This sounds like a decision for each individual league. The problem with waiting until each owner checks in as ready is that there are usually 24 owners in a league. It's gonna be near impossible to find a start time that's great for all of them. I think the fairest thing is to set a date (at least a few days if not a week out), notify all owners by sitemail, and start the draft then unless there are multiple strong objections.

It shouldn't be a surprise for progressive owners that a draft is upcoming. If someone knows free time will be scarce, they should work on it ahead of time.

Of course, special considerations can be made for emergencies, but real emergencies should be few and far between.

I usually start my research for the next draft as soon as the season starts.  No offense, but if I were in your league and you asked 23 other people to wait a week because it wasn't a convenient time for you because your family was visiting, you have internet access and aren't actually even on vacation yourself, I'd frankly be thinking "what a selfish douche."  Now, I know you aren't a selfish douche.  But most owner like to keep their progs rolling if they can keep them full.  Between 24 owners odds are virtually any time you pick is at least moderately inconvenient for somebody.  I completely disagree with your idea, and I think you should be able to see where most other prog players are coming from.

I am down to 3 as well.  And I do prepare early, I have a spreadsheet for all rookies, and I dedicate a team in my draft center to the +1 season  version of a team as soon as I enter it in the league... The better to prepare for trades and drafts.

But I find that there are commishes who start with zero notice... Send out a sitemail on friday saying that the draft will start on Monday.  I've had some of the best commishes on the site do that to me. 

Personally, I always want a minimum of one week notice before we go on the clock.  And I don't want that buried in the 3rd paragraph of a sitemail, it needs to be the headline.  I don't read all the routine sitemails (ie: if I'm not in the lottery, I might not read the sitemail... if you're taliking about new stadiums and I don't need one, I'm tuned out... Etc).

I camp a lot (at least 25 nights a year) with no computer and frequently no cell phone coverage.  In one league, I left on a Thursday and returned on a Tuesday to find out that I was missing 2 draft picks for a draft I didn't expect to start.  Notice was sent out Thursday afternoon, and they went on the clock on Monday. 

I've no problem with giving extra long proxies to cover myself and the league in that situation, but I have to know that they're needed. 

So I don't want the option to delay the whole league for my convenience, but I do want plenty of notice that the league is going to start so that I can prepare for it.

Italyprof - I'm no expert, but I bet in the time it took to write the nine paragraphs above you could have prepared for one of your drafts ...

I have to disagree respectfully with the professor on this one.  I certainly think prog commissioners have an obligation to give plenty of advance notice (in the NWP I usually send out the schedule of expected draft start date at least two weeks in advance, and owners in the league know that the draft will almost always start exactly 2 days after the previous regular season ends).  In my opinion there should never be uncertainty about this, and I believe commissioners have an obligation to be consistent, and to clearly communicate their intentions. 

But the obligations cut both ways.  I expect owners in my leagues to be prepared for that schedule.  And I gently disagree with biglenr on the sitemail issue.  I expect owners in my leagues to read every sitemail I send in their entirety.  I often send "NWP League Update" sitemails, clearly titled as such in the subject line, with 5 or 6 important items such as draft schedules, owner turnover, trade deadlines, rules updates, etc. 

With those mutual obligations in place (commish communicates frequently and acts consistently; owners make the effort to read communications and be prepared), I would never ask for consensus (or worse, universal agreement) on when the draft would start.  And to go a bit further, I've had some excellent owners whom I hold in the highest regard ask me if I would delay the start of a draft for a couple of days due to vacation or other personal reasons on their part.  In each case I have refused. 

It's not personal - I'm certainly not trying to screw anyone over - but it goes against the obligation to consider the greater good of the league, in my opinion. 

Several of the people I have the most respect for on this site have replied here. They all make good points, but interestingly don't necessarily agree with each other, which tells me that reasonable people can disagree on this one. 

Yes, many commissioners give enough notice, so I am not talking about those situations, and many very good commissioners at times get hurried and perhaps not wanting to disappoint or annoy member owners go ahead with rushed drafts anyway, despite their own RL commitments and things get tangled. 

Some, as biglenr points out, announce that tomorrow we are starting the draft and you find yourself about to board a plane, or be away, or having a funeral to do to (I went to four in the past two months, and some of the family visits are in the aftermaths of those tragic losses, including in-laws, so whether it makes me a douche or not, they take priority over even work which has suffered, let alone my own interests), and yet trying to catch up on players. 

I suppose I could be researching players right now instead of writing this yes, but then since I thought the request a reasonable one to have considered, and being less of an individualist than some on this site, I thought that my own experience lately might hit some chords with others with whom at the time I may likewise have been impatient, not knowing what they were dealing with. I also am not either a Kantian or a Cartesian: I don't consider time, space or mind to be homogeneous. Which is a fancy way of saying that some days I am better at doing physical work around the house than others, other days I translate books better and sometimes I am sharper than other times at concentrating on the characteristics of obscure baseball players for round 6 of a draft. If I am distracted or feeling like there are too many balls in the air, even if in theory a half hour could be useful, not every half hour is equally useful, since some days a half hour is more than enough for me to get a lot done, other times it is not. I doubt that I am unique in this regard.

