Just a couple of notes --

First: I found the post you're talking about, here. I confess that I deliberately didn't read it. Now that I have read it, and the rest of the sub-thread it belongs to, I have to say it's hard to tell intent when the content is just shy of indecipherable.

"Consider the source" may be a good rule of thumb to use in deciding whether a post is personally offensive to you. Another way to say that might be: "You knew the job was futile when you took it, Fred."

Second: It happened to occur just before we received the tools to do anything more decisive than warn, and the entire system isn't up and running as of this morning. Any minute now, Robert will be editing the boards' code to provide email links to their respective moderators (or teams), thus permitting a "backchannel" method of bringing our attention to something you see that we might not have.

We don't spend the entire day scanning the Zone for infractions. Hell, even I sometimes have other things to do. And it was never intended for us to read every post in the board for which we have responsibility. Granted, I'm going to have to change some deeply ingrained habits about who I choose not to read -- but, speaking only for myself, I'm going to continue to rely on subject lines to clue me in on "problem" exchanges.

Third: Even though you don't know why you brought up the "backchannel" email discussion, I'll presume you were concerned about its tenor, and I don't mind giving a precis:

It started up when SDG proposed sharing OT with Mary Anne. He then started drafting their "platform", to which Mary Anne and I both suggested rephrasing for clarity. Then I proposed that the three of us, plus RL, become The Civility Slate. At the same time, the confusion about who was being nominated for which board finally resolved itself -- i.e., Frank was both willing and available -- so we invited him to join the Slate and brought him up to speed on the platform.

The only time individual Zoners and their habits were named was as illustrations of extreme intolerable behavior... and at no point were you included in that category.