"We will FORCE insurance companies to compete against each other through the magic of doing nothing to force them to compete. Furthermore, we will wilfully neglect to observe past instances of collusion and price fixing that have plagued such essential industries on the blind premise that regulation is bad bad bad. This means everyone is a winner in what is essentially a zero-sum game. I know that such an idea if logically impossible but America is the land of freedom and we have the freedom to ignore logic and necessary entailment. God bless you and God bless the United States."

>> I think you are setting it way too high in asking for incontrovertible evidence; evidence the kind of which is rarely found in real life, or in our past instances of banination here on the Sift.

I'm not sure where you got that information, but that's not the case at all. I've seen lots of solid evidence in almost every case. The only cases of banination that frequently lack solid evidence are for self-linking, but even then there's good presumptuous evidence that makes the guilt apparent.

>> you risk indicting yourself as a hypocrite

I disagree. I've never personally banned anyone who I wasn't sure was guilty. This is especially true for cases of sock puppetry. Every ban I have handed out for such an offense has always, in every single case, 100% of the time, been supported with hard evidence.

>> This misses the point.

I think you missed my point. I simply noted that I personally find myself waiting for more evidence before I personally point my finger at someone who's earned a star.

As I said in my private PM to you, Tofumar:
"If Dag and/or the community decides he does in fact deserve to be banned or receive any other punishment for something he may not have done, I won't argue, but I can't in good conscience condemn someone when the evidence says he's not guilty of the crime with which he's charged."

In fact, I'm not even arguing about any of this now. All I'm saying is I myself can't personally proclaim any certainty about his guilt or innocence.

"The burden of proof should be that by the community to convict, not by the accused to exonerate himself."

Yeah, except that there's a fundamental disagreement about what the burden of proof here ought to be, which was one of the points of my post. I think you are setting it way too high in asking for incontrovertible evidence; evidence the kind of which is rarely found in real life, or in our past instances of banination here on the Sift. If you want to start using that as the metric, then so be it. You should know, though, that you risk indicting yourself as a hypocrite when you do it. After all, we certainly haven't been so timid in the past, and if we want to keep this place from going to hell in a handbasket, I suspect we won't be in the future either. Do you see why? Because as you well know, banning is an indispensable tool in a forum like this, and as it grows you will undoubtedly have to fall back in important instances on less than 100% certainty in the future if anyone is going to get banned at all. In other words, you, in your capacity as an administrator, are setting yourself up for some serious inconsistencies in how you structure--and allow others to operate--the banning procedures around here. You are making yourself into someone who believes one thing about when people ought to be banned, but has followed another thing in the past, and will revert to that same (now rejected) thing in the future if the Sift is going to remain anything like what it is today. Methinks this is not so desirable.

And it is not overly demanding to expect people to be able to give an account of themselves when circumstances seem (more than a little) fishy, nor is it somehow unfair to think that when they can't--when there doesn't seem to be a plausible alternative explanation that they or anyone else can offer in their defense--that this might be strong evidence of their guilt. I'm prepared to argue at length for this, and to generate some thought experiments that will help demonstrate the case. However, since I already said my last comment would be my final (public) input on this, I'll limit that to private messages to you--and then only if you're interested in hearing them.

"I suppose I'm just naturally inclined to be less accusatory whenever it involves a member who has been here and worked long enough to earn themselves a star."

This misses the point. Precisely what's at stake here is whether or not MrFisk earned his star through legitimate means at all. Our star point system is fantastic, and should be both defended and relied upon to inform our decisions about Siftquisitions. But if the question is whether the person has done what all the rest of us had to do to earn our stars, or instead cheated, then that changes things. You can't have a functioning ranking/privelege system based on star points if we can't be sure that the attainment of those points wasn't tainted. It just won't do anyone any good to rely on stars at all if we allow the foundation of the system to be eroded through sock-puppetry. The stars simply won't mean anything at that point.

Alright, I know I'm annoying the shit out of everyone, so I'm gonna stop now.

Oh man, the art in the opening frame is simply awesome. I'm not so vain as to call it channel-*-art, but it's an awesome gag I completely forgot about - or had I ever even really noticed it??

@JAMES - well, OFF didn't really get much recognition for its past instances of genius in the Sift's first year, so perhaps we're making up for lost ground. For something which has provided the broadest cultural reference point for an entire generation the world over, you've got to admit they've earned the right for recognition.