Okay, folks, here’s the scorecard.
The following people are no longer welcome to post on these forums (i.e. they have been banned): Derek Smart, Bill Huffman, wumpus, Met_K, Captain Cookiepants, and Cleve Blakemore.
They were all asked to, basically, chill out. Each of them refused, either directly (e.g. an email/PM saying ‘no, I won’t, so you can just ban me’, which was what happened with Met_K and Cookiepants) or indirectly (e.g. initially agreeing and then violating the spirit or letter of the agreement, which is what happened with Derek, Cleve, Bill, and wumpus).
There are no other outstanding warnings, bannings, probations, whatever. We will not ban people because you disagree with their politics. We will not ban people because you don’t like them or because they made you look like a fool. We will not ban people because they call us names or discuss the way the forum is run. We will not ban Brian Koontz for his strident calls for ‘full disclosure’, or whatever it is he wants. We will not ban Jason McCullough for being too left or Dan Morris for being too right.
If things get out of hand, Mark or I will ask you to please chill. We will be polite. We will not be arbitrary. We will try to be clear about what we expect. We will even discuss it with you. It will not be a personal vendetta thing. We’re pretty easy-going guys. If anything, we’re easy-going to a fault.
We didn’t like doing this. We think all of the above people had something valuable to contribute to the board, particularly wumpus(!). But the bottom line is that it’s our backyard and if you can’t honor that, you don’t have the right to be here.
-Tom
P.S. I’ll lay 3-1 odds this thread hits 200 posts before the weekend is out.