Dan,

The thread below is not the incident in question. What you see below from Monday night, as it developed, was only the preamble.

You might remember the thread that started Tuesday morning. Keith kicked things off with a post associating me with anomalists, and it drew quite a few responses, including one from you. Late in the evening it turned rather ugly, with Keith posting not only profanity in subject lines, but the taunt "(hoping to be banned)". Although on the surface he was directing his profanity at SDAI-Tech, it was the taunt about banning that convinced me that the board was under attack, and that SDAI was likely just a pretext. Justin and I were able to consult by email this time, but things were coming at us pretty fast and heavy--honest to God, Dan, the situation was indistinguishable from an emergency.

In all the noise and fury I chose to delete the thread rather than move it, but it's in the archive. I can post the URL if you're really, morbidly, curious about the whole regrettable incident.

I'd rather we didn't, though, because I just lifted the block, and Keith is welcome to return. I believe Justin is emailing him now to invite him back. Publishing that thread would just reopen the wounds and reignate the conflagration. I agree with you, and I said so in several posts during the incident, that Keith has made a valuable contribution to the board in the past, and that I believe that he can in the future.

I agree in general with everything in your post (including "Guess what. Not everyone reads everything Robert posts."--I have no illusions on that score!). Although on the surface the board doesn't look much different than when it was housed at disc.server, in reality everything here is brand new, including the way that Justin and I try to work together to hold things together. We need to clarify the situation and develop consistent policies. We're developing those policies in realtime based on painful lessons like this. This has been the week from hell, let me tell ya.

About your final paragraph full of suggestions, ending "That paragraph was right off the top of my head and, rereading it, the idea looks like a small scripting nightmare." Not at all. Not to diminish your ideas in any way at all, but Justin and I have already discussed the "Community" board ASAP (maybe combining it with the tech support function). The voting system is high on my list to add to the software in the near future. What else do you want to see?

--Robert