• My voiced objections have nothing; zero; squat; zip; nada; to so with whether I can change rules.

  That is as irrelevant to the debate as one person's precise, chosen, somwhat ecclectic, understanding of the degrees of separation between the terms "moral" and "ethical" in the wider social context.

  I intend to make no further comment on that red herring.

• What I spoke of was an absence of a percievable "mechanism".

  I to have seen some, albeit minor, changes in PM's way of working. However, these have (from memory) usually come about (from my veiwpoint) as (apparently) capricious gestures on behalf of one or two gods.

  Rather than a mechanism for socially pressured change, that smacks of "The Queen's Perrogative".

  Better that the 'rules' be laid out in clear, unemotive terms.

  It has been decided that...

  This is how it is.

  Rulebreakers will be sanctioned in the following ways:...

• I have remarked on the absence of a clear definition of the "rules".

  Many of those I personally find most objectionable, and moreover, those that seem to come up most frequently for scruitiny, are (at best) "defined" in terms of one or two people expressing their likes and preferences. Their personal take on what should and should not be.

  Not only are these (probably rightly) couched in terms of personal preferences; they often incorporate derisory, insulting and antagonistic phraseology aimed at those that disagree with their point of view.

  If this is indeed a community, then the former is sadly lacking as a mechanism for laying out the communities preferences for it governance--which is bad enough--but the latter should have no part in such statements of policy; if that's what they are?

  A cynic might suggest that the derision and scorn poured on those having the temerity to question the status quo, is as much about trying to supress those questions, as it is about an unhelpful and unwarrented outflow of personal emotions.

Alternatively, if the rules are mutable according to social pressure, do away with the "poured scorn" social backpressure mechanism of supressing debate in favour of a statement along the lines of.

Currently, the status quo on this is ....

The following alternatives have been considered, and currently rejected on the basis of a lack of sufficient social pressure to warrent the change.

I'd like to see it go further and have a mechanism that was transparent enough that it clearly allowed the community to register their opinion in a tangible way. I even think that the technical means for this is already in place for the most part.

I think it would be a mucher better use of the Voting booth than most of the polls I've noticed over the last year or so.

It might be necessary to restrict the voting to members--or not.

Some restriction on how often a particular issue could be the subject would probably be in order.

As now, the voted themselves would (as far as practicable) be anonymous, but those that felt the need to outline their reasoning could post subordinate to the vote node.

One benefit of this would be that subsequent posts calling for change could be easily and breifly referred to the last poll on the subject, where all the considered options, expressed opinions and weighted decision would be clearly laid out.

That would be a mechanism.