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Well, it can't be easy to be stripped of being one point six bar per cent of the revolution, AG.
Thanks for putting a nice gloss on that, TTS. I'd like to believe that you're right.
I would hate to see you condemned by your own words for inconsistency, Horse. Let me help you. You did not notice that I had called Talks to Strangers Mordant Carnival. You have two options here. You have chosen to pretend that this has no relevance - that all MC is doing is providing a "gloss", rather than actually giving you new information which invalidates your insinuation. This is not going to play.
So, option the first is to admit that this rather torpedoes your conspiracy theory. That would be sensible, but probably not desirable. Number two is to claim that actually this was a cunning double bluff on my part, and that, anticipating that your piercing mind might discern my purpose, I agreed beforehand with Mordant Carnival to call her by a previous name and then hold this in reserve in case you rumbled me. You could go for that, I suppose.
To clarify. I call people by the names they are using or the names by which I remember them, usually, unless they ask me to do otherwise. You may have noticed that I, for example, move between two recognisable phonemes, and do not mind whether I am called Haus, Tann, Tannhauser or whatever variation I am using at this point. I call SJJ/Mathlete Mathlete because he tends to revert back to Mathlete on a regular basis - this cocoon/butterfly idea that SJJ is a new start is, as far as I know, something you have made up rather than something he has expressed. I call you He Of Stable Beef because it is a memorable name, and is the one by which I think of you. If you want to be called by your current name as a matter of policy, you need to ask. If you can point to an instance where you or Mathlete asked me to refer to them by their new name, because it represented now the totality of your identity, please do so: I missed it, I think, or have forgotten it. D'mandem asked, and I have complied. Until he asked, I had no means of knowing that this was an issue for him. Please do feel free to state a preference. Do please feel constrained in making up imaginary slights based around my selfish failure to read your mind and determine how upset you are by an offense that, honestly, I suspect you just invented foor the purposes of this discussion. If you feel that your previous name is associated with trolling, that is certainly a good reason to ask people not to use it - I knew of no such association - but the allegation that calling one person Mathlete and one person HOSB will make people identify them because both of them are their previous names is, frankly, beneath my attention. Consider instead that you might be being likened to Mordant Carnival by the same logic, and try to live up to that.
Now, back on the banning. Allow me to apologise for my misunderstanding, and offer in mitigation only that you appear to have missed out an enormous chunk of your statement, without which your current gloss (for, in this case, such it is) makes no sense. Am I correct, then, in thinking that what you meant when you said:
I see no reason to continue the conversation.... cause to move for a ban.
You meant to write something like:
I see no reason to continue the conversation further unless SJJ does something (and here's hoping he doesn't) that would give anyone cause to move for a ban. Of course, there are those who have already of a mind to think that he has done things that give cause for a ban. They might think that now they should wait to see if he does anything else that gives cause for a ban, or they might think that the cause that they believe he has already given for a ban remains a convincing cause, in which case, naturally, they can continue the conversation, or simply restate that they feel that his current undertaking is not sufficient for them to suspend or rescind their call for a ban. And, I suppose, people might want to discuss whether or not they are right to believe that. So, that conversation can happen as well. However, apart from those conversations about what people already understand as suitable and ongoing causes for a ban, there should be no continuation of conversations about whether Mathlete/TJJ has given cause for a ban unless he does something (and here's hoping he doesn't) that would give anyone cause to move for a ban.
Or perhaps:
I see no reason to continue the conversation further unless SJJ does something (and here's hoping he doesn't) that would give anyone cause to move for a ban. If anyone who has so far called for a ban does not say anything - and they should not, unless he does anything further to provide cause to move for a ban, they can be assumed still to want him to be banned, since what I have just said has no impact on what has gone before. So, we should not continue such conversations, but we should continue on the assumption that a majority of those who have expressed a firm preference in the thread have supported a ban. So, we should not have any conversations, but we should ban Mathlete. We just shouldn't talk about it. It's really not helpful speculating as to whether he will be able to have a more successful relationship with Barbelith in future, as any negative speculations will only fuel the impression I believe he has that he's not treated with fairness on the board, and also because he is probably going to be banned. Right now, I think it is best to congratulate him for undertaking the action he's mentioned (as, indeed, XK did), wish him the best, and look forward to his transformation from an ugly Mathlete duck into a beautiful Jawsus swan. Until he is banned.
In either case, I'm fine with it, but it could possibly have done with some of the love and attention you have devoted to making up stories about my attempts to liken you by the use of the word "Matrix" (which I am happy to amend to the term of your preference - it seemed appropriate because you were seeking to alter, it seemed, the topography of the online environment) and your previous chosen name to various evils.
I think that actually what you meant was something like:
I see no reason to continue the conversation further unless SJJ does something (and here's hoping he doesn't) that would give anyone cause to move for a ban. That is, we should suspend any current conversation about banning, and behave as if no such conversations were currently in play involving the idea of banning SJJ until such time as he does something else banworthy - that is, we should behave as if he had not so far done anything banworthy, and disregard all statements to the effect that his behaviour has so far justified banning, unless and until he does something else banworthy.
This is also fine, and is in fact what you meant, as far as I can discern. It is also what I thought you meant, and as I thought it seeks to normalise a situation in which everyone behaves as if there have been no statements from members that he should be banned, and/or that all those statements no longer have any force. However, as Mordant Carnival has demonstrated, it has no more power to compel than XK's suggested contract - the primary difference being that Mordant Carnival repeating her position on whether she feels Mathlete/SJJ should be banned is unlikely to be taken as a sign of an inability on his part to control her own behaviour to the detriment of self and community. If I have misunderstood you again, I apologise, and will do so without the need to throw up a smokescreen of weird allegations about nomenclature.
So, let's move on. Posit: Pursuant to the discussion of "second/third/etc chances" earlier, we could, if it were agreeable to all parties, agree that this was Mathlete's second chance. Part of that second chance was conditional upon him understanding that he is unable to determine what is and what is not a useful contribution to the Policy, or what is and is not harassment in response to a particular person (persons, I think we'll find over time, but that can wait). He has agreed to put boundaries on his experience of Barbelith to avoid those problems recurring. The crossing of those boundaries will act as a sign that he is unable to control his behaviour, despite wanting to, and so the banning process will start and end very quickly, to avoid further misery on his part. Without assigning blame, one could see it as equivalent to the delicate but unspoken "don't push it even a fraction as far as you have pushed it before" balance extended to DEDI after he avoided banning in the face of nobody really having any use for him but him wanting to stick around. However, that does mean that we can't have the same conversation we have just had if there is another such incident. |
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