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.

OK Binary walk explaination. I think better here than Natter - keep bureucracy stuff from spreading there. But skip this post if you are not interested; it is not a choice for us; most of us don't want it.

OK - for the sake of an example suppose we were voting on mvt and only five choices got votes two, ten, fifteen twenty and fifty. That does not mean that one of these numbers will be our choice, only that they happened to get all the votes.

Halfway between two and fifty is around 24. (We don't need exact medians for this, though it would go faster with them.) So we count how many voted for values at or below 24, and how many voted for items above that.

Let's say that more than half of the voters voted for 24 or below. OK, so now we make an assumption. Anyone who voted for a number above 24 will prefer the highest number they can get.

So we divide the range from two to 24 in half, picking (say) 11.

Suppose more than half the votes pick 12 to 24 (counting all those who voted for above 24 as favoring 24 - because 24 is the highest option left). So now we have a range from 12-24. 18 is around halfway along the range between 18 to 24. Counting all those who voted for numbers above 24 as favoring 24, and all those favoring numbers below 12 as favoring 12 (because these are the highest and lowest options remaining), We might end up with 12 to 24. Ok you see where this is going. You keep dividing the number of options in half. At eachs step count anyone who voted for a number above the highest remaining option as favoring the highest remaining option. At each step count thos favoring choices below the lowest remaining option as favoring the lowest remaining option. Eventually you end up with only one option which becomes the winner.

Note that choosing number halfway only speeds up the process. As long as you keep dividing the voters into unequal sets you will eventually narrow it to the same choice.

This is almost exactly like the simplest algorithm for programming a binary search. Maya I think suggested this upthread. Note that if we did this (which of course we won't) someone voting for eighty quadrillion would not bias the choice in any way. It would count exactly the same as any other for a number larger than the majority wants.

Just as a sanity check, I will do this based on the published vote counts when the vote is complete. It will be interesting to see how the results vary from the average. (I'm presuming here, that all unique numbers picked, and the number of votes for each will be published - or just a list of votes stripped of the voters could be e-mailed to me, and I could then publish statistics.)

Yeah, I think that's probably overkill for our purposes. I don't mind the concept of explaining the whole rank-the-options thing to newbies, but having to break out Binary Walk every time seems like a bit much. It's seriously geekily fun, though. (Um, not meant as an insult.) I'll be interested to see what the results are.

I've been trying to stay away from the mieskie business, but I think I should say, any back-channel-ness that I contributed to, I'm sorry.

I think the admins handled it well. I'm very relieved it's all over.

I've got some other stuff to say, of course, but maybe I'll wait a week or something. See if it still needs saying.