'd never see it since the humor forum here is not funny.
Yes. The questions weren't discussed so thoroughly in the staff, since we felt it's better to have some idea of people's opinion rather than to delay it for ages. This is the downside of getting things done quickly.
The downside is that you have far less useful data, and I predict yet another go-around with similar questions because of your (plural your) really bizarre assumptions that you know what people are thinking when they specifically
don't reply to a particular question.
1) We have already held several polls, every single one of which showing a clear majority opposing the split
2) Yes yes I realise our opinions are irrelevant. Well, to be fair, not all opinions are irrelevant -- just the ones that disagree with the admins.
I've been talking about the theoretical question as well. They may well not actively support the merge, but you seem to be taking "not actively supporting" to mean "opposing". The fact that you don't claim to have any motivation for making this weird inference makes it all the more baffling that you'll continue to make it.
This guff about "discussing" the questions annoys me too. It would have been quite easy to ask the question directly: "Do you like the split or would you rather remerge the OTs?" You don't have to set up a question asking committee and hold 10 day talks on the proper wording of the question. You just ask a simple "split or merge" question. Why didn't you do that? Is it because you already knew what the answer would be? Did you write the question in such a vague and inconclusive way exactly because you wanted to later claim that no conclusions could be drawn from it?
Of course, the answer to all of that is "no". How silly of me! You did it quickly because you were rushed and hence the question lacked clarity. It's impossible to ask a clear question without deliberating and discussing it for weeks, months even. How silly of me to think otherwise.
There seems to be an assumption that if people don't say anything about a topic, that means they're against it... wow. What currently passes for logic in the staff forum is quite enlightening. I had no idea that the Canadian government was running the Staff Forum.
Newsflash, guys: If I wanted to witness a constitutional crisis, I'd go read about the Senate scandals and whether we (Canadians) should open up the Constitution over Senate reform. All this talk about not being able to formulate clear questions to get useful answers further reminds me of the problems we had over the various referenda concerning Quebec separation and the constitutional accords. That's going back over 20 years!
This is an internet discussion forum. It's not constitutional talks - surely you can outdo the Canadian government in figuring out clear and useful questions that won't take DECADES to figure out.
On the wording of the question itself, I drafted it, and Atticus disagreed with it. There wasn't any further discussion on it beyond Atticus expressing his disagreement, because we decided to just post the survey, which had already been delayed. Both Atticus and I were about to be a little inactive, so no discussion could take place without even further delay. I drafted it broadly because I wasn't just interested in an OT remerge. The status of A&E and S&T have been important topics too. Moreover, I was interested in gauging people who are active proponents of a remerge, rather than those who are simply happy to go along with it. A question not specifically mentioning a remerge captures the former rather than the latter.
You should have asked a specific question concerning the two parts of OT. That wouldn't prevent asking the other question of how people would prefer to organize the Colosseum forums.
Perhaps we could've asked more questions, or more specific questions, or different questions. But we didn't, so I'm not seeing how it's relevant to our interpretation of the survey results. You said you questioned our judgment in interpreting the results, but now it seems you're saying you question our judgment in drafting the questions. You're entitled to your opinion either way, but it leaves me confused as to what you're actually arguing, or what you're actually wanting us to say.
Both Mise and I are saying that you should have come up with better questions that would have given results that aren't so open to creative logic and faulty assumptions when it comes to interpreting them.
One issue that has not been discussed is what would happen with forum-specific bans. Currently, if someone is banned for an incident in the Chamber, they are often banned from the subforum for a number of months. If we have one subforum, we can't do that. Exclusionary options are limited. RDs are just an icon, and I don't believe forum software would allow for preventing people from entering threads with that icon. So it'd be much harder to exclude people from those threads. What would be an alternative to this sort of exclusion for people who can't engage on the level required for that sort of discussion? Would banning them from a unified OT in fact be another point in favour of a remerge?
If people are going to behave like jerks in one forum, doesn't that mean they will tend to behave so in others, too?
Maybe you should just have a specific "Red Diamond Forum" and roll the other threads back into OT. That way you can exclude people from Red Diamond threads without preventing them from posting elsewhere. But if you do anything like this, do NOT do so on April 1, 'k?
