@KRyan seems to be quite insistent that this isn’t the case, rather that the interlocutors who in various ways voice opposition to the policy merely represent an illegitimate vocal minority who are just bucking a well established, overwhelmingly consensual system. Correct me if I am wrong, but this is very much how your commentary has come across to me, KRyan.

@Rubiksmoose I meant to also tag you in that last message.

Well the votes don't really lie:

+56/-26 for "keep the policy" and +50/-23 on "revert the policy" for the re-revisiting meta.

So 3 votes apart net.

Out of ~75

So it is clear at least that there are nearly as many people who want to revert the policy as to keep it, even though the "keep" option narrowly crossed the finish line ahead.

Worth noting that the division between up and downvotes indicate that both options are about equal in divisiveness. I actually think this means there is an interesting space for a slight compromise.

@ThomasMarkov ^

KRyan said above, “This behavior is rude and inconsiderate, but beyond that, it cannot be allowed in a healthy democracy.“ It seems that with the actual community opinion so evenly divided, compromise is exactly what should be the goal for a healthy democracy, and that silencing a minority that was so narrowly defeated is the real democratic threat.

@Rubiksmoose :^{)

I mean I'm not going to argue against someone who's not here to back up their side.

Right, I didn’t mean to be putting you in that position. Apologies. I’d like to hear @KRyan’s thoughts in response.

@ThomasMarkov That’s a fair point, but some compromise has to be demonstrated in comparison to existing options and actually achieve the votes

If someone wants to participate in the existing discussion, where I have already said my piece, and demonstrate that some compromise is more popular than my position, fine

but trying to restart the conversation elsewhere is a major problem, because it means I either have to repeat myself (over and over and over), or my failure to do so is taken to mean... something

both of which have already happened.

I’m not trying to stifle new proposals

I’m trying to stifle attempts to restart the argument in a new space where I have to repeat myself

and where we cannot directly compare the votes on the current proposals and whatever the new one is, so it’s impossible to say for sure what the consensus actually is

which is exactly what the recent arguments have amounted to, whatever their intention in starting them

there can be an argument for restarting things, if the previous discussion is really old, the people who weighed in and voted have maybe left, the people to made the arguments themselves have maybe left, or maybe opinions have changed and people’s votes are locked in, whatever

but it hasn’t been remotely long enough since the last time we had this debate for any of those arguments to hold much water here

@ThomasMarkov the illegitimate behavior is primarily in trying to abuse new metas as places to re-litigate the policy where that’s A. not what we’re here for, and B. not necessarily obvious to people scanning Meta that this is what’s going on in those questions, so they get less attention

and that behavior, or at least the most aggressive forms of it, that’s only been a handful of users that I’ve noticed

they may enjoy roughly as much support as I do in terms of what people think the policy should be, but of the ~75 people who voted on the policy, and the ~25 opposed to the policy enough to downvote it, only a handful have felt the need to continue arguing about it in not-necessarily-related discussions and in ways that I find inappropriate

@KRyan Also, I’m sorry if my comments came across as aggressive.

I appreciate your thoughts, that clears things up very well. I can appreciate where you’re coming from.

@KRyan I’m confused once again.

You now seem to be saying the exact opposite of what you said in this comment back in March.

@ThomasMarkov Because I misguidedly thought 1. no, we wouldn’t be doing that because it doesn’t solve anyone’s problem, and 2. that where it occurred, it would be kept to that topic itself. What we have seen instead is that each question just spawns a mini-clone of the larger discussion, making it impossible to track and impossible to work with.

@ThomasMarkov Please do not seek clarification from me again. I am no longer willing to engage with this debate. This is not your fault but I don’t want to be dragged back into it.

Thanks, that’s understandable. I’ll leave it alone.