It looks like a portion of the thousands of messages I missed in my brief absence were of the unpleasant nature. Just as happy to have missed it since this is my non-confrontational happy place.

I have elected to use my personal MARCIE filter to avoid posting that is not entertaining. I skip over quarrelsome posts the way that others may skip over dieting or political posts. It is no biggee since the overwhelming majority of posts are interesting.

Peace.

Have we all gone mad? This strikes me as totally out of proportion. We had one possible troll. We've had worse. This community functions because we don't define strict rules or codes of behaviour. Frankly, if we're gonna get trolled to death then there's nowt we can do to avoid it. Let's look back a bit - I can remember a time when a member of the community made seriously hurtful remarks about another - like "your nation should be exterminated" offensive - and we dealt with it in a civilised way - we remonstrated, then we ignored it.

What I'm saying is do not feed the energy creature. I think we (as buffistas) are in more danger of becoming a hideous CoW-type clique, scared to death of newbies and change, than we are of a Bronze Beta-style meltdown.

Jim is wise.

I like Jim.

We must chill.

Jim has spoken. Let it be so.

I am chilling.

I think I probably votes 'yes, soon' to the Foamies.

Chilling like an ice princess from Refrigeratonia.

Doblerization of the Buffistas: it's a good thing.

Foamies = yes.

I've just read the last 300+ posts. I know that following Jim's advice is the best course of action, but I wanted to clarify something.

Far upthread, Allyson mentioned my idea of social capital. She didn't explain it fully and it echoes much of what many of you have said. MM, you and I have discussed this IRL, so you already know what the deal is. It's basically the idea that certain people have a lot of social capital and certain people have none. If you are unknown, chances are that you have none. If you are known to the community, people will draw on their relationship with you to overlook and accept things from you that would be intolerable from anyone else. (or conversely, if you are known to the community and disliked by certain members, they will always read your posts, even those intended in the mildest manner, as offensive).

The way you increase your social capital is to become "known" and to build relationships with people.

When someone steps over the bounds of what is acceptable (however it is defined or perhaps not defined) and a member of the community calls them on it, generally speaking, the person with the higher social capital prevails.

Let's say, I'm in a fight with my a person at work over how something should be handled. He has been there for 30+ years. Chances are he will prevail and his way will be how it works. Except, if he actually has offended, pissed off and upset lots of people. Then it's possible I could prevail.

It's the social version of the cost benefit analysis of whether or not I could beat someone in a fight.

This is all cruel and cliquish, but also how social groups function. This is the very basis of politics (and, therefore, sadly our governmental system), in fact, probably the very basis for how groups work.

At my previous school, everything was run by consensus. Which worked great the first year (staff of 15 or less) and worked somewhat the second year (staff of 22). It was hell trying to define what got a kid in trouble, let alone kicked out of school. There was an incident where the head and founder of the school wanted to expel a student and 4 teachers fought like hell against it. What they came up with is once a person loses all advocates among the staff, then it is time for the kid to go.

This is surprisingly simple approach. Once someone has lost anyone to advocate for him or her, then that person is no longer a community member. Of course, if there is only one advocate left, then it is awful to figure out the courses of action for the pariah to go through to rebuild the broken relationships.

Blah blah blah.

I also wanted to add two more things: Jim is right. We must chill! t Lloyd Dobbler. But also, I didn't read what happened as being offensive as the rest of you read it. We are a sensitive bunch (and I'm definitely including myself in that list. I gave myself an emotional time out this weekend which was very helpful.)

Sophia, you mentioned that you worry people backchannel about you. I worry too. I'm sure it happens to me. Then I have to yell at myself for being egocentric, because Not Everything Is About Me. So, you aren't the only one to worry.

Well after that post, I'm not alone in thinking much should be about you, Kat.

Volfram ees your friend. Volfram vill not bite you un trow you un de basement.

You wanna take that to Previously? Becuase I'd love to chew over W&H with you, but this isn't the place.

Okay. I assume Previously is for Angel as well, b/c the description says Buffy.