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.

It came up privately. It was addressed privately. Anathema requested his ID suspended and it was.

Straightforward enough.

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

Agreed.

I am able to do the vote count, but timing might be a little tight for me because I am going out of town Wednesday morning. I don't think this should be an issue since most votes will probably be cast within the first day or two. Let me know what is needed.

I didn't edit because I couldn't resist the number.

My profile address is fine to use for the voting forward. Did Jon make a new form?