Forgive me for the following rambling and possibly incoherent post:
TORN, as I understand it, you are saying that a hearing on a non-bannable offense (Hearing on a Violation of By-Laws etc.) should have been lumped together with a hearing on a bannable offense (Hearing on a Ban)? Is this correct?
The proposed text for Hearings on a Ban begins with this:
Hearings on a Ban are convened and conducted in the same manner as Hearings on a Violation of By-laws/Community Disruption, except that a recommendation by a jury to ban a member is not final.
So we have said they are essentially the same, the distinction is in the kind of offense being considered (not in the procedure). Are you suggesting that because we've distinguished between a hearing for a non-bannable offense and a hearing for a bannable offense, that we have essentially expanded the set of possible offenses that will be considered for hearings, and this is what you object to?
May I direct your attention to the following?
TORN the befuddled and uninformed wrote: |
I fear I may have cast my ballot with excessive ignorance of the particulars as, although I've probably read most of the posts on this topic, I suspect that very little of the particulars have stuck in my mushy brain, so what I say below may be completely off-track or may have been fully explained away before
Thank you for explaining that to me -- I had completely missed that the distinction was so small -- I trust my vote will have no impact on the final outcome. However, I do remain concerned (and I realize we have not yet gotten to the point of enumerating Board member rights & what are considered "enforceable" rights) that we may drift toward too many "causes of action" -- i.e., too many things that can give rise to an official proceeding, and what I was specifically referring to in my prior post was that by creating two categories, we may feel compelled to come up with things to justify the existence of two categories.
For the record, I think having a jury trial, followed by a board wide vote, for bannable offenses make sense certainly as far as permanent bans are concerned. What other penalties do we envision? Short-term bans? Restrictions from or to specific fora? I personally urge that we do not allow proceedings for an "offense" if that offense cannot result in a punishment (i.e., if the only thing that can come of a proceeding on a particular offense is an admonition, then that offense is not worthy of a proceeding, in my view). And I strongly urge that punishments be meted out only for particularly egregious circumstances.
One observation I'll make about the whole public procedure for dispute resolution is that there is a real potential downside -- I fear that public jury trials in such a small community as this (and I still have not seen any scenario that realistically foretells an extraordinary growth in the size of this community) might in some cases, depending on the specific facts, cause more harm than good in hard feelings, embarassment, etc. Many offenses will involve one poster doing something that was probably aimed at one or a few other posters, and a public jury trial may drag everyone involved through the muck. I wonder if any thought has been given to allowing the accused to request a "bench" trial (i.e., waive a right to a jury and instead have an admin "try" the case, possibly in private) or allowing settlements to be reached where the accused poster agrees to be banned (this option brings to mind prior discussions on this board about allowing people to request a self-ban -- my personal opinion is that I see nothing wrong with fulfilling a requested self-ban, even if it might tangentially help that poster to make a point that is contrary to the established position of the board).
Out of curiosity, putting aside any woeful activities of TPTB at TORC or at B77 (okay, just admins here), how frequently do you folks think what is being cooked up here would have resulted in a formal proceeding if these nascent procedures had been in place back at TORC and from Day 1 here? In other words, how often did you find in the past that there was a need to formally protect posters from other posters? For me, I can't off the top of my head think of any situations in all my years of LOTR messageboarding, although I suspect that there in fact have been a small handful of cases. I don't think we want to inadvertently create a "litigious" culture by bestowing too many enforceable rights.
Finally, it is interesting for me to consider how different my views are about the nature of the protections that should be put in place for B77 as compared to my view of such protections in the general civil society -- although I would characterize myself as rather strongly liberal, I suspect that my views on this committee might be viewed to the contrary -- go figure!!! (the difference, I believe, is in the difference between the general civil society in which every aspect of one's life is lived and a smaller voluntary association that, no matter how meaningful, is only a small sliver of one's life).