I meant wouldn't the whole shadowy behind-the-scene manouvering be more upsetting to the majority of posters than an open discussion.

Backchanneling, without everyones opinions with their names on them for the botherer to see, and then an official warning seems, can't think of a good word, but cliquey comes to mind.

Yes, this.

It also might seem like less of one if the person being discussed would discuss the behavior with us.

And this.

I think, in many circumstances, a person (well, I would, anyway) would welcome the chance to participate/apologize/defend themselves in this forum, rather than have the impression that people were raging about them behind their back.

We can't force Zoe to come here, but we've given her every opportunity, and she's been made aware several times in several ways.

Another problem is that, if the whole accusation/fustration registration process takes place behind the scenes, there will be no way for someone to defend herself

But while I know that a lot of you in here have the standing within the community as well as the writing abilities to come in here and stand up for yourself, I'm going to admit: If I saw there were 300+ posts about me and what a pain in the arse I was to some, while others speculated about my mental condition, I may not feel like jumping into the fray either. I can understand how someone may feel like the situation was very intimidating, and the decks were stacked against them.

I don't like the notion of backchannel at all. I prefer to discuss issues which concern the community in this thread. Whether it is proposing a new Monkey thread or discussions concerning violations of community standards.

I could see that point Monique, in another circumstance. But in this one, Zoe was invited here immediately. It grew to 300 posts, in part, because she didn't respond.

What Cindy said. I was just writing it, but not fast enough. Damn you, wee fingers!

I would venture a guess that a poster violating community standards probably gets a number of private emails from members expressing concern. If they have a profile address listed that is.

I actually think Monique has an excellent point. It's not necessarily good for the board as a whole to have this stuff always be front and center, as we've seen. The person could be e-mailed and given a chance to respond just as easily as he or she could be given a chance to respond here, and I think that might well be less disruptive to everyone else and less stressful to face for the person in question.

The person could be e-mailed and given a chance to respond just as easily as he or she could be given a chance to respond here, and I think that might well be less disruptive to everyone else and less stressful to face for the person in question.

But given this particular case, with people speaking against action and in Zoe's defense, while others were pointing the finger at other posters for the manner in which they've called Zoe on stuff, our stompies were (and I'm not picking on them, I understand why) unsure whether to handle or how to handle.

Nothing that happened here gives me the opinion that a stompy would have contacted Zoe based on an email request.

Plus the stompies will be forced to make decisions backchannel, which they have already stated they don't want to do, and based on less information about how the board as a whole feels.

Well, and again this is all asspull, but they wouldn't be making a decision. It would be a case of X-many posters have officially expressed their discomfort, therefore automatically this is brought to the attention of B MP. Not in an aggressive way. One would certainly hope that people would speak to B MP themselves before running to a stompy (as has been the case so far), and maybe say (as Kat did, quite correctly) that they were going to make an official complaint.

there will be no way for someone to defend herself--or to come to the defense of another--until a decision has already been made.

Of course there will. I'm not remotely advocating a "four complaints and you're banned" kind of policy. I'm suggesting that making the first move towards warning be simpler, rather than hundreds of posters trying to decide whether or not a stompy should alert somebody that there was a problem. B MP will totally be able to email the stompy back and say "Shit, really? I didn't realise!" Or "No, this isn't fair. X did such-and-such first, which is why I said blah blah blah". I'm talking about proactively opening a dialogue, in an attempt to nip problems in the bud - not shooting somebody.