Proposal: Ban Polter-Cow from the board by consensus, without going through the official voting process.
Background: In the past couple of days on Twitter, I've seen several writers discussing what they consider a pattern of harassment by Polter-Cow. Anyone interested in what's happening on Twitter can search on his real name, Sunil Patel. (He has linked his pseud and his real name repeatedly on the board, so I feel comfortable using it.)
In discussing this with other board members, I have been made aware of several people who he has made uncomfortable with his behavior and actions, to the point that they have avoided threads he posts in or F2F events he's part of, or they have left the board entirely. I think we should ban him for this consistent and long-standing pattern of behavior.
It is with sadness that I have to agree. This board is precious to me and it hurts me that members feel uncomfortable with his presence.
Any consistently behavior that drives multiple users away shows an egregious pattern and needs to be censured.
As far as I'm concerned, I haven't had any problems with him. But I don't feel like those who've had should feel obligated to post any details they don't want to. As a society, I hope we're getting past the point of seeing woman after woman say "This happened to me," and disbelieving them.
Agreed. If I had heard all of the stories I heard today at the time, I would have said this years ago, I hope.
Or, frankly, my tolerance for poor behavior from men is at an all-time low right now. That doesn't make the behavior any less poor.
There are several people who'd left the board who I really missed, and I just learned today that they left at least partially because of him, though I don't know the specifics.
I'm torn, because he got on my nerves a lot, but this is a "win" I can't relish.
As far as I'm concerned, I haven't had any problems with him. But I don't feel like those who've had should feel obligated to post any details they don't want to. As a society, I hope we're getting past the point of seeing woman after woman say "This happened to me," and disbelieving them.
Dana speaks for me. I've no need for testimony, you have my consent to ban.
What Hil said. I've never had any problems with him myself, at all, but it's deeply upsetting to know that other long-time Buffistas have come to feel so uncomfortable around him that they have chosen to exclude themselves from the community. And it's important because, as a community, we make it such a priority to connect F2F as well as on the board; if multiple people are opting out of engaging at all in order to avoid one person, that's a problem for the whole community.
I just wanted to make it clear that I'm not, like, licking my chops over this...I wouldn't even consider our twice-yearly blow-outs anything to be concerned about...however, I'm not astounded about what I've been hearing so I guess I'd support the ban.
