It is not easy being in charge...
I appreciate that, and that while people are flailing at your head for something you nearly wish you hadn't done, they are also making it very difficult to respond like an adult or a leader or a professional management team. If you change your decision, it lets them think they've won, you've lost. Can't be havin' with that!
There are certain kinds of trouble you wanted to avoid, so you put in place The Rules. But what do you do when The Rules fail in fairness, or in avoiding trouble or actually create more hassle than they prevent--there you are stuck without a graceful way to make adjustments.
No one is going to browbeat or bully you into reconsidering something you have done According to The Rules.
What do you need as an alternative, from us, to make it possible to reconsider a Rule that isn't working the way it was intended?
Can you tune out the bullies in the crowd who just want to knock you down and rub your nose in wrongness? There are plenty of mature and reasonable people talking to you now about this banning issue, and you could listen just to them, and have a reasonable dialog with them, and work out a better system than this one which has caused grief and hassle every now and then for as long as I have been on Blogit.
There are times and places when an Autocrat is the only way to get things done. Usually it is in situations that are short term, like a party, or when the people being managed are unable or unwilling to grasp the whole picture, or lack the sophistication to make informed and rational decisions. Or when quorums are not to be found reliably, to make changes that need to be made.
I don't think Blogit is that sort of situation: It is a long-term party, full of diverse people many of whom are far from unsophisticated, many of whom are mature and good-natured as a rule, and willing to be reasonable. Hard to tell, though, when so many people are angry and frustrated and alarmed and defensive--on both sides of the discussion!
Is there not some way this sort of situation can be addressed productively? Is there not some solution to going through this every time someone is banned whom others liked, admired, and saw good and no harm in?
How about locking down an allegedly offensive blog, long enough to have some time to work out the problem if indeed there is one, or permanently if no other solution will serve?
And what is your concept of the relationship of Blogiteers and Blogit and Blogit Team? Is a community the people who live in it, or the people who run it? Is a management team the autocrat, or the steward of the community? Is walking away the only effective voice of distress the community member has, when distress is with the management of the site? Is protest like this, over this banning, just a storm that will blow over eventually, that can't really do too much damage, so need not be taken too seriously long term?
Blogit has a lot to offer, is basically a great notion--but this is about real people, real feelings, real investments of time, energy and other resources. Yours and ours, both.
So what's to be done?
Ciel