there were some voices raised during some of the arguments about rape in the Buffy threads. That said, most of the posters still made an effort to disengage their investment in the topic from anger at the people they were arguing with.

Yes, and more importantly, people apologized when they realized or had it pointed out to them that they had offended someone.

I just completely agree with Allyson, again. Which is handy, because she's said it all so well already!

I'll just add that on the mailing list I co-mod for a bunch of Usenet oldtimers, one of our posters went batshit unexpectedly. As another of the co-mods put it, "We're just hoping that another rock falls on his head and snaps him out of it." Political arguments turned into personal attacks, and even posts on neutral subjects returned again and again to his sense of aggrievedness.

He was eventually asked to take a leave from the list, but if you ask me, it was about a month and a half after he should have been asked. (In fact, one of the other co-mods said after the first outbreak "oh, it's over now, nothing more to worry about." When I saw said co-mod shortly after the guy got suspended, I did the Dance of Smug Rightness and sang a little song.) After he left, you could practically hear the exhale of relief on the lists, and people who hadn't posted in weeks started posting again. Birds sang. The sun shone. And it all could have happened right after the first or second time he started calling other posters "fucking idiots" rather than the fourth or fifth time if the other co-mods hadn't been overly willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I'm tired and I doubt I'm expressing myself as coherently as I could, but the point I'm trying to make is this -- being too nice to disruptive posters is just as damaging as being too mean to them. I think the tack that has been taken with mieskie is the right one, and I don't feel even the slightest qualm about it.

I suppose I should have posted this here rather than the FF thread. I'm glad mieskie was banned. I'm sorry it couldn't have worked out better, but I am one of the people who left the thread because of him. My time to be online is not something I wish to spend being insulted repeately.

I think it was handled well, and I am very glad he was banned.

First off, I'd like to note that I am grooving to Afghan Whigs as I type this.

Cincinnati band, BTW. Go Whigs!

Only one note: I think that the Stompy Feet are the ones who have to deal with trolls, or the cluelessly rude. As was noted above, there is not time enough and world enough for a consensus to develop among the Buffisita community - especially if two or three Mieskies show up at the same time. If someone violates the rules, is warned , violates them again and refuses to apologize - I think the Stompy Feet should stomp.

If they do wrong, I think the community will let them know, and the person can be unsuspended. You could have a formal process. For example if 10% registered Buffistas rounded down to the nearest whole Buffista (i.e. 60 Buffistas at time I press send on this post) protest, then it goes to a formal vote of the community. Or you could leave it informal. If a poster is suspended and there is a lot of outcry you take a vote or seek a consensus. At moment only one person has expressed what I take as actual opposition to the suspension; and I could be reading her wrong; it might just be a high discomfort level, rather than actual disagreement.

Incidentally, I don't have a problem with some people having more influence than others. Some people contribute more to the community than others. My only role on this board has been to make posts that I think some find interesting. There are others who have put in tons of time, pr contributed money. People will respect their opinions more than mine - and I don't see anything wrong with that. They have more at stake than I do, stand to lose more if they are wrong.

Don't get me wrong. I love this board; if it were destroyed it would be devastating to me. But ita put a year of hard work into specing, designing and coding it. As did others; as did people who put in time in other ways; as did those who contributed money. If something happens to the board, they lose everything I do plus the time or money they put into it. So, on board matters ita's opinion and others in the core group should be respected more than mine.

That sounds like a WAY heavyweight process to me. I'm much happier with what just happened.

There are posters here whom I don't always agree with, because sometimes they say things I find personally offensive. However I don't generally get the sense they mean to offend me personally, and if called upon it they would apologize.

If I'm at all honest with myself, I have to admit that unfortunately I'm one of the oversensitive ones, mostly because on any topic close to my heart, I have an extremely short fuse. We're talking a few millimeters. I get so overwhelmed by my own emotions that I can't even think straight, and therefore can't make rational counterarguments. Then I'm equally angry with myself and whoever I'm disagreeing with, because, dammit, I still believe with perfect faith and confidence that I'm right, but am temporarily incapable of mounting a rational defense of my POV. Drives me crazy. I'm trying to develop a longer fuse, but have accepted that I'll never be truly coolheaded about anything that really matters to me--and that that can be a virtue as much as a curse.

All of which is to say that there have been times I've been much, much angrier at people whom I value and respect as members of this community than I ever was at mieskie. mieskie didn't come near my personal short fuses, so all my anger at him was head anger. But I completely support banning mieskie, and would never, ever have argued for banning any of the aforesaid Buffistas who have set off my fury fuses. I mean, in a way they're like my mother or my very conservative oldest brother--no matter how vehement our disagreement on a certain set of issues, they're still part of my tribe.

I'm being all rambly and stream-of-conscious here, but I guess what I'm trying to say is the difference between tail-pulling by a clever troll and impassioned disagreement among people who genuinely care about whatever they're fighting over is usually obvious, at least on an intuitive level.

And, t sap I love you guys! t /sap

I mistakenly posted this in the wrong thread, so edited and moved here.

Victor, my fear is what happens when it's not an isolated case, but having SEVERAL Mieskes at the same time.

That killed the Bronze. The inundation of several Mieskes at once, all agreeing with each other, creating a subcommunity of asswipes. The "major" community broke down into three factions, Those Who Would Argue for Days Trying to Push Them Out, Those Who Ignored the Heathens Hoping That They Would Go Away, and Those Who Took the Ferrel Users Into the Fold to Try and Change Their Behavior with Kindness.

We had no Stompy Foot, of course, but I saw those same three factions, here.

Saw this happen here.

