Danton --
Please see my post in response to your post:
http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1757
That said, it is certainly not true that process reforms "were only necessary" because of the behavior of ThePrincess. I think that the reforms were equally necessary to curtail the partisan manner in which Pat ran the RA -- which took the unprecedented step of stripping the RA as a whole of the ability to control the ordering of votes and otherwise modify its own agenda. That said, I think that the free-form meetings are susceptible to disruption by snarky comment -- and my rules proposals were meant to address and have addressed that as well. Additionally, our meetings were getting longer and longer and accomplishing less and less. My rules were meant to address, and have addressed, the efficiency problem of the meetings as well.
In other words, more formal rules and processes were overdue -- and were needed (soon if not now) even if we disregard the personalities of the members of the RA.
The fact is that we are a community. As in all real communities, some of us don't get along with others of us. This results in disagreements that often result in real conflict. The solution is not to, as you suggest, break off into gangs and beat down the weaker side (who is probably no more at fault than the other side -- it takes two to tango). Rather, the solution is to create an environment that disarms conflict. The best way to create this environment is to implement rules that both enable discussion and an airing of disagreement while circumscribing actions to proper bounds of decency. This is what I am trying to do (I think to some success). Your solution, which is nothing more than a stepping up of our internecine conflicts to true internecine warfare, seems fundamentally misguided to me.
Beathan
Let's keep things simple enough to be fair, substantive enough to be effective, and insightful enough to be good.
