after hinting and hinting and wink-wink-nudge-nudge-ing, that his posts were being written by the same person who had been writing the posts of a persona now banned.

I just have to say that I never saw this. If you're referring to his love of canasta, I think that was a slip up on his part. My mind could be changed on this, but I'd have to see specific examples.

The official voting page is up at [link]

I'm about to head out for the evening, so someone will have to post the text of the ballot with a link to the page above at midnight.

I'll be back 2am or so (unless I get very lucky ;), so I can deal with any problems then.

he broke the terms of his suspension (which were... suspension! As in, an enforced period of no-talky) by registering and posting as Michael. Which is *very, very against the rules*. And that's the final reason why we banned him.

For the record, I've been looking back over this, and he did it not once but twice.

He re-registered as "mmmieskie" and got in one more post. We deactivated "mmmieskie".

He then re-registered as "Michael" and got in five more posts on Bureacracy before we deactivated "Michael".

At that point a few people discussed banning him forever because of his violation of the terms of his banning, but we shied away from that idea.

It could be someone who discusses pro baseball and the Simpsons all the time.

I want to talk to that person! Go make him or her up, Lizard.

John saw more of it than I did, but I saw some.

I also, honestly, would have expected him to answer the "Are you mieskie?" question with a polite, immediate "No, I'm not, what makes you think so?", instead of that lengthy chasearound and then the blowup. (It reminded me, slightly, of when my little sister Calla is asked directly if she did something wrong, and instead of answering she keeps stammering and telling me how upset it makes her that I'd even ask such a question.)

that lengthy chasearound and then the blowup

Which, again, just for the record, he then deleted. My posts are there, everyone else's posts are there, but the post in which he called me a "Nazi pit bull" and denied even knowing who mieskie was, is gone.

Do we really need to do a post-mortem on this now?

OK, we don't need a post-mortem, but if there are facts which people have forgotten, or appear to have forgotten, you have to forgive people having the impulse to point them out or correct the record.

you have to forgive people having the impulse to point them out or correct the record.

I'm completely forgiving of the impulse. I get it. But I don't think there's any record and going over it more at this point seems unnecessary. Aside from everything else, I do think Anathema had come to like and value the community. He's absented himself to avoid any further diviseness. Let's respect that. He's taking the loss at this point. Anything else leans towards last-wordism.

OK Hec, I get where you're coming from. But honestly? It freaks me out that you keep referring to him as Anathema, a poster who seems like a nice guy and it's a pity we had to ban him. There is no Anathema. There's only mieskie. He was banned once, and he came back a total of three times and was deactivated each time.