Mercy, chip, you're making a liar out of me. I told you I was through with you, and yet, here I am, replying to you again. This time, however, I will expend the energy to reply thoroughly to one of your petulant missives. I should also note that these messages from you appear at such a furious pace that some mechanism to assist you must surely be employed. Indeed, it could be no other way, for surely no reasonable man, no well-and-good man, no man of solid moral character would spend such time stewing in his juices over such a regrettable tempest-in-a-teapot that he would churn out screed after vehement screed upon the topic. I say these things simply as de facto evidence -- that persons giving such importance to the issue would not be fully mentally healthy -- and not to impugn on your character.

The issue at hand is that borging is anonymous.

I don't think it's much of an issue for anyone except you. I don't care what rights you'd like to assign yourself at perlmonks, you don't get to know who borgs you when it happens. All I see when you suggest this as a burning issue is Chip Salzenberg, Freefloating Agent of Chaos raising a stink; a stink over non-existent rights as a pretext for complaining about his anger at being silenced.

No one should wield anonymous power over public conversation.

The conversation may be freely available to read, but it's certainly not open to public participation. Chatterbox is not public, chatterbox is not democratic, ok? Let us say it again : The Chatterbox is Not Democratic. In light of this apparent revelation, what is your complaint? Perlmonks is not ruled by a shadow conspiracy, but it does have a set of administrative users. Any information system (a system made of computers as well as people) will have trusted users, sysops and administrators, because without them, the system breaks down. Your actions were taken as hostile to the perlmonks system and they were squelched. Maybe you think this was fair, maybe you think this was unfair. Who cares? When an agent decided that your actions needed to be addressed, they were addressed. Who was it that actually did the deed? Who cares? Borging is the most ephemeral, least serious punishment in the perlmonks world. Your suggestion that this slap on the wrist should be subject to such auditing is without merit at all.

In the end, what should matter to the Monastery is not one little incident with a crabby guy who used swear words in an online chat. What should matter to you is that the crabby guy was silenced by someone who did not have the courage to show his (virtual) face.

I disagree. Neither of these things matter, regardless of how many times you say it does.

Would (tye) have done so if I hadn't made a stink?

Who cares? It doesn't matter.

(C)an we suppose that every Power User, ever, will own up to what he does?

"owning up" to actions occur when those actions are bad. In this case, the action -- borging a user -- is a service. Your statement that power users owe a confession to people whom they borg is hyperbole.

If so, what is the objection to removing the veil of anonymity on borging?

Simply put : it doesn't need to be removed.

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