A, until I got to your final sentence I thought you must be refereing to John and Michael as those "2 people".

Can I ask what was so wrong with this board in the period immediately preceding a couple of weeks ago? As I've said elsewhere, there are posters who have contributed more frequently on M&S, who I think would enhance this board as well, but that notwithstanding, what was the problem? Was the whole board really so threatened by the existence of the commodification thread, for example?

Ian,

First of all, the commodification thread is still intact and has not been added to since M&S was formed.

Secondly, I am tired saying why I took the action I did. It was the last straw in an almost monthly series of incidents or necessities for intervention. The Argment board was formed yet anyone sent there refused to use it and new trouble was created later, the latest was the attack on Baz.

I felt that rather than allow the intellectuals to ruin R3ok give them the opportunity to form their own forum. They have. So R3ok decides to reorganise the moderation roles and Ian comes back for the very first time to the very thread that is arranging this and challenges the existence of R3ok, and expresses contempt for the majority of the members here. When I refer to 'silent majority' I refer to members who DO post but have not involved themselves in the this latest debacle.

During the last week R3ok has returned to being a peaceful forum, some of the silent majority began posting again, while the M&S forum without an audience has posted mainly trivia and some members decide to return here and disrupt things again.

John W

I'll second Tommo. There are other candidates who are already nominated / seconded who I am also very happy with but the more quality candidates the better.

I second Tommo!

Oh rats!  BobbyZ got there first. I`ll third yer then

What were these incidents, specifically in, say, the two months leading up to the decision?

My own opinion is that any decisions made about the running and moderation of this board should be taken entirely in isolation, and not in relation to what other boards, with other memberships and different agendas, may exist?  I have said before and say again that I wish the M&S board success, although I have no wish to post there - but we discussing this board and its administration here, and that shouldn't be done on an "if you don't like it you can go over there" basis.

May I ask a question which may seem both anally retentive and paranoid (I'm sure someone somewhere will enjoy me admitting it..) but does seem pertinent?  My question is: "Will voting be restricted to the current active membership?"   It seems to me that there is nothing to stop vote-rigging by signing-up duplicate memberships, by encouraging one's off-board friends to join-up and vote etc?  (I feel entitled to ask as there are two memberships in my name - one from before I took a "sabbatical", and one from after I came back.  One is disabled, in the sense that I don't have the password to it to be able to use it, and it would be transparent from the "last visited" date that it hadn't been used to vote.)   When, in Don B's words, "Krakatoa erupted" we even had dormant members rushing back in order to announce they were leaving!   Dormant members I can cope with, posting isn't obligatory - but how can we guard against misuse of votes by duplicate memberships or similar practices?   Or are we just going to pursue an "honesty policy" and hope that real-life individuals who might happen to have two memberships only vote with one of them?

Not fair? It was open to all for about two days (until you closed it, John) and only one other poster (other than yourself) voted for the option that 'political threads' had no place on the R3ok boards. There were over 40 voters, three of whom, I think, left the boards subsequently.