A few observations:

• Whether or not Zoe is deliberately trolling, unable of seeing

why she is offensive, or some combination of the above, she has posted things that have provoked people into uncharacteristic and un-Buffista like behavior. Some of that behavior has clouded the issue.

• After the whole mieskie thing, we are a bit gun-shy about anything that even touches on the idea of suspension or banning. We learned a lot from that incident, but the wounds aren't quite healed.

• This would be a hell of a lot easier if we were dealing with an obvious troll. It's the fact that Zoe isn't always annoying that makes this a tricky subject. Still, it should say something that I tend to roll my eyes/cringe/skim when I see her post.

I'm trying to come up with some sort of conclusion, but I have a nasty habit of playing devil's advocate with myself. Although I understand the desire to have a disruption removed from the community, I think it serves the community better in the long run to try to heal the disruption before removing it surgically. This may not always be possible, but I think it is important that we try.

We've already mucked things up a bit by responding in kind to some of Zoe's more outrageous statements. I think that no matter what we decide going forward, we need to self-Doblerize before responding to anything she posts.

I think that ignoring disruptive behavior is a bad idea, as that behavior then becomes entrenched. It also tends to get worse over time. We've also seen that it tends to bring out the worst in ourselves.

I think that we need to tell Zoe when, how, and why her posts are crossing the line. Anyone can and should do this. That person could call for an explanation, an apology, or a toning down of the original post. We've been doing this to some extent, and it doesn't seem to be working. Still, it's partially for our benefit that we continue to do this and to do our best not to repond to her in kind.

Now, however, I think that if she responds rudely to or ignores these requests, the request should be followed by a request to discuss the issue in Bureaucracy--not as a punishment, but in the context of "let's not drag the thread off topic with this discussion."

At that point, if this is met with refusal or rudeness, it would seem clear to me that Zoe has no interest or ability in learning how to play well with others. An official notice would be perfectly appropriate at that point, and might have the sort of sting to get her attention.

By the time we get to that point, I think that if there's a refusal to play nice, then it's fairly clear that a person is not going to make the effort to be a part of the community.

[x-posty with Cindy]

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Well, the good news is the Kat/Laura posting ratio is now skewed to the point where I can post a whole bunch when it is a subject I want to get posty about during my wakeful hours. YaY

Zoe – Put me on the list of board members that have been annoyed and/or confused by her postings. Also put me on the list of board members that have been annoyed and/or confused by the responses to her postings. I am very rarely confrontational and I hope I am never mean. My way is to use my personal MARCIE and it works well - for me.

I personally feel that a formal warning system is less confrontational or mean than sparing in the threads. I also feel a warning is appropriate in this case. My understanding of the warning system is that it is not a trip to the woodshed but rather a polite attempt to explain community standards to posters who appear to not understand them.

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I'm with Allyson--let's just warn her. If she explains that, as I suspect, she's a high-functioning mentally ill/disabled person, fine, we'll self-MARCIE or engage her as we each see fit. If she reforms, fine. If she says "screw you guys", then ban her. And give her a deadline of a week or so to respond, in case she just ignores the whole process, which is also something she might do. I hate to see good people and longtime posters in such a tizzy about this.

Sorry to be so blunt, but I think this would be a win/win situation, even for Zoe herself.

Edit: If she ignores the deadline totally and refuses to explain herself, I would send her a stronger warning and say if she doesn't respond with an explanation/apology by deadline 2, she's banned.

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If we have community standards and a method for enforcing them, then we should. If violating the community standards is fine, then let's change them.

As far as I can tell, everyone here is human. Everyone here has limits on their patience. I'm surprised it took this long for Zoe to make it to Bureaucracy. I'm averse to the term "piling on". If I say something that people like, and 15 posts after me go "yay, ita!", it's dead parallel to me pissing folks off and being followed by "god, you suck". Is it piling on for me to express a previously stated negative reaction, but one-true-buffista-lovey-dovey for me to add my cheer?

Why? The key for me is that I want Buffista A to know my reaction to their post. It just so happens that it took me longer to get my point onto the net than other posters, but so be it. Everything I post is open for response from every registered poster. Hell, I think I've had someone REGISTER just so they could disagree with me.

If I didn't know that was a factor, I'd go play in a chat room where my posts are ephemeral.

That having been said, I'm a person of little enough patience, I feel. I don't really care to have to explain "Oh, Buffista A can be as profanely homophobic and jerky as she likes -- she's touched in the head. But you have to be nice, unless you show us a note from the doctor." I can't do that. I can't get past it, sorry. And I'm disappointed I'm being asked to do it.

I don't care about having behaviour explained. "I was pissing people off because of A B and C ..."

Whatever. It is quite apparent that a lot of people are being pissed off and having their posting experience tainted. That's what the community standards are here to prevent.

And it's not a "veterans piling on" thing to me either. If someone who'd been posting 3 days was offended by something, anything, that violates community standards, their opinion is valid. Statistically speaking, those who complain are likely to be vets, because there are more vets posting, and even though it took this long, perhaps vets are more likely to speak up. But should they not, just because they've been posting here since year dot?

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I'd also like to point out that when she's posting, Zoe is nearly every other post in the Angel thread. Makes it difficult to self-MARCIE. For me, at least.

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I almost entirely agree with ita; my only little quibble is that my mother has a head injury and sometimes she also veers off the tracks, so I know how strange and quirky such things can make a person. If Zoe didn't show signs of that, fine; but she does IMO.

