Koosebane Crisis: I Will Stay, but the Rules Will Change.

Some time has gone by after the Koosebane crisis and I had some time to think and I've come to realize the following:

1) The nature of Newsvine is very different from what I first took it to be

2) The way NV conducted themselves was shameful, but understandable

3) After several conversations with Koosebane, I have come to the conclusion that I also do not agree with his position of not feeling that there is anything wrong with slapstick or easy-to-misunderstand humor on this forum.

And I feel stuck directly in the middle. What it comes down to is that Koosebane offended NV by using poor humor and NV offended Koosebane by treating him like crap.

There are no winners in this. Only losers. Koosebane was too good a member to have been booted, yet booted he was. Newsvine has failed to implement policies that would ensure transparency and safety and, at least nominally, refused to learn from this experience, not to mention lost a very interesting user. And me? Well, I just ended up looking like a drama queen.

But one thing is important: Newsvine is a great endeavor. I could strut my feathers and defiantly leave because I didn't like the way the situation was handled. And I was seriously considering doing so, but several people for whom I have great respect have asked me to stay and part of me does understand the witch-hunt NV engaged in, so I am going to swallow my pride and hope NV and K follow my example.

However, seeing how the situation has changed, I will also change the nature of my involvement to conserve time and improve efficiency.

From now on, I will implement the following:

1. I will mark some of my posts as "strongly-moderated". What this means is that I will not tolerate what I perceive as demagoguery and will liberally remove all comments I find uninteresting, counterproductive, or simply because I do not like them. If Newsvine is a community, my column is a little sub-community and I should be able to make my rules. If good users like Koosebane are banned for minor offenses, I should be able to protect my threads from ignorance and other, real offenses. Please do not mistake this for ideological censorship - alternative points of view are welcome and desired, but they must be well formulated and presented to be accepted as commentary.

2. As a policy, unless something violates CoH or really rubs me the wrong way, I will NOT remove links to relevant content from strongly-moderated threads be they Bush=devil diatribes or pointless anti-corporate rants. So if your post is being removed, simply place it elsewhere and link to it. This should satisfy those who might wish to scream that I am violating free speech.

3. I will unlikely respond to comments that have less than 3 votes (the number may change) unless I find a comment to be extraordinary. So if you happen to read my threads, please vote if you would like to see a response from me.

I would like to help shape this community into one that is a source of enlightenment that will have a positive effect on our society, rather than a loud bastion of ignorance.

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This post is strongly-moderated.

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