Dear CRY Members, I had a CRY Hub Leader reach out to me concering the status of the CRY HUB. I subsequently had a discussion with our senior community director and would like to both summarize and reach out to all of you as follows:

1. We received a request from nobear to be removed from AGORACOM last week. It is my understanding the request did not stem from any conflict with AGORACOM and was nothing more than a personal decision
2. As a courtesy, our community director banned the nobear account strictly to comply with the request of nobear
3. As a result, a firestorm of personal based posts insued last week, which lead to our violation box being overloaded, resulting in numerous post deletions (that were based on the rules), which only lead to more complaints, more deletions and a vicious circle.
4. Standard protocol for this type of event has always been to calm down a board by requesting that only company related messages be posted. We have deployed this strategy for years and has, until now, a 100% success rate in getting everyone in a HUB refocused.

Clearly, we are now between a rock and a hard place. If we let personal posts fly and don't delete them, we get massive amounts of violation reports and unhappy members if we don't actually follow our own rules.

On the other hand, if we ask everyone to keep nobear and all non-company related posts on the off-topic forum, we're threatened with a mass exodus (where to that can solve the conflicts I don't know but that's another discussion).

As such, given the fact we have no way to win, I've concluded as follows:

1. We will reactivate the nobear profile. At the end of the day, there is no right to banish yourself from AGORACOM, a member can simply stop posting. However, this removes all doubt as to whether we actually banned nobear. We did it as a courtesy to nobear - but we learn once again that no good deed goes unpunished.
2. AGORACOM community directors will not be processing any violations for the remainder of 2013. At the end of the day, this is your HUB / community, so we'll let all of you decide how to run it. HUB Leaders will have their hands full but when we're in between a rock and a hard place, better to let you guys figure it out amongst yourselves.
3. Remember, if you're not a HUB Leader, you are not powerless. Your vote of any HUB Leader or member can be changed at anytime to graduate or demote as you see fit. This is the beauty of the AGORACOM HL system. It is fluid, not static. Most importantly, the flow is strictly determined by members of this HUB.

Thanks and I hope the season allows cooler heads to prevail and either a balance is restored amongst all of you, or a new HUB Leader lineup that more accurately reflects the wishes of the majority.

Sincerely,

George