I probably will drop a couple of teams, that is probably good advice from crazystengel who usually gives me good advice. But I also know that had these drafts all been next week, and I mean all of them, I could have handled them no problem. I would be tempted to say that having drafts in late August, or for that matter scheduling ANYTHING in late August in Europe (including my two new courses that started this past week) is American-centric (in fact I work for an American college here), since no project, no matter how important, is considered worth starting until September in France, Spain, Italy and elsewhere on this continent. But after all, this is a baseball site, so it should be American-centric. On that point, at least, I will defer. 

But my main point, that since I currently have no less than four teams that have been sitting there already in the league, the draft completed, for at least a week each now, while others have not placed their teams in the leagues so we can get started, remains valid I think. This means that others have blocked us starting, which means we would have started at the time exactly, let's say next week to be hypothetical, even had we put the draft off. Instead, we had the draft and this has still not meant getting started. 

it could be that a hard line as contrarian23 suggests, is the answer, but taking away a team and finding a new owner, the "death penalty" is harsh if all that has happened is that someone is away, or camping or whatever for a few days or a week or even 10 days. All I have suggested is first polling the owners as we get started to find out their schedules so that such delays will be predictable. 

Some reasonable posts here...

Italyprof - You're very correct that this is an American-centric site.  From previous US vs the world leagues, I'd estimate that more than 90% of the owners on this site are in the US and Canada.  Shutting down for a month is an alien notion to us.  Personally, I understand... On my real job I'm setting up a new web site credit card system to transact in 7 currencies and settle in 3, and I can't get any help from the site staffs in Spain or Germany, so I know what you are saying is true.  It's just not something that most of us have to deal with.  Unfortunately, you'll probably have to deal with the North American way of doing things.

Contrarian - I understand that we disagree about the contents of site mails... But frankly,I receive about 20-30 a week, and I don't always have the time to review each one carefully.  If you communicate well, it's not an issue, but not all commishes communicate well.  I once received a sitemail from a commish where the main body dealt with team stadiums, it was all in one paragraph, and 2 sentences before the end of the paragraph it mentioned "before the draft starts on Monday", then continued on with discussions of new stadiums.  He claimed that was notice that we'd be starting the draft on Monday.  I still disagree.  Communicate clearly... Something that improtant deserves a sitemail of it's own, and if you can't do that, then at least dedicate it's own paragraph or bullet point to it. 

Now waiting for teams to be entered into leagues has always been a sore point to me.  In a progressive, you've agreed to play.  There's no reason you can't have your team entered within a day of the league being created or your last pick (whichever is later).  Yet we always seem to wait a week for people to get on board... I never understood that.  It's just plain rude..."WAIT FOR ME....I WILL MAKE MY GRAND ENTRANCE AFTER YOU PEONS, AND YOU CAN ALL WATCH FOR ME AND ADMIRE ME WHEN I FINALLY JOIN".  Screw that. 

I can agree and disagree with many things posted above. I do expect people to read the smails I send out. I take the time to craft them, at least take the time to read them. I try to communicate as much as is reasonable with my owners (enough to keep them informed, not enough that they get sick of my smails) and I tell them about milestone league dates WAY in advance. Here's my way of keeping everyone informed just to give people ideas/discussion points.

• I set my roster due date a month out from the transaction deadline and send a smail that the roster thread is open. This gives everyone a month to post their team and about 10 days after the playoffs end (for those who are superstitious about posting cuts to until the season is complete)
• At the end of the season, I send a smail to all owners reminding them of the roster deadline.
• At the end of the playoffs, I send a smail to all owners reminding them of the roster deadline and I also set the draft schedule for 7-10 days following the deadline date (I always start drafts on a Monday)
• The day of the roster deadline, I add all cuts to the draft list and send a smail to all owners reminding them of the draft date.
• The Friday before the draft starts, I send a smail to all owners reminding them of the Monday start. I send a smail for the next round each prior night.
• At the end of the draft, I send the league number and a roster deadline for all teams to be in (typically a week from the draft ending).

In all of my smails, I let everyone know I'm available to post proxies for them if they'll be out. Since I'm keeping tabs on rosters, all they have to do is give me a position they need and I'll take the best available for them if they can't do individual research. Also, I'll do makeup picks based on my idea of who is best for your team if you fall a round behind, becasue even if it isn't my team, it's my league and I want you to be competitive and stay in it.

My two cents for your request italy. Send a smail to your commish and dialogue with them on schedule. I have held off on a draft as much as a week for people's vacations and such so long as they let me know in advance. 98% of us on this site are reasonable people and willing to work with you.

i recently entered my first 2 progressives. I have already begun prepping for the draft, even tho we are not even 1/3 of the way thru .It is very tedious work. The point i am most in agreement with is that 3 of these leagues is a lot. More than 3 has to be impossible, and i say that from the perspective of someone whose greatest time commitment is walking the dogs.

I think it depends on the leagues.  Some leagues require much more prep than others - and also depends on how much prep you do - personally I look at the rookies for the next draft and if it looks like a deep draft I don't really do a lot of research up front because I figure there will be someone good available and I can just research a couple days before the draft starts according to my needs.  If it doesn't look like a deep draft then I wil put more time into prepping for it because I want to make sure I get the player(s) that is best suited for my team.