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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To: votes@buffistas.org
Subject: Buffista Ballot
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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?

It sorta did work on the Buffista side, didn't it? I mean, I remained convinced Schmoker/Anathema was mieskie. I think a lot of people may have held the same convictions. But once we became resigned to having no way to prove it, and once he decided he liked it here and got how we do things, it was okay. I didn't see anyone giving him a hard time.

Honestly, if he'd come here, 'fessed up to all of it, and said, "that was me" - my response would have been more along the lines of "no shit" than "ban him". I would have understood those who still would have wanted him banned (Rebecca makes excellent points about the winking), but it might have given us a chance to more closely examine what happened with mieskie in the first place, and if/where we acted too swiftly with the initial suspension.

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

That was spam, not trolling. It's a completely separate issue, IMO, closer to whiting out spoilers and fixing broken HTML.

Having the facts cleared up for me, I'm satisfied with the way this was handled.

However, I still think the phrase "it was being discussed on Livejournal and would have come out eventually" and all iterations of such should be banned from any further discussions about board decisions on the grounds that backchannel gossip should be kept BACKCHANNEL.

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

At least for myself, I'll probably approach any future suspensions a little differently.

I guess I want to underscore the fact that the stompies were cognizant that Anathema had tried pretty hard to fit in and made an effort to be in the community. That the idea was to have him own up to what he had done within the community, that he owed us that respect and that he would have been allowed to stay. He chose to leave because he felt like he was personally responsible for violating the good things that make the Buffistas work. That it would be divisive to stay. I don't agree with that - I think we can be pretty forgiving as long as people act in good faith. But that was his call.

I guess I want to underscore the fact that the stompies were cognizant that Anathema had tried pretty hard to fit in and made an effort to be in the community. That the idea was to have him own up to what he had done within the community, that he owed us that respect and that he would have been allowed to stay.

I'm glad to hear this, and in general I have no quarrel with the way things were handled. My real problem is with the backchannel not staying back enough. Jengod was responding to a specific question about the situation, and trying to smooth things rather than work them up, but her post and others just made it clear that something was going on behind the scenes, and that made me and at least a couple of others uncomfortable.

We've put our stompies in a weird place, I think. I've argued in the past that there are some things that full and open discussion may not be appropriate for, or at any rate where it would create more problems than it solves, so that's not my issue here. But when the subject of stompies comes up we, including stompies, keep insisting that there is no special role there, that it's just a technical thing to keep the board running. By maintaining that line, we leave ourselves with no clear way to deal with something like this. I don't know what the solution is, but I'm not sure that keeping up the pretense is helping anything.

Who is counting the vote that is up going to be up soon?

Oh yeah, I meant to say I'd do if if the last person who volunteered (Laura?) was put off by the mathiness of it all.