It did seem to me, however, that the people who have contributed negatively to this community, have overwhelmingly not understood this community.

Making an effort to do so? Not a bad thing. And certainly not dependent upon any need to interact, in a public manner, from the first moment one found the board.

There are, and have been, people who saw the board, jumped right in, and had a handle on things from the get-go. There are people who lurked for a long time then jumped in. And there are some who, with or without prior lurking, had some adjusting to do. There is no one-size-fits-all waiting period that will ensure that people "get" us. But several folks have noted that trying to implement one probably would have made them move on, and why on earth would we want to do that?

In my case, I lurked for a long time at TT without registering - at that point, if I'd had to register, I probably would have skipped it. When I did register, it was because I had something I just had to say. You can't know how long someone's been hanging around before they go through the reg process, and I don't think it's useful to try.

It seems you're trying to legislate lurk-to-learn. But if something sparks my interest, I want to jump in with both feet, and I suspect others feel that way as well. Lurk-to-learn wouldn't have stopped either of the banned folks, they were around long enough to learn, if they could, wanted to, or were able to do so.

Lurk-to-learn helps with rules, but you can't legislate a personality or pshche that fits. You can't legislate sanity, or social skills.

That's where our biggest problems will be. Spoilers in unAmerican is something we can totally fix, because we have active "moderation" of those sorts of rules, and our Stompies are quick with the whitefont.

I'd not want to lose an ita to a registration pause. We're good with Jono-type trolls who would fuck with coding.

We're not so good with "wrong fit." And unfortunately for short fuses like me, the way it works is that we'll spend weeks on toilet training, days on debate, and a lot of energy on buttering our doorway to squish the bad fit back out into the net machine.

But now that it's been legislated that way, I can bide my time until the ill-fitting poster loses out on their write priviledge.

Interested enough to not walk away if they can't post right.here.and.now.

ME ME ME ME

I would have walked away.

I would guess you'd have lost many good posters along with maybe some not so good ones. And you'd have lost me (whichever category you lump me in).

You can't legislate sanity, or social skills.

True enough.

See, Lyra Jane, Allyson and I are cut from different cloths, but we've all stated it's unlikely we'd have been back.

And I think that's the key to why voting discussions become so problematic. 3 people, three cloths. 900 people, nine hundred cloths. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but it is a thing. And it's the thing that's going to make it difficult to formulate any kind of enforceable behaviours.

It's important to you that you can (or could) register and immediately participate in this community. It's important to me, for instance, that there aren't closed threads in this community.

Basically, upthread, I was trying to look at what wolfram was trying to achieve with his suggestions and see if there was a more palatable, even handed way to do that. I guess the short answer is no.

All the arguments against having closed threads also apply to the usefulness of having Search available only to registered users (when it was). Yet that actually did have some preventive function, because there was no link to it anywhere. No one's boss was going to register to get Search, because they wouldn't know we had it.

Bureaucracy has almost as much camouflage, just by looking boring. Mieskie didn't know about it. But it would be even more hidden than Search if it didn't have a link, because people wouldn't be asking about it as often.

Yet that actually did have some preventive function, because there was no link to it anywhere.

There was always an intention to add a link to Search once the coding was completed.

Mieskie didn't know about it. But it would be even more hidden than Search if it didn't have a link

IMO, the biggest mistake we made in the mieskie sitch was not inviting him to Bureauracy at the start of the discussion about him. Open discussions are a good thing.

IMO, the biggest mistake we made in the mieskie sitch was not inviting him to Bureauracy at the start of the discussion about him. Open discussions are a good thing.

I agree with Jon here, and I think that's been lost in my posts.

My concern is how we'll handle suspended posters who, during their suspension, do things that warrant banning. And then, I'm mainly concerned if the person is less than stable (which I realize we can't discern).

I'm concerned because our admin. aren't going to act on their own, and did catch flak when they handled Anathema behind the scenes. Given what I've seen in the two prior situations (all of it: the in-fighting, the losing posters, the big gap between the 'ban-them-now' and the 'let's-bend-over-backwards' crowds, the finger-pointing at the admin.), I have less confidence in the process than I'd like. I lack confidence, because I think our method is great for most situations, but is likely to fail in extreme situations, which of course, is when we need it most.

You can put me down in the borrowing trouble column. I suppose this is something that will have to go in the wait-and-see pile. I'm frustrated that the last problem went on for so long, that it took some of us getting in the person's sights before the person was ousted. However, this isn't my proposal; it's not how I would have framed it; and I don't want to agitate for it as is.

For the record, I wasn't emailed by a banned Buffista, nor did I claim I was, but I have no desire to explain the situation or give it more attention.

I think the definite risks far outweigh any possible benefits.

And I think it is unBuffista-- by which I mean that our nature as a big, happy, welcoming group of geeky-warm mixed nuts who can and do go off on any old thing would be seriously inhibited if people couldn't step in as soon as they were moved to do so.

I think it is unBuffista

I still hate this term, for the record.

I don't like the idea of making threads locked for members only, I don't see what good it will do.

If we have to move an issue to voting and this thread isn't locked then people can read this. If the issue is mentioned in other threads then unregistered lurkers can read about it there and register and read.

I don't like delaying the registration process. I'm one of those people who would have never participated if it had taken a long time to register and participate. I'm just like that, there are plenty of places I've registered and posted once or twice and then never gone back. If there was some place where I had to jump through hoops to be able to post then I just wouldn't jump.

I know some people had issues with the fact that the admins dealt with meiskie privately but I think that people are going to have to realize that as admins they are going to have private discussion about how to deal with situations.

I'm not sure how else voice my objections except I agree with what other people have said. I don't see how locking threads will be any kind of help.