Gengulphus wrote:Gengulphus wrote:Finally, to return to this thread's subject and MDW1954's "Reach some sort of consensus" challenge, I'm not at all certain whether we have already reached some sort of consensus or not... Discussions like this one can result in people dropping out of them when they don't care about the matters that are still being discussed or only have mild preferences between them, or alternatively failing to make it clear that the preference they're still expressing is only a mild one, both of which can result in the discussion giving the impression of less consensus than there actually is. So I think some sort of poll is in order at this point to try to establish whether there is a consensus or not, and I've therefore just posted such a
poll.
At present, the results of the poll are:
31 votes: The Retirement Investing board remains unchanged as it currently is
13 votes: The Retirement Investing board is split into two boards, one to discuss investing after retirement, the other to discuss investing before retirement to fund retirement
9 votes: The Retirement Investing board's subject becomes restricted to investing after retirement only; another board is created to discuss FIRE (but other discussion of investing before retirement to fund retirement should go to other existing boards)
3 votes: The Retirement Investing board's subject becomes restricted to investing after retirement only; discussion of investing before retirement to fund retirement should go to other existing boards
2 votes: The Retirement Investing board's subject becomes restricted to 'decumulation' only; another retirement investing board is created for discussion of 'accumulation'
1 vote: The Retirement Investing board's subject becomes restricted to 'decumulation' only; another board is created for discussion of FIRE (but other 'accumulation' discussion should go to other existing boards)
0 votes: The Retirement Investing board's subject becomes restricted to 'decumulation' only; discussion of 'accumulation' should go to other existing boards
I'm posting these now because the numbers of votes haven't risen all that much since yesterday morning - i.e. the results appear to have stabilised. Note by the way that I've not included some figures from what you get if you click on "View results" in the poll, namely the total votes figure of 59 and the percentages it ascribes to the various options. This is because the poll allows people to vote for more than one option being acceptable - so all it tells us about the number of people who have voted is that it's at least 31 (since nobody can vote twice for the same option) and at most 59 (since every voter must vote for at least one option), and so for instance it only tells us that the Retirement Investing board remaining unchanged is acceptable to between 31/59 = 53% and 31/31 = 100% of voters, while the straight before/after retirement split is acceptable to between 13/59 = 22% and 13/31 = 42% of voters.
I have however noticed wordings of a subsequent comment or two that suggest to me that some might have treated it as a "vote for the best option" poll rather than a "vote for all the options you find acceptable" poll. Nothing remotely conclusive and I'm not pointing any fingers, but I did set the poll up to allow people to change their votes. So if anyone has misunderstood the nature of the poll and wants to correct their vote in the light of that misunderstanding, it's easy to do so.
And just in case this post results in a lot of vote changes, I'll be treating the above results as preliminary and leave the poll running for another day or two before posting some more definitive results.
I've ended up leaving the poll running for rather more than just another day or two, due to taking my eye off the ball, but its updated results don't show any fundamental change:
34 votes: The Retirement Investing board remains unchanged as it currently is
18 votes: The Retirement Investing board is split into two boards, one to discuss investing after retirement, the other to discuss investing before retirement to fund retirement
9 votes: The Retirement Investing board's subject becomes restricted to investing after retirement only; another board is created to discuss FIRE (but other discussion of investing before retirement to fund retirement should go to other existing boards)
3 votes: The Retirement Investing board's subject becomes restricted to investing after retirement only; discussion of investing before retirement to fund retirement should go to other existing boards
3 votes: The Retirement Investing board's subject becomes restricted to 'decumulation' only; another retirement investing board is created for discussion of 'accumulation'
1 vote: The Retirement Investing board's subject becomes restricted to 'decumulation' only; another board is created for discussion of FIRE (but other 'accumulation' discussion should go to other existing boards)
1 vote: The Retirement Investing board's subject becomes restricted to 'decumulation' only; discussion of 'accumulation' should go to other existing boards
As explained above, all that is known about the number of respondents to the poll is that it's at least 34 (as no-one could vote more than once for the first option) and at most 69 (as every respondent voted for at least one option). That means that the poll results are that:
* Somewhere between 49% and 100% of respondents consider it acceptable that the Retirement Board remains unchanged as it is.
* Somewhere between 26% and 53% of respondents consider it acceptable that the Retirement Board gets split into 'after retirement' and 'before retirement, to fund retirement' boards, and whatever that percentage is, it's little more than half the percentage who find it acceptable that it remains unchanged as it is.
* The percentages finding any of the other options in the poll acceptable are all under 30%.
So in terms of MDW1954's "Reach some sort of consensus" challenge, I'm not certain whether
any of the options in the poll is acceptable sufficiently widely to be described as a consensus. But I am certain that all the options other than leaving the Retirement Investing board unchanged as it is are
not acceptable that widely (53% acceptability is IMHO clearly nowhere near enough to be described as a consensus, especially when its existence implies that another option has near-100% acceptability).
In short, the poll indicates either that the consensus is for leaving the Retirement Investing board unchanged as it is, or that there is no consensus for any of its options.
Gengulphus