If she didn't, then hell yeah, we got rules, let's enforce them and stop the hand-wringing.

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Jesus fucking Christ.

Apparently people have left because of the mieskie/Schmoker kerfluffle. And now I can see why.

I've read everything that was posted last night.

It seems way more important to bed over backwards to accomodate people who don't give a damn about the community, which in turn drives out people who DID give a big damn about the community.

Why is that? It seems self-destructive.

Kat said this:

If nothing is done, then it's a bit of a smack in the face of people who are upset and feeling irritated and feeling like this person is being deliberately rude and upsetting (note: I'm not one of these people. I just don't like to see the community turmoil her posts can cause). If we don't say anything to this poster, how can we justifiably say anything in the future to other posters who are strange, off putting and unwilling to be part of the community?

And I couldn't agree more. What are we to actually do, demand a notarized doctor's note? I mean, seriously. If not, anyone could come in, claim to have a mental problem, and post disruptive shit over and over and over and over.

I feel like warning for rude behaivor (as opposed to attacking or abusive behaivor) is a little too Orwellian.

Really? Because if I did the same things she's doing, I would hope that you all would cut me some slack on the first instance, because anyone could be having a bad day. But if I repeatedly posted disruptive, rude posts that sometimes come across as bigoted, I would expect a warning. Well, I would expect in-thread requests to tone it down. But if I ignored them, I would expect a warning.

And this (by, I think, Cindy) sums up my feelings perfectly:

People have taken it upon themselves to say, "Excuse me, but you were being offensive." She doesn't apologize and makes the situation worse. It happens over and over, so much so that there were 200 posts about her behavior when I came to the board today. People finally bring it up in here, something that Buffistas loathe to do because you're all bending over backwards to appear polite and open to all. And now they're being told to cite and use footnotes and present relevent case histories? People have already linked to specific instances and mentioned the threads in which the flare-ups occurred. If you care so much, go look. I did.

This is from ita:

I don't really care to have to explain "Oh, Buffista A can be as profanely homophobic and jerky as she likes -- she's touched in the head. But you have to be nice, unless you show us a note from the doctor."

Right. That's bullshit of the highest order. Mostly because this is a private posting board. We have standards we set up, and when people come in and violate them, people's responses have been, by and large, not to enforce the standards, but to give excuses for the people who violate them.

And again I want to know why.

Our standards are not unreasonable. In the standards, we encourage newbies to lurk in order to get the tone of the place -- although others, like Miracleman, we able to jump right and and hit the ground running. Anyone who lurked for even a few hours would see what a broad range of topics, ideas, and ways of expressing those ideas are present here.

This is not a board that stifles expression. All we ask is play nice. Is it REALLY that hard?

And why are we making excuses for the people who won't play nice?

I'm NOT saying that I'm going to leave, so don't read this as a melodramatic threat. I'm here, and I'm staying. But I can totally understand why the mieskie/schmoker incident drove people -- people I LIKE -- away.

Because it seems we give a way bigger damn about the TWO people who won't play nice than we do about the hundreds of people who do.

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t runs up behind Steph wearing "What Steph Said" sandwich board

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Really, I have to go, so I honestly look forward to peoples thoughts when I get back.

But the more I think about it, the more it burns me up that we're hurting our community by being over-accomodating to TWO people who haven't shown a single sign of wanting to meet us halfway. Or a quarter of the way. Or at all.

Maybe we should be more accomodating of the hundreds of posters (and hundreds more lurkers) who DO follow community standards.

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I am an occasional poster, and, as such, I don't often feel engaged enough in the community to call someone on what I feel is inappropriate behavior. This also affords me a higher level of tolerance and the ability to self-filter/ignore topics and/or posters fairly well.

That being said, Zoe has pinged my radar more than once. I think askye made a really good point when she said

Not to mention the fact that if (excluding the day after a new show) I see a huge jump in posts in Buffy/Angel thread my first thought is to wonder what Zoe has said now to piss people off and dread reading the thread. Even if she said nothing at all that's still my first thought.

Yesterday afternoon, I left work at 5:00est. The Angel thread hadn't been extraordinarily busy during the last couple of hours, but Kat had made her request. When I checked back into the board an hour or so later, there were 84 new posts. I thought things were exploding again. (They were, but only with Lindsey-lust.)

This is not the first time I have had this reaction. I read the show threads and have seen Zoe cause friction there on several occasions. I am surprised that it took this long for anyone to officially complain, but I chalked it up to being gun-shy.

In the general sense, I disagree with the reason that if we warn a troll because we give them what they want. If we aren't going to enforce standards on obvious trolls, there is no point to having standards. This may or may not apply to Zoe.

She has corrected her behavior before, though it took time and a more official warning. I am thinking specifically of her repeated instances of responding to "Beep Me" posts in "Beep Me". I may be misremembering the specific details, but I recall a poster complaining about the natter, and a Stompy posted a general reminder in "Press" and may have issued a specific reminder to Zoe in a show thread while she was posting. Whatever the exact chain of events, Zoe did respond and correct her behavior.

I think that an official notice is warranted, acceptable, and may well produce the desired effect. If it doesn't, the issue will have to be readdressed. I'm sorry this has become divisive, but really, it's been divisive for a while. It just took Kat to address the issue, and I'm sorry she felt attacked and excused herself.

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