You know, Shambles, I treated you with respect and gave you a completely honest answer. But it doesn't do any good to be honest or respectful to you, does it?

And no, nobody but the responsible party can tell whether a change is intentional or inadvertant - logic should tell you that. There is a mechanism which can tell us which volunteer did what action - but that mechanism was damaged in the crash and hasn't been repaired yet. It's low on our priority list of repairs, since we really haven't had any serious problems with volunteers. If there is a problem with a volunteer, Jeff or I will talk with the volunteer about the problem, determine if it was intentional or inadvertant, and resolve it - it's not something that I would ever discuss publicly. I would also not discuss publicly which volunteer did what - that's an internal policy matter, and people outside the functional structure of Mudcat have no reason to have that information. There is nothing constructive they can do with internal information like that.

As for the seriousness of the offense of closing a thread, I think the regionwide power outage and accidental shooting are inappropriate analogies. A more appropriate analogy might be my misplacing my glasses, an offense I often commit several times day. Usually, I don't bother trying to blame my stepson, although sometimes I'd like to. Most of the time, I find the glasses, put them on, and then go about my business (until I lose them again). It's inconvenient and perhaps a bit embarrassing, but no harm was done.

So the thread got closed, and then it was reopened. I wish it hadn't happened, but it did, so I fixed it. End of story. It does seem totally ludicrous to make an issue out of a thread having been closed for a few hours. As soon as it was called to my attention, I reopened it.

-Joe Offer-