I'd like to apologize to Heradel. My answer this morning was flippant. I was rushed for work and didn't take the time I should have in replying.
I realize I was brusque in my string of posts, but I didn't mean for my language to be incendiary. I will take your post as a nod-from-a-mod to watch my tone.
What's the purpose of all of this?
You do, as it happens, answer your own question: "Both Russell and Rachel made mistakes (and I'm not just talking about the specific poll incident). As a result, both of them are no longer moderators on these forums." In internet terms, that's pretty serious and shouldn't be taken lightly.
In a disagreement about the overstepping boundaries we have lost the most senior mod, a handful of active forum members, and an editor has been rebuked. This was not the first, or even second run-in Russel has had with Rachel over this kind of thing, but now that he is gone it will be his last. I do not hope for Rachel's head on a platter, or for her to be removed from office, nor for Russell's reinstatement. Rachel has a queendom to run and Russell is... doing whatever a displaced god does with his free time.
I hope that by illuminating the maltreatment others have been subjected to that this won't happen again.
Any mistakes there were done in public are known to everyone who was here at the time, and uninteresting to the people who were not as they will no longer be moderated by either Russell or Rachel. Any mistakes that were done behind the scenes are the business of those people who have access to those forums and
shouldn't be aired here (not that I'm against transparency, I'm just not sure what the point is).
I really think the best thing for the community at large, and our current cadre of moderators, is if we move on. I'm not saying that they should just forget this unfortunate sequence of events happened - lessons, I hope, have been learnt - but we should wait until we see evidence that lessons haven't been learnt before we bring it back up.
I don't feel the same way.
I had been assured in the past that Rachel wouldn't be moderating outside of PodCastle, but that's what happened just a few days ago*. In a few months, it might happen again, as it has happened before. I also realize it might never happen again. And although Russell is gone, Rachel is still here, so it will effect future forum participants.
As to what happened behind the scenes; if the effects had stayed there then there wouldn't be any point in discussing them, but they did lead directly to some large changes in forum life.
*I realize that the thread was
about podcastle, but the moderation should have been handled by someone else.