UPDATE: Friday, January 13th

Please note that this post, which was a "run it up the flagpole" idea floated, in context, on January 1st, has absolutely no relevance now and no bearing on how AN will proceed in the future in any regard. As a result, I am taking Paul Thomas' excellent advice and putting up this notice and closing comments, and I apologize for "hiding" the post as a clumsy way to try to avoid confusing people with what is now "obsolete/bad information" about where the thought process is about AN going forward. Peace. -Nico

UPDATE: 10:00am, Sunday, January 1st

First and foremost, Happy New Year everyone and please recognize Optimist Prime's awesome Fanpost as being the epitome of AN at its finest.

"Speed" has not been our ally these past 10 days. In today's cyber-world of "red buttons," Facebook & Twitter, and blogs like AN, you can push a button in the blink of an eye, and you can spread word far and wide, or you can rush to judgment, nearly as fast. Few good decisions are made in the heat of the moment and perhaps unfortunately, the cyber-world is one that encourages us to "act, then think" while emotions are still raw, and the consequences are self-evident.

2 weeks is not a long time to anyone who has sent a key correspondence by carrier pigeon (but enough about my Aunt Bertha). This is all going to grind to a halt for 2 weeks, by way of my leaving the poll open, talking totally privately and quite seriously with Blez and baseballgirl, and my truly not so much as logging onto AN. There is nothing that needs to be "solved" that can't be solved in 2 weeks. It's only a long time on the internet.

Relax, hug a loved one, talk about baseball: How can you wrong with any of those three? May 2012 be good to you.

-Nico

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This proposal isn’t intended to “favor” anyone, or any “side” taken in recent discussions. It is intended to find the common ground that can both make the most people possible happy and also make AN a better community going forward. This combination works for me if it works for the community. In democratic fashion, I put it up to a poll vote and will act on the majority decision.

The CGs are amended to add the following:

1. The Blogfather cannot take any unilateral actions normally reserved for the committee of moderators, unless the moderators have specifically authorized the Blogfather to do so.

2. AN adopts a rule that the front page of AN, including the sidebar (Fanposts, Fanshots) is a place free of “meta-discussion,” which includes comments and discussions around AN’s enforcement of rules, how AN is run, how it should be run, etc. (Someone can write up an actual definition.) This rule is made in acknowledgement of the fact that AN is a public site, subject to be read and discovered, at any time, by readers who wind up caught in the crossfire. Offline conversations, online conversations outside of AN, and if necessary AN’s Overflow threads (e.g., The Lounge), can be used for discussions about policies and about individual members or cases.

Additionally, “mikev” is reinstated and Nico will simply convey to him, privately by email, what he was first aiming to convey to him back on December 10th.