I will deal with the issues surrounding this situation as I see them one by one.

1.  The ban on individual posting of fics for the challenge contained in the post "[FFML] [CHALLENGE] A Hell of a Challenge".

The original challenge post contained the following from the author:

***************IMPORTANT****************
********PRIVATE POSTS ONLY!!!!!*********
********Do not spam the list!***********

Post replies to this challenge to my email address and not the list

*********************************************
*Private posts only to xelan@linainverse.com*
*********************************************

When all the challenges are in, an archive will be set up on a
website whose address will be announced at a later time.

This is not an ambiguous request, and the disclaimers were put in place at the request of the admin team when the challenge's original poster contacted us and asked about the proper procedure.

Past precedent from challenges (in particular, members who have been on the list for the last two years or more may remember the adfic challenges) has shown that they can quickly devolve into legions of spamfics averaging 3-4k each.  These individual challenges thus had to be banned, and requests made that future challenges be organized by having stories sent privately to the author of the challenge, and released either in a large post at a later date, or on a website with the URL posted to the list.

This challenge in particular was of concern to the administrative team because of the potential it had for producing the same sort of flood of spamfics, in which people stuck their least-favourite characters into personal hells.  Thus, the author was asked to put these disclaimers on the challenge, and when it looked as though (due to Quicksilver Knight's post) people were not going to pay attention to it, Gary Kleppe issued an entirely appropriate [Admin] post as a reminder for people to pay attention to the author's request.

Summing up: encouraging courtesy in response to the explicit request of the author (which was, as I noted, made at the request of the admin team), along with past precedent from previous challenges, made the [Admin] post Gary made banning the thread acceptable.

There are, I will agree, some debatable issues over this ruling given the mandate of the list.  However, the list should also not be the first gathering-point for individual posts of the dozens of extremely short spamfics that these challenges can spawn.  The largest element of Gary's [Admin] post was a preventative one, a reminder of the request of the challenge's author to prevent the tide of spamfics we've seen in the past with other challenges.

This issue (of the appropriateness of challenges and response to challenges) is something that could use some clarification within the FAQ, and we will attempt to do so in the near future.

2.  The behaviour of Gary Kleppe as a list moderator and Quicksilver Knight as list member.

Quicksilver Knight claims to have some history of personal problems with Gary.  I don't know anything about this, and so am forced (and am required by my position as a list moderator) to judge the situation based on the public posts I have seen.

Gary issued what I see as a neutral and mostly preventative [Admin] post which did not personally mention Quicksilver Knight in any way, other than being cc'ed to him.  If the [Admin] post was brought on by Quicksilver Knight's post, it was because the post made Gary feel there was a need to remind the list of the explicit request of the challenge's author that all challenge entries be sent privately, not to the list at large; the reasons for this need I have dealt with above, in my discussion of the issue of why the [Admin] post was made.

Quicksilver Knight responded as though this were a personal attack, and, in a public post, declared he was leaving the list over it while taking some shots at Gary publicly.  My judgement of this is that Quicksilver Knight decided, for whatever reasons, to make a mountain out of a molehill, and attempted by this public post to incite either public or private condemnation of Gary's actions as an administrator.  I have been pleased to see that, so far, the only public post in response to these actions has been Steven Avery's polite, thoughtful and legitimate request for a clarification of the issue, which I have tried to provide here.

Summing up: Gary's actions in making the [Admin] post were acceptable within the bounds of the list.  Quicksilver Knight's actions in taking it personally and trying to turn it into a public battle were not.  Concerns over the actions of the moderators in administering the list should be brought to the attention of the moderation team at large, at the address ffml-admins@anifics.com

I agree that this may seem a "closed door" policy, which is why I have tried to clarify in this post to the list the position of the administrators in this matter, as we have always tried to do when (for whatever reasons) the actions of the moderation team are called into question publicly.

I hope this will be last word that has to publicly said on the matter.

-Alan Harnum, FFML Moderation Team

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