I just want to mention that Bitches is not really all full of the secrets that non-Bitches think it is.

This is true. And the intimate feel of the place is a matter of the response people get there from other bitches, not from the fact that those of us who post there imagine that the place is or should be a secret.

wouldn't emailing a stompy foot be a better course of action, if people are concerned about making visible comments about a troll?

Thank you for posting, Cindy. I read most but not all of last weekend's Natter this past weekend, and am still reading the posts leading up to the last vote. My first thought was, did something happen that's behind this vote proposal? and I gather from your post that there is. I'm sorry that you are being pestered or harrassed, I'm not exactly sure where on the spectrum it falls.

My second thought was, I thought in a prior vote that it was agreed that if someone was being a pest, or there was a problem of some sort, they'd first be asked to try to deal with the matter in that that thread, and then take the matter to B'cracy to hash it out. So you'd want B'cracy to be unlocked?

As for Bitches, I've had hopes of joining in at some point, and to that end, printed out all of thread 10 in the hopes of eventually reading it and joining in sometime. Is that kind of lurking considered intrusive and am I the sort you want to ban?

Edit to clarify: I wish that it was always this easy to find out what's behind a vote proposal. Cindy's message was just a few posts behind the vote proposal. Sometimes, you have to know who to email to find out why something has come up, if you aren't in every thread daily.

If I'd had a private place to report what she was doing, perhaps I could have stayed out of her sights.

I think we either need some sort of private thread to discuss our suspensions and bannings, or some other method.

I totally sympathize. But Zoe was a registered user when she focused in on you. As was proven this morning, she can become one again easily -- if she hadn't posted, how long could she have lurked, reading Bureaucracy or whatever?

One option would be allowing posters who want someone to be warned to contact the Stompies by email, but that was pretty conclusively shouted down last time it was discussed.

that was pretty conclusively shouted down last time it was discussed.

Ahhh... I missed that discussion.

If I'd had a private place to report what she was doing, perhaps I could have stayed out of her sights.

I do think Cindy has a point. Well, the point revolves around how responsible we the board are for events that happen off-board, since it was in service to the board that Cindy picked up an unwanted email correspondent. I think there's potential for a chilling effect, if doing something for the board causes you to get emails from creepy weirdoes.

I'm not sure what the solution is. One of the options is to make it easy to email the admins with a notice, and the admins rephrase or repost that notice in Bureaucracy, saying "this came from a user blah blah blah". But that wouldn't deal with discussion, only an initial complaint or heads-up.

Java Cat, to try to answer your questions, the kind of lurking we're talking about is banning people who aren't registered Buffistas at all from seeing threads, not banning people who aren't active in a given thread.

Anyone who's causing a problem in the threads is de facto a registered user, as are you if you ever decide to try the waters in Bitches (and I hope I can speak for other Bitches in saying you'd be welcome there).

Java, absolutely not. It's when threadsucking is used for evil, that I wish, like others, there was a happy medium. Like "Are you going to use this board for evil? Check yes or no." on the registration. Not that would help....but....

(and yeah, what amych said...get thee to Bitches!!)