About a year ago I turned over RBmail to Councilman Charlie Sharpe and appreciated his offer to manage it because I had run it for 10 years. The list always had a small group of fervent ranters whom I ignored but was often asked by members to delete. My standard reply was that I didn't have the time or desire to be a policeman. I figured members knew how to avoid mail they didn't want. Heavens, look at all the spam they had to deal with besides RBmail.

But the rantings annoyed some folks and Charlie Sharpe was pressured to do something so he deleted a dissonant individual. The word got out and it appeared many folks liked the old geezer despite his rantings because he was a nice guy who helped folks. But the issue came to pass. Later, following another squabble, Charlie, with perfectly good intentions, reasoned that "religion and politics" were what caused heated arguments, so he banned discussion of these topics. That's when it hit the fan because it sounded like censoring to many folks. But Charlie's supporters said he had every right to censor and delete anybody he wanted because RBmail was a private list. The controversy became heated. I wasn't happy with the situation but kept quiet because I didn't want RBmail given back to me.

The speech ban caused a lot of ugly remarks that some folks probably wished they hadn't made and finally another person was deleted from RBmail. I wrote to Charlie suggesting that we settle the issue once and for all by having an online poll to see if the majority really wanted rules banning speech. Charlie agreed and we also agreed to post his new rules on the RB webpage if the poll ended in his favor. Otherwise, we'd retain the simple rule to "use common sense and respect your neighbor" when posting on RBmail.

The poll was set up in free Sparklit where I had set up polls before. It allowed only one vote per household because it checked IP addresses and cookies to prevent repeat votes. But it did not prevent anyone from outside of RB from voting who happened to know the unique address of the poll. This didn't worry me because I figured nobody would bother asking relatives from out of town to vote. But I also didn't know that so many people would even bother to vote or that the issue would become so heated.

The poll lasted 3 days and was closed when voting ceased. 332 of 500 members (66%) voted and 55% of those ended in favor of Charlie's rules on speech content. This became a surprise to many, especially after seeing a flip-flop in voting occur overnight in favor of rules. Where did the votes suddenly come from in favor of censorship? Comments posted at the polling site were all in favor of no rules except one? Charges of skewing the voting were made and a few folks got mad and dropped off the list while others created a new list called RBfree at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rbfree/.