Someone who was ill and now has their situation under control is a good example of why.

My problem with that is that there is no way to prove someone had been ill, short of demanding doctor's notes. Which seems just a tad extreme. And it seems almost insulting to the posters on this board who have remained civil through cancer, divorce, miscarriage and severe depression to say someone else who deals with those things by lashing out at the board should get a free pass if they promise to play nice.

To me, whether bannings should be permanent is a different question than whether we should invite Zoe back. I guess my vote would go yes on allowing any and all banned posters back after a year, no on making case-by-case exceptions.

Can it be moot until someone who is banned for an extended period of time brings it up? Please?

Thirded. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it.

Whoever wants to contact Zoe to wish her well should contact the Stompies to get her address -- I think especially with the time lapse, there's no need for a board response.

I don't think she's asking to come back -- it's a nice note, in fact. So I'm with the very large group saying that, in the circumstance where we might have banned someone and that someone comes back with an explanation and asks to be reinstated, we consider it then.

(I would, for myself, still vote no at that time -- I just went through an equivalent situation on a list I co-moderate (misbehaving person gets bounced, comes back and says, 'whoa, I was altered, sorry,' is reinstated, and then gets crazy all over again), and I'll freely admit it biases me.)

But I would also note that despite our exponential growth, we have with a few notable exceptions lived in peace and harmony (knock wood) and it would seem to me that the likelihood of the situation Trudy's proposing to address actually occurring here is quite small.

Heck, Lyra Jane, we have very little way of knowing much about anything anyone here says. IMHO, you sorta have to take things at face value or not.

As far as:

And it seems almost insulting to the posters on this board who have remained civil through cancer, divorce, miscarriage and severe depression to say someone else who deals with those things by lashing out at the board should get a free pass if they promise to play nice.

She didn't "deal with" her problems by "lashing out at the board," she had a psychotic break (and we surely didn't suffer the worst of it). To me such characterization seems insulting.

It's not that small, Dr. T... different wording on the note and it would be happening now.

Like I said, I just wanted to propose that I think it would be kind (and in the spirit of the season) to say, "Glad to hear that you are feeling better. If you'd like to come back for a month and see how it goes...."

She's not asking to come back, Trudy. The note reads very much like a goodbye to me. There's no reason to reopen the matter if it's closed.

And, yes, the likelihood that someone else would have a similar situation, and also ask to come back -- given the general population of the board, this strikes me as a vanishingly small possibility.

What Michele said. If a banned person asked to come back, we could consider the question then. We aren't in that situation right now.

Trudy, I would be very, very uncomfortable with any policy or decision that suggested that we had different standards for different posters depending on what caused their problems with board culture. It's immaterial from this end of the screen whether someone has a psychotic break, or if they're getting divorced and don't like the other gender very much right then, or if they're just an asshole -- it's all equally disruptive. I have sympathy for Zoe's problem, and I'm glad she's doing better, but that sympathy does not extend to wanting to make an exception for her.

It's worth noting that when Schmoker asked to be reinstated, the consensus was pretty much "hell, no." And he was capable of fitting in with board culture when he tried.

Like I said, I just wanted to propose that I think it would be kind (and in the spirit of the season) to say, "Glad to hear that you are feeling better. If you'd like to come back for a month and see how it goes...."

I'm really against this. She didn't ask to come back.

It reads to me that she might like to be asked back.

We disagree, that's no big deal. Neither of us had definitive knowledge, however.

I was among those in favor of taking Schmoker back too.

An opinion being unpopular doesn't make it unexpressable.