Dear Eratosphereans,

Thank you to everyone who contributed opinions and suggestions towards a revised guideline following recent dramatic events & the vigorous threads that ensued.

The updates have been posted at the Sphere's cyber halls here where the concensus opinion -- mine, the staff's & yours -- are instantiated as articles 10 and 11 of our guidelines.

Cheers,
...Alex

I'm neither transported nor transubstantiated when I click on "here."

Bob

Bob, in that case try entering the URL manually (or copy n' paste). it's: http://eratosphere.ablemuse.com/guidelines.htm

...Alex

Alex,

Thanks.

I just discovered that the "here" works if I drag it to the top of the window, the same thing I have to do with PM's, Replies, Quotes, Topics, etc. Quirky, but it works when I remember to do it with everything requiring a mouse click.

Bob

Alex,

I've just noticed this topic - it's been a Busy Month. Thanks for posting these modifications.

I do have a couple of questions, though:

- article 10 says that you will get the input of "moderators and other parties with an interest in, or affected by, the incident".

- article 11 says that suspensions and banishments will not be publically announced.

How, then, are other parties, who might well have an interest in the suspension of a member, supposed to know that the member has indeed been suspended, so that they can convey their input to you?
- is it expected that the suspended member will PM other people about the situation?
- do you intend to actively solicit input from people that you think might be interested?
- if I have been following a controversial thread and one of the primary controversers suddenly falls silent, am I to infer that she or he may have been suspended, and PM them to find out?

Also, article 11 says that public discussion of banishments is "discouraged". I'm a little unclear as to what this means in practice. If such discussion begins anyway, will threads be locked? Threads and/or posts be removed? With or without explanation? Members who chose to discuss the matter in public be suspended, themselves? Possibly any or all of these, depending on the exact circumstances and the judgement of the moderators?

Please note, these are intended as logistical questions about how the policy will actually work in practice; not a question of the policy.

Thanks in advance for your clarifications; and thanks again to you, Carol, and all the moderators for all your hard work here.

Victoria Gaile

More good questions.

Caaaaarollll....


Alex ?

Victoria and Wendy, I can't really give absolute answers to hypothetical questions and I can't promise you that every decision made on this board will have the approval of all members, but certainly anybody who feels he has input to contribute to a given situation is free to write to the administrators and share that input or ask questions. Such information may be asked for or volunteered when Alex considers the grounds for revoking or banning a member, though the final decision will be Alex's. We don't plan to make a public statement of bannings and we ask that you respect the spirit of the guidelines and limit your own questions and objections to private messaging. There is little advantage in suspending a member's posting priviledge if he's to be allowed to continue posting through third-parties. If he has a convincing rebuttal he will have the chance to present it to Alex directly.

If you ever wonder what happened to a thread, write me or the moderator of the forum, or you can write to the author directly. When a thread is deleted the author is notified and told why his thread was taken down. Suspended members can send and receive PM's just as the rest of us can, though once their membership is revoked they will no longer have access to board resources.

The idea is to keep the focus of the board on poetry in the public forums and to deal with disciplinary matters in the least disruptive way possible.

I know this doesn't reduce everything to absolutes, but situations do vary. That's part of what our excellent staff have to consider, and we appreciate your confidence.

Carol

Just to say how nice to find the new rules on my return to this site after a long absence (courtesy of local library). The arguments between irate parties did get a bit tedious.
Have switched to new username partly because my own is a common combination. Greetings to all old friends, Margaret Moore.