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!).

I haven’t visited the FF thread lately due to a combination of limited time and a preference to avoid conflict. I didn’t see the posts that recently offended. The procedures established can and will protect this cherished community. Thanks to the stompies, and the old and new members who considered the options so carefully. I am a very tolerant person in many ways, but I don’t tolerate disrespect IRL and I would flee rapidly from a board that allowed that behavior. Peace and love in the New Year to my dear Buffistas.

He's just posted under a different name: mmmieskie "Firefly 2: You Can't Take the Sky From Me." Jan 1, 2003 11:37:21 am EST

I just deactivated mmmieskie.

I have a question. Has anyone been suspended before?

I thought averagejoe was suspended, but I just checked and he's still active. So the answer is - no one else that I'm aware of.

Yes. Christiandollarstore was suspended. And he even sent an e-mail in reply to the effect of "oh. okay then."

Right - I missed that excitement.

Given the taunting nature of the troll's final post, would it be appropriate to delete the post? It would take away that certain 'nyah-nyah, I got the last word' feeling.

What a twerp. We disagree with each other all the time. Besides, I would hardly call Buffista discussions 'sanitized.'