djbinder

He's spoken plenty over there. Why should he here?

Funny, that's what AAJ said about you.

From what I gather, Ed Byrne and "Clave" had disagreements on the Musician thread and another one about musical theory. I hadn't really followed what happened between them, but Mike didn't like Clave and Ed's back and forths and came down on Ed's side of the situation going on between them. Then when a thread became somewhat abusive towards Ed, nothing at all being said against Ed by Clave, when humor was injected by JFitzGenius, after a comment about berets being worn, and JFitz talking about Cowboy hats being Verboten, Clave posted a photo of a musican in a black hat, and then of another one in a Cowboy hat, we kibitzed back and forth about Cowboys, rednecks, (me telling about an encounter with a couple of no talent singer guitar players singing about Rich and myself one afternoon), nothing at all was being said or implied about Ed being anything at all. It was just humor on a thread that was going nowhere, it had run it's course, and Ed had left the equasion, so those posts were deleted, and Clave was told she'd be banned as they wanted to keep the posts on jazz and wanted them to be intelligent and if she didn't stay off the musician board, and follow directives about the post Jay Noram had started on Ed, she would be banned. So in the end that's what happened, she was banned. Much ado about nothing. With all due respect, that's not at all an accurate or complete depiction of what went down. As has been posted by both Mike and the "goon from Ottawa," JKelman, it was a little more complicated than that. Mike asked clave to stop posting in a particular thread as the result of a conflict with Ed Byrne who, like Clave, has his share of supporters and detractors. She chose to ignore him and continued to post. Mike then banned her temporarily, in order to (a) try and let the situation defuse, (b) accommodate the fact that he was in the beginning of a house move, and © make his feelings about her ignoring his request as a moderator known. That a number of posts were removed was in the interest of trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, since the thread had begun dissolving (no pun intended!), even if some of the posts were themselves innocuous. It wasn't those posts that were the issue. Clave signed back on - not once, not twice, but multiple times, and took the conflict public in a big way. Mike banned her permanently as a result and, being in the middle of a house move and largely offline, was unable to address it or other folks' posts in any great detail - only being able to get online occasionally during a five-day period (JKelman tried to throw in a different perspective, but was largely ignored or argued with). Mike is now back online and planning to organize a teleconference with interested parties to discuss the situation and come to a resolution that will, hopefully, make as many people as possible happy. AAJ board members can check out the thread in the "About the Board" forum if they're interested in participating, which seems like a good idea to me. Mike also wants to step down as a moderator, as does JKelman - not because of any pressure to do so from board members or because of this particular incident (though it does appear to be the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back), but because they're both apparently way too busy with developing/growing the main website, and the amount of time situations like this (and it's been leading to this for some time, apparently) take away from those long hours spent at the main site simply can't be sacrificed. Both are looking for people willing to take on this responsibility, but the bottom line appears to be: Mike (and JKelman) sound frankly pretty reasonable about the whole thing. Whether Mike's request of Ellen was legit/reasonable or not, it was escalated to a degree of unnecessary and destructive publicity by Clave. The initial upset may be a subject on which people fall onto different sides as far as accountability, but it's likely this could have been handled a whole lot better, that's for sure; but if Mike is culpable for actions some believe to be draconian, then so, too, is Clave, who took what should have been a private conflict resolution process and made it a messy and hugely distruptive public one. So from where I stand there's fault to be had on both sides. I think it's important to try and view this from a balanced perspective and, instead, the majority of folks weighing in on it are either for or against. It's not an either/or; it's a conflict, and one that should have been resolved quietly without any muss or fuss. Sadly that's not what happened.