Going off on a tangent, this thread has drawn an unusual number of anonymous replies. I suppose that many people feel a need to get in digs without taking responsibility for them. Cowardice comes to mind...

Oh puhhhleeaze. Do you have any conception of how many monks left permanently, and returned AM? I mean, Tilly is the obvious example, but there are dozens of AMs who used to be real monks and just got sick of the politics, the XP stuff, and so forth. It's just easier to focus on the code as an AM.

If you are suggesting that most AMs aren't as scared to comment on controversial issues involving important people, you are probably right. So what? Why do you have to leap to the assumption that these are "cowards"?

In fact, the mere idea that lots of AMs felt more free to comment than regular monks is a troubling sign.

Finally, to make my point, I didn't bother commenting on this thread until I read this post. Why? Well, it's a freaking ACME module. As Tilly said earlier, Merlyn is doing us a favour in QA/QC -- that's the core of this meditation, not all this stuff about who-said-what-when-and-how.