Well said merlyn. I'll ++ this node as soon as I'm allocated my next round of votes. A few thoughts, in no particular order: perhaps there had been a general understanding that the chatterbox is everything you say it is in option #1. Just as your extensive knowledge of perl is not necessarily known by us peons, so it is with your knowledge of monastery politics. You've been around here considerably longer than many (most?) of us, and some people don't pick up on unspoken rules no matter how much exposure they have to them.

You mention that the Chatterbox is like a pub. Conversations there are off the cuff, relaxed, unguarded, transitory, and somewhat private. I'll grant you all but the last one, as I discussed over here. Like it or not, people browsing this site as Anonymous Monk can read what is going on in the chatterbox. Or to borrow your analogy (without asking permission no less :)) this is like someone put "a microphone connected to a loudspeaker outside the building." Pardon my saying so, but if you s/loudspeaker/scrolling hypertext/; and s/building/manastery walls/; this describes the present system exactly, and you knew this, if only for reading this thread. I propose a modification to this is my aforementioned post, but right now we're still in the raising bloody he|| phase of the operation.

Please understand, I mean no disrespect to merlyn or anyone else in posting this, and as a participant/ maker of noise in the thread that sparked this discussion, I both understand and sympathize with your indignation over having an informal conversation introduced into the permanent public record. Unlike you, I was logged in when it was mentioned that the conversation was going to be posted to a node. I remained silent, implicitly giving my permission, (whatever that was worth) and I assumed that the poster would go through the unspoken formalities before publishing said content. Evidently that did not take place, and a much needed discussion was started. Started, I might point out, by a trivial intra-monastery misunderstanding, not by Anonymous Monk's "Unguarded Wisdom of the Wizard" book appearing on the NY Times bestsellers list. From the alge filled end of the pool it looks like this has been a good thing for the monastery.

And no, I don't own 27 pairs of sweatpants.