And, Rebecca, are you there? Can you get on AIM for a second if you are please?

(I did, you didn't hear me, then your network kicked you off, insent.)

This is about mieskie, I know it's very late in the game to say anything but this is the first I've caught up to this thread and I wanted to say my piece.

I didn't like what he did to our community and I was glad when he was suspended. However, when he was suspended I was under the impression that he couldn't reregister under a new name, that doing so would be grounds for banning.

Meiskie reregistered, he came back and when he was asked, point blank if he was the same person he lied to us. He said, nope he wasn't that other user, he didn't know who that was, any similiarities were just a coincedince.

I know this is bringing up backchannel and everyone is going to hate that but he sent an email "apologizing" for all the bad feelings that happened in this thread because of him and John. He told me point blank that he was not Mieskie. He lied to me. He lied to all of us.

He came back here and registered under another name and everyone was so...upset and nerves were frayed and there was such disorganization that there was no way to handle the situation. No one on the board to take charge of the situation.

If registering under another id while suspended is grounds for being banned then there shouldn't be any debate about banning Meiskie no matter what name he uses. He's banned.

He came into our community, he broke our rules, and he cause dissent and distrust and heart ache.

Heck, I agreed with him about Attack of the Clones, and as much as I wanted not to ever agree with him on anything or have a conversation with him I ended up having one. I was mad at myself then for it and I'm mad at myself now.

You can say, well he changed, and you can say, well he became a member of this community, you can argue that he deserved a second chance. But we gave him that, over and over and over we gave him chances. Suspension was a second chance. All he had to do was wait two months and then he could come back and it would have been fine.

Instead of being honest with us and treating our community and our rules with respect he lied to us and disprespected our rules.

Because the form will happily let me vote a second time, it seems.

In the future we probably need to address that.

OK, I'm a little drunk, but "duh". All my form does is send an email to somebody. There's no writing to any tables. There are plans to make the voting tabulation an automated thing so that no one will have to manually count them like what happens now. A part of that automated voting thingie will be a mechanism that either prevents a user from voting twice, or changes their vote or something. We'll have to decide that when the time comes.

And THANK YOU Sophia for dealing with the late night last minute stuff you dealt with. The argument summaries are great.

The argument summaries are great.

They're really beautiful. 

Just wanted to pop in and pass along my compliments to the folks who toil away thinking about these rules of order. I'm happy not being part of the inner circle (notice how I avoided saying Gang of 14) because you guys do a great job working out basic questions, formulating them well, and making it easy and fun for us kittens to vote.

In short, thank you.

Thanks Java Cat for posting the voting times in Press!

One quibble on the position summaries:

Please, we are closing discussion for six months once the issue is voted on.

This implies that this has been decided on. I know it's been discussed a lot, but it's not official yet, right? I'd be happier with something along the lines of "we may be closing discussion for a time (such as six months) once the issue is voted on".

Very well-summarized arguments for and against, that was a good job indeed!

PS I move we change the name of the Gang of Fourteen to the Invisible Legislators. Unfortunately I can't quite locate the original quotation, but it was to the effect that poets are the invisible legislators of history. Maybe Victor or Thessaly know it better....

Changed. That was where I was quoting from someone and kept the original wording. Oops!

Would it muddy the waters more, or less, to go back and vote a second time? Not suggesting it, just asking the question.

I only have one double vote, and the choices are identical, and they are sent a few seconds apart, so clealy just an error. If someone (RL) made an error when they sent their ballot and would like to correct it I don't mind making the change. Send me a note.