I don't consider that I've got the right to decide on action, just the power to take action.

To play something of a Devil's Advocate, at this point, waiting the three weeks it would take to poll the entire board would be like slowly pulling fingernails.

It's a discussion that the community has been involved in to a great extent (speaking only as a community member here), and pretty much with a large "spork please" call to feet. BUT, where and when do you stop discussing and start acting? Because at some point, decision making of some sort is called for.

(Active trolls are easier to deal with, and give me less in the way of belly rumblins.)

waiting the three weeks it would take to poll the entire board would be like slowly pulling fingernails

I never suggested that, though, you know, put it on the features list -- all I meant was there are people who've joined who might have a different view of what a stompy foot is.

I was thinking specifically of a poster, who has a long relationship with an online community elsewhere and came here. She seemed to think that having Stompy status implied some kind of authority, rather than just being the holder of a different set of keys to the regular users.

I mean with great power comes great responsibility and all that, and if we want him stomped, then I'm happy to do it -- how do we do it? -- but I think what's going on is, as previously stated, we've got a policy that says something like:

We know what 'it' is and we know who 'we' are.

It might just be noted that "we", the people whose opinions are respected around here, aren't necessarily stompy feet, though there's a lot of crossover. Stompy feet are people who've said they wouldn't mind holding certain keys for the community, that's all.

Stompy feet are people who've said they wouldn't mind holding certain keys for the community, that's all.

That could go as-is into the FAQ. I've always seen Stompy Feet as people who take care of the administratrivia (deleting nattery posts from Beep Me, closing tags, whiting out spoilers, etc.) They aren't so much the decision makers as they are the ones who check the locks, unplug the coffee pot, replace the TP when it runs out, and scoop out the litterbox.

BTW, when someone gets sporked, is this fact announced somewhere other than Bureaucracy? I think it would be a good idea, especially since many of the warnings were given in public. Given that this person has only posted in the FF thread, I'd suggest making the announcement there rather than in Beep Me.

John-- I was the one who said that, and I had actually thought we decided that a poll would be unweildly and that the stompy feet would know when someone needed to be stomped. Which has been pretty much true. But you are the people who are actually posting, so I think you would have to agree.

Of course, now all I remember was a really long discussion of rotating stompy feet, etc, etc in which we never actually made a final decision.

I mean with great power comes great responsibility and all that, and if we want him stomped, then I'm happy to do it -- how do we do it?

IIRC, uncheck active (toddles back to bed)

To suspend or ban a poster, you uncheck the "active" box on the Maintain User page, then send them an e-mail informing of same. Which I will do as soon as I draft the e-mail and send it.

To me, the stompy feet are members of the community that the community trusts to do our business, regardless of how or why they got stompy status in the first place.

If a stompy foot became a stompy foot (as John says he did) because he has technical ability, I've always assumed that there was still consideration given to the stompy's temperment and character. From what I've seen of John's posts here (and those of all the stompy feet), I have no reason to change that opinion. He (and all) are the bonus-plan Buffistas - technically and/or administratively inclined as well as trusted and respected. Somehow I doubt the Buffistas would let a technical genius have keys to the kingdom, if s/he were an ass. This is my way of saying that the stompy feet have my confidence and gratitude, regardless of how and why they got their stomp on.

how do we do it

Is this a question on process, or is it a which box do I click type of question?

Okay, it's done. I stomped him.

What Cindy said (and therefore, thanks, DXM).

I haven't been able to follow the discussion in the "Firefly" thread, but I've tried to follow the Buffistas' reactions, both here and in (to some extent) Natter (in fact, even though I lacked the time to comment about the subject myself, here was pretty much the one thread I made sure to catch up on - it seemed important to me to know what's going on).

So I'm in the strange position of not knowing what is the content of the posts that created the problem, only seeing the community's reactions. And from where I sit, it looks like somebody upset the community, up to a point that members avoided one of the threads just in order to avoid that somebody's posts. And it wasn't just one person, but several, with different sensitivities and 'hot buttons', so I think we could safely say it wasn't 'the popular kids' clique, which couldn't handle anybody disagreeing with them.

Another thing I've noticed in this thread is the newbies' responses - and I'm very glad that they speak up about it. It ties again to 'the popular kids' clique possible-problem, which I do think is something we should be (and are) careful about - if those who are relatively new to this community (even up to the point that they still don't feel comfortable in calling themselves members), those who didn't get to be here in time for the lengthy discussions which formed the response, if even they think there's a problem, on top of the 'old-timers', I guess it means there is. It's not just a 'somebody new is playing in our sandbox', it's more of 'somebody is not playing nice in a sandbox', IMHO.

We know what 'it' is and we know who 'we' are.

Just a remark: even in science, which is supposed to be as exact as they come, sometimes there's no alternative but to sort to this kind of definition. For example, the term 'fractal' (in math! not even in physics) kept being re-defined, because whenever people thought they've found the most inclusive definition, they could come up with something that the definition didn't cover, but was definitely and without a doubt, something that was supposed to be covered by it (meaning, a fractal). So the scientific decision was to leave it undefined, at least as of now, and declare it pretty much like "we know what 'it' is and we know who 'we' are".

Each time I wrote 'sandbox' I wanted to write 'soapbox'. My fingers wanted to give me a hint about how long and states-the-obvious I went along with this.

Thanks DX (and nicely written too!).