I think the Stompy Foot makes all the difference, though. Not being able to enforce community standards makes it easier for them to be attacked and dissolved.

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.

... So, what if we needed a new stompy (because, *eventually*, this will happen), and a hypothetical someone offered to be it, but they were someone I for one held great private misgivings against? I can't imagine this actually happening as things stand *now*, but it doesn't seem like it could never happen. Would there be some sort of space-- I mean not a literal thread, but emotional space, or something) for me to be able to state "I'm just fine with Poster X as a regular Buffista, but I'm not sure I trust their judgement enough to have the power of a stompy?" (I'd imagine Poster X would then be feeling kind of upset with me....)

Actually, since he's already violated the terms of his suspension, I'm all for permanently banning him. What do you think?

I'm behind that, DX.

And I wouldn't delete his posts, because I am of that sort of mind.

With you on the stomach butterflies. When people first started showing up and saying they didn't feel like Buffistas, I felt all creepy. I'm supposed to be in the out-group. Being part of the exclusive in-group was a horrible sensation.

Well, I think it's fair to be able to say "I just joined last week, I know I'm not a real Buffista yet, but with time I hope to worm my way into your community as an established-type person!" The "yet" part being key. Being a Buffista doesn't just mean you post here-- it means (pretty much) you're part of a network of people who are fiercely intelligent, considerate, and friendly and intimate with one another. I know that I, too, didn't feel like a "real" Buffista for a while. The problem would come in if the new person felt they could *never* become a real Buffista.

And, of course, a person who feels themselves to be not a "real" Buffista yet is still certainly invited to this thread to discuss matters of policy. If the rules affect you-- and they affect everybody, "real" Buffista or newbie-- you ought to be able to share your point of view, if you find your point of view underrepresented in the opinions currently being thrown up here. I mean, thrown out. I mean, thrown over? I need to find another preposition.

The biggest problem I had with Mieske is that he wouldn't say, for example:

Allyson, you said ten minutes ago that all newbies should compose their posts in notepad and spellcheck them because misspellings make people look like morons and drag the community down, and your last two posts were riddled with bad grammar. When you make demands that other people conform to a standard that you, yourself refuse to live up to, you come across as hypocritical.

He would simply say:

You're all hypocrites, look it up.

The former example would likely cause me to get defensive, but force me to acknowledge the truth of the post, bitter medicine as it is.

The latter just shuts me down with condescending name calling.

The former is sort of a crude example of how Buffistas behave. It doesn't dance around the point, that demanding others live up to a standard to which I am unwilling to live up to is hypocritical, but it's constructed in such a way as to both make the point and to not incite a flame war riot.

That be the Buffista way, as i see it. Think before typing, if you feel maligned then speak up about it, if no maliciousness was intended, then apologize for the misunderstanding and clarify until understanding or a somewhat amicable impasse can be reached.

It's all about intention, and sometimes it takes two days of posting to get to that intention. It took a couple of weeks for everyone to be sure of the intention of Mieske's posts, which was to use Buffistas to make himself feel superior by telling the smart kids that they were stupid.

I'm quoting all this again, Allyson, because it's really perfect. Might motherfucking boots of Wrod.

Because people are, well, people, what I see as intense can be seen as tension by others. Things I think are funny rants can be seen as mean-spirited attacks by others.

If a group of ten people see a discussion as cruel arguments, and a group of ten people see a discussion as spirited debate, where do we find the balance?

I'm not sure that we *do* find the balance that easily. I think we repair to this very thread for another six-hundred-post argument about it, in which the hypothetical offending party, if they are convinced they are right, really ought to go something like "I'm so very sorry I caused you any anguish. But I hadn't intended to offend or hurt anyone in any way; and honestly I've stared at my posts trying to figure out exactly where I went wrong; would you please maybe articulate exactly what you found problematic in my posts?" Etc.

And honestly I can't see mieskie doing anything like that. But we did that for him, by having our own six-hundred-post argument about whether he was bad or not, and whether he should be given another chance or not, and blah blah blah fuckcakes. I'm happy with the way this ended up; and I'm happy with the process we took for it, and I think that feeling is general.

Or, what Suela said.

(And I feel, personally, that it is better to be over-cautious than go in the other direction-- Michele's group's hesitancy, rather than TWoP's over-the-top-ism.)

I'm happy the guy got banned.

I know what Connie meant about being on the side of the shunned, not the shunners, but it's a good thing for the board that it happened.

The fact that we discussed it at such length and the fact that we're still discussing it now -- and there are records of the discussion, which he could come by and read, if he wanted to: Cindy did a great job in listing all his annoying posts: I got a wry little laugh out of "See also 3535, 3547, 3554, 3564, 3572, 3578, 3594, 3618, 3621, 3625, 3628 and 3636", Cindy -- is our saving grace, I think. More than one newbie has come to this thread and expressed something like amazement that we went into it in such detail. I think they've been in environments where there were Mods, and the Mods word was law, and judgement was passed summarily. I think in a lot of communities it would happen in reverse. A Mod would say "you're being an asshole, you're banned" and it would take major protest and discussion from people in favour of the banned person to get it reversed.

m. was a problem not because he said offensive things, but because he intended to offend.

That's the key, I agree. He enjoyed it, or he said he did. He never apologised, or even half-apologised; you know that apology you make when you think you're right and everyone else is being over-sensitive "I'm sorry if my opinions upset you"? Not even that.

Honestly, I think his behavour was not only annoying, but, I think, a little obsessive and self-destructive and depressive. I think the banning was the sad little climax of the unpleasantness he worked up for himself, and the post after he got banned was the post-coital cigarette, and he'll stay away now.