OK, I'm here now. Sorry that this couldn't be as quick as some might have liked - I have a lot of real-life stuff going right now too.
I'm going to give my take on this for once here, and then let it rest. Some of you have already heard some or all of this via PM or IM, and I'm sorry if you've had to read it twice.
First off, let me say that this is exactly the sort of issue that I do not believe is worth any of our time. It was started in good humor - if others feel it should not go on, then I'm willing to defer to that even if I disagree about their reasons. I also have a bona fide fear that too much discussion over this will lead to some form of committee or amendment, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be responsible for starting another thread that has that effect.
The Rangers have my permission to move, lock, or delete this thread at their option, and I defer to Lidless as thread-originator as to which of those three things should happen.
For people who didn't understand the chess references:
I was joking around in the Member's Lounge when I asked Lidless to "meet me at the Racks". When I was at his house during the Florida m77t, the two of us sat down for a game of chess. Much to my chagrin, though I originally had the better of him, he checkmated me (even though he was somewhere between buzzed and drunk
). I vowed to beat him the next time I took him on - my post in TML was just a joke about that in response to the friendly three-way banter in that thread between TM, Lidless, and me.
When I saw that Lidless went with it and actually started a thread in the BikeRacks, I was surprised but highly amused. I considered for about two minutes whether to post, because I felt that
someone would be bothered by it. I actually thought it would be for a different reason than has been voiced - that people might see it as distracting or detracting from the Libertarian/Non-Libertarian mediation. After two minutes of not-that-careful consideration, I decided to post, figuring that it was obvious that we were just looking for a laugh, and hoping that others might draw a chuckle or two as well. Although it would be a problem if
everyone decided to start a joke thread in the BikeRacks, I thought it could be one of those "once is funny" things.
It became apparent last night that there were some concerns, when a Ranger contacted Lidless to ask that we voluntarily have the thread locked or deleted. I think Lidless was honestly more sympathetic to the idea than I was. Although I hadn't expected the thread started and had no great emotional investment in it, it brought some of my low-level frustration with things to a head - I voiced to Lidless and the Ranger my feeling that we've moved from censorship by mod (at TORC) to self-censorship out of concern that someone will be offended or take things too seriously/the wrong way. The two of us agreed to keep going, but to reevaluate if anyone publicly expressed concerns.
This has now happened. The thread was supposed to be fun. It cannot be fun if we are fighting over - of all things - whether the Charter permits it. I've just gotten through five hours of real-life fighting over what state law says with an attorney in a dispute that has real-life consequences. As I've said elsewhere, I come to this board to get away from that - i.e. I refuse to spend my time here on arguing about what a would-be legal document (for purposes of this board) permits or doesn't permit. By the time we're done with that discussion, it'll be three months from now and all humor will have long evaporated. If people feel that our thread is violating the objectives of a forum, then I understand their concerns and would rather yield to them than engage in a time-consuming, unfun fight.