I'm with Shawn. There is no trial. That's not what this was.

For all that it's hard to avoid legal terminology in such a matter, I don't think anyone's saying it is.

I think Cindy's suggestion, that a reference to the Bureaucracy thread in the official warning, will cover situations regardless of the length of discussion required to reach a decision.

What if it was Christiandollarstore?

Christiandollarstore, please note, was not suspended. From ita's post on the subject (#544): "The note just said we discuss, not preach or sell, so if s/he wants to do that, s/he'd be welcome back." There was no two-months' suspension, simply a shutting down of spamming. The poster was not prevented from coming back any time they liked.

But yes, a discussion about spamming or some other more easily identifiable behaviour is likely to be a faster one. Again, Cindy's suggestion should be sufficient to cover it. As long as they know such discussions can occur here, then I'm comfortable with the onus being on them to check.

Still thinking that our established policy worked quite well. I don't advocate making the FAQ any more involved or lengthy because that will make it less likely to be read.

Most posters seem to have no problem figuring out what is acceptable behavior. I think members will explain how we do things here to posters who don't get it.

We had a lot of discussion because we all wanted to do the right thing. I don't think any future problems will require quite so much debate.

614, jengod.

And, is one of them Joss? Because I can't recall...

Wow. That's impressive. Someday, we should make someone smart and unbusy parse the numbers. Frequency of posting, who joined when, cross-referenced, etc. Has there been a noticeable increase in traffic since the Joss posts?

I don't know if it's explicit enough that we don't use that standard, that we try very hard to be polite.

I think it is pretty clear, in the FAQ, in the filk, and in the general tone of the discussion.

Has there been a noticeable increase in traffic since the Joss posts?

Yes, to not put too fine a point on it. We more than doubled in users after he registered, and some of them stuck around to chat even when he wasn't here.

I'm not sure if my opinion concerning mieskie is welcome or appropriate at this time, but since I just recently discovered this thread, and since I'm extremely new to this community, I thought you might find my perspective on this interesting.

I don't know anything about mieskie's history here. He seemed a little abrasive, which I really don't mind because abrasive can be interesting.

It looked like mieskie was banned after his posts in the Firefly area, which as I was reading them, seemed to convey his opinion which was overwhelmingly in the minority for the rest of the people in that area. He sounded like he was writing Devil's Advocate position. While abrasive, he didn't strike me as particularly insulting.

There is probably stuff I didn't see, along different threads, and in his history. What it looked like to me was, he was being assertive in his contrary posts, and was given the boot when people became a little defensive [and, when mieskie started talking out of his ass]

It's obvious to me that you want a friendly community here, and that's one of the reasons I've spent so many hours the last few days trying to catch up on the messages, get involved in discussions, and learn the lingo. The community here is very attractive. If he was booted because he was a disruption to the community, I can dig that. It looked a little like he was booted for having such a contrary position in regards to the quality of Firefly, which would be censorship, which I believe isn't the goal of this site.

Darrien, the first thing that made me want to ban him was when he spoke of Michelle Trachtenberg in a way I found repugnant, especially given her youth. That particular bit of obnoxiousness, and his utter inability to SEE how vile his behavior had been, made me no longer give him the benefit of the doubt in other circumstances.

To sum up (and therefore leave out a whole lot), mieskie was told he'd offended people. He replied that he didn't care, and then offended some more. At which point he was warned that he was violating community standards, not with content, but with delivery. He spent more time discussing -- which went well, and then when his delivery went over again (while he was disagreeing with many people -- it is possible he gets like that when he feels outnumbered, but that's not the point), he was suspended. Then he broke the terms of the suspension at least twice.

Not to mention, censorship and private fora ... not quite applicable.

It's really not about the content. We've had more heated debates, over more sensitive topics. People were nice to each other, though. Respectful. He was not, and that's where he ran afoul.

Darrien, he wasn't booted for having a contrary position. Contrary positions are fine, although I always wonder why someone would come to a thread and say "this sucks."

He personally offended a number of people on the board, and when people complained he said we shouldn't be offended. No apologies, no modification of his behavior.

I think mieskie has interesting things to say, but if he can't carry on a conversation without pissing off the other people in the dialogue, and refuses to acknowledge that the problem might be *him*, then this is not the place for him.