Liese just said his account was deactivated.

Yeah, because he left, and said to close the door behind him.

He made that decision, not some big lurking cabal.

You can be mad at him for removing the right to choose from you, but not at us.

Liese just said his account was deactivated.

Per his request.

Liese just said his account was deactivated.

Noting specifically that Anathema himself had personally decided to leave the community.

So we basically just banned someone for being an asshole over email, yes?

We did not ban Anathema. We presented the information we had to him, and asked that he be the one to come clean with the community so that the community could decide what to do. He declined to do that, and it was he who decided to leave and it was he who asked to have his account deactivated. It was never our intention to unilaterally ban anybody, and if he hadn't decided to bow out, we would've brought it up for discussion.

Per his request.

This was not made clear. [edit: My original impression was that the Stompies had given him an ultimatum -- come clean or be banned, and he chose to be banned.]

Hec, Livejournal may be a public forum, but conversations that happen there should not count as public for the purposes of this community, unless they are repeated here. It's backchannel, and it's as irrelevant to any big community decision as a conversation over AIM.

Could I please have the chain of events that led to this spelled out, then? Because, not being privvy to the Livejournal posts or private emails that went into it, I don't understand why it wasn't a decision for the entire community to make.

I don't understand why it wasn't a decision for the entire community to make.

Becuase he made it! What decision would you like to make? Force him back? There was no decision made by anyone other than him.

I'm not privy to these LJ posts either, so I have no opinion on what impact they had on the proceedings. They were backchannel to me until they were brought up here.

It went down like I spelled out upthread. ita "Bureaucracy 1: Like Kafka, Only Funnier" Mar 14, 2003 11:33:25 pm EST -- it's not more complicated than that.

Hec, Livejournal may be a public forum, but conversations that happen there should not count as public for the purposes of this community, unless they are repeated here.

I don't think the private (let's just call LJ private for the moment) discussions determined any community decision here. I didn't read any LJs about this myself, incidentally. I just heard it was out there. I think the backchannel aspect needs to be understood as a point of etiquette and appropriate behavior within the community - I don't think it determined anything in this instance.

I don't consider Stompys discussing administrative decisions as backchannel. In this case, they had the evidence and only acted on what had been a community consensus suspension.

Could I please have the chain of events that led to this spelled out, then? Because, not being privvy to the Livejournal posts or private emails that went into it, I don't understand why it wasn't a decision for the entire community to make.

I have no idea how LJ factors into it at all. I know damn well that I didn't mention it on mine, nor did I see it mentioned on any of the stompies' LJs. Any LJ speculation by other people was purely that.

FWIW, I'm unaware of any discussion that went on about Anathema on LJ, and I think I keep up with most of the Buffistas LJing at this point.

It was just waiting for someone to ask, and working out how to say all that without sounding like a terrible dark cabal. Perhaps not the most successful attempt.

Not the most successful, no, given my misunderstanding.

I'm sorry if I overreacted.