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.

I have no idea how LJ factors into it at all.

My fault. I brought it up. It was not a factor in the stompys decision.

I was just noting that more than a few people had already found mieskie's picture. That this whole thing would've occurred as soon as Anathema's picture were posted on the gallery because a number of people had already seen it as mieskie's picture. That's all I'm saying.

Again, let me just emphasize, I had two points.

One is separate from the mieskie/Anathema situation, and that's opening discussion on what's appropriate etiquette, expected behavior around backchannel in the community. That's one thing.

Second, I just wanted to emphasize that mieskie's picture had been found by a number of Buffistas, though that point had not been brought up publically on the boards. I think most people felt the issue had been closed here, but folks satisfied their own curiosity about the matter. So all I am saying is that if Jon had simply posted Anathema's picture on the photo gallery, then the issue would have come to public attention anyway.

I apologize very sincerely for muddying the issue at all, or implying in any way that there was a big Livejournal or backchannel discussion around this. People knew things which would have come up. That's all I'm saying.

In the interests of honesty, which is going to lead straight to a different kind of mayhem...I just got this ballot message in my inbox. I expanded it to full headers so you can all do whatever analysis you smart techie types do. It appears to have been sent during the ballot period. I can't bear to do the math to see if this changes the results. And I also don't know if it should count. For the record, I made every effort to notify voters that I had rec'd and counted their ballots, and posted a note on the board saying to email me if you hadn't gotten a personal note saying that your ballot had been rec'd and counted.

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1.) VOTING: abstain

2.) QUORUMS: no

3.) SIMPLE MAJORITY: yes

4.) DISCUSSION AND VOTING PERIOD TIME LIMITS: yes

I can't bear to do the math to see if this changes the results.

Since everything passed by at least a two-thirds majority, I think we're OK here.

Unfortunately, until we have a board-based "official" voting system set up that doesn't rely on the flakiness of email, I think that this is a potential error we'll just have to live with.

YES! We have our first pregnant chad!

I high hosie hosting the baby shower. What kind of cake do you like, jengod? MWAH.

LJ doesn't really factor into anything at all. From LJ I happened to know that there was a meiskie picture out there, and probably would have checked as soon as Jon posted Anathema's picture, to satisfy my own curiousity.

When I found out, I seriously doubt I would have brought it up.

The LJ that I read was private, backchannel, and not participated in by stompies. And it was about 2 months ago.

I think it was much better how it went down. Public asking would have led to public flogging, I think, just as we all put our 2 cents in. I mean, even 50 talkative people, some defending and some wanting banning would have resulted in something scary, especially as 2 days ago tempers were running hot on the voting issue.

It came up privately. It was addressed privately. Anathema requested his ID suspended and it was. I imagine that if he had needed to be banned, it would have come up for public discussion.

To continue John's analogy of a "caretaker with extra keys"-- the caretakers told A that it had some to their attention that he was misusing his set of keys. A. chose to turn those keys in. If the keys had to be taken away, the caretakers would have shared with the rest of the dwellers, and we would have discussed.

If this were ChristianDollarStore, would we have trouble with the stompies just stomping?

I am sorry that neither Anathema/meiskie nor the Buffistas were able to end up making this work, but we learned something, right?