I'm glad I finally know what y'all were talking about. FTR, my snerk was made without any back channel information.

Given how it unfolded, I understand how and why the stompies had to keep it off the table until they had all the information. Thank you, stompies.

I do think this is a good lesson for us to consider as a community going forward. Because...he was trainable. He certainly had his chances, and blew them. But when he came back he made a strong effort to fit in, and seemed to value the culture. Just something to bear in mind when we're dealing with somebody who isn't an obvious troll only intent on disruption.

I agree with Hec (but am petty enough to be annoyed that we have to "train" an adult). I still feel really badly that John caught flak for doing something we told him to do, just because the Schmoker incarnation decided the best defense was a good offense + lying to boot.

Just want to say, RL, I think you handled this very poorly. In the future, if you are privvy to backchannel information, please keep it to yourself unless death is imminent.

Even though I understand why the stompies had to keep this off the table until they figured out how to handle and announce it, I think we should not start pointing the finger at each other, Allyson. I can also understand why people who did know, didn't think it should happen behind the scenes. Either way, The Yoko Factor is over. This should be the hugging-in-the-elevator-shaft scene in Primeval.

My. word. I'm turning into Andrew. Scared now.

edited to say the same thing in fewer words. Caffeine kicked in.

Well, not only is my insatiable curiousity satisfied, but my guess based on the cryptosity was correct.

Anyway, I think that this was handled correctly as we do have the tendancy to be all non-shit-uppy about things and it would have been horrible to do in public.

I had long thought that Schmoker/Anathema was also mieskie, so I'm not entirely surprised at the outcome of all this. I did sort of think that, because Schmoker actually worked at the monkey-grooming gestures mieskie so disdained, I was willing to give him a pass and pretend he was a different person 95% of the time.

I'm sorry it all had to work out this way, and I'm sorry so much confrontation responsibility fell on the Stompies in this instance. Knowing that the Stompies didn't have to actually wield their feet, but that Schmoker was the one who made the decision to leave, makes me feel better about the situation and the nerves of the Stompies.

All I have to say is basically what other people have said, especially Nutty right up there. I do think we handled the whole thing as well as we could have, but it is too bad that it took so much upset and everything before the poster figured out how to act around here. Ah well.

I think there's been a lot of bad behavior on all sides in this matter, in all honesty. I hope that as much as Anathema learned to be part of the community, the community can learn to handle disruptions more maturely.

And, as a general rule, I think hinting in public fora about backchannel stuff is bad form, whether it's foregrounding a private joke or trying to ask when action you know is being considered will be taken. Backchannels are *back*channels for a reason, after all.

[stupid double post]

I wanted to talk about the idea of Banned Posters Reregistering In General, as some people were beginning to, last night. This is my position.

John had said, to me, in AIM:

I mean, like I've said before, if the guy would just admit it, apologise for lying, ask for mercy, then it'd be a different thing.

And I said (this is cobbled together from AIM responses):

... No.

What exactly is effected when M was banned, what was M's loss, precisely? He was barred from posting under the persona of mieskie. The persona of mieskie was banned. And we could do that, we could lock up his user name and everything. The man who was writing the posts-- him, now, we can't. There's no way for the Buffistas to physically restrain him from every being among us again; there's no way for us to prevent someone from re-registering.

So what he really was supposed to lose was not actual passage to Buffistas.org, but rather the name mieskie, and the persona, and *history* he had built up with us as that persona; the fact that people already knew his name. (Of course, since many people's relationships with him were largely... antagonistic, I can't completely honestly see why he fought so hard to keep that.)

So, in practice, if a banned person re-registered under a different name and worked very hard to keep it so that he was kind and polite and appreciated the second time 'round, and nobody knew it was the same guy; then that's all right. That's what's supposed to happen in the case of a banned person still being interested in the board. What if Generic Badguy (I'm not speaking about m/S/A specifically at this point; this is an abstraction)Version 2.0 never creates any trouble and never drops any hint he was the old, banned poster? You could never tell. You'd be blissfully ignorant; and maybe you'd love to pieces the new poster when you'd hated the old one.

And my point was: what mieskie-Schmoker did badly, if they are the same person, was to blur those lines and keep hinting that he, S, was also m, culminating with the outrageous act of sending Jon a picture that already existed on the web with identification as mieskie. That's him saying over and over, "the rules don't apply to me, I was banned but I'm still talking, I'm that same old guy, wink, wink". (Exactly the way mieskie registered as /mieskie and mieskie/ mmieskie and finally Michael, to get his goddamn last word in. That's the thing about suspension-banning. You're not *supposed* to be able to get the last word in! You don't have that right! You're not supposed to be able to post at all!)

Or rather my point was, that illusion. He can't *admit* he is m. That's not the right thing to do here. It's the bloody opposite. The right thing to do is not beg for mercy, but rather live by a strict code of not-annoying-everybody and not-dropping-hints-that-you're-a-banned-poster.

So if he actually did drop, admit he was m, and beg for mercy? I'd say we'd be forced to ban him again. I'd say that absolutely. I would filibuster Bureaucracy until it happened. (Joke. Joke.)

And then, if he were still interested in the board, which I think he is, he would re-register and pretend again. Hopefully-- if he were truly penitent-- being good this time. And we would never know, because he would work so hard and be so pleasant and not be dropping hints all the time. And that would be all right. That would be the way it is *supposed* to be.

Hey guys. Just wanted to make it clear that we did formalize it. His account is deactivated now. The choice to leave was his own, we've just made it official.

I'm very disturbed that an executive decision concerning banning (IMO, a topic that should be taken more seriously than any other) was made backchannel, based on information and events that occured backchannel, especially in the midst of our "no more fake consensus, we vote on stuff now, goooooooo democracy!" transformation.

I'm not saying we should bring him back (I suspect that had we discussed this for 4 days and then voted, the outcome would have been the same), but the fact that none of this happened publically turns my stomach.

Whatever was going on backchannel, the Anathema-persona was never a troll on the board. So we basically just banned someone for being an asshole over email, yes? And we're all okay with that? That's a precedent that nobody minds setting?

No, Jess, they upheld a ban on someone.