The very off-topic derailment in this week's open thread forced me to do something I'd never done before on this site - close comments on a post. I really, really did not enjoy doing that. It also made me wary of posting the summary chart of how the healthcare vote went. People did manage to stay on topic and remain civil for the first couple hundred comments. But I was very disappointed that in the end, a few people wound up derailing the thread yet again.
So we're giving one-week suspensions to certain users. I'm not going to name names, but I'm posting this as a diary since we do not maintain contact information for our users. If, starting today, you logged in and found you can't comment or post diaries, you've been affected. You'll be able to participate again in a week. Consider this a serious warning.
I'm also going to say this once more: It's a big Internets. If you want to gripe about policy or simply act uncivilly, there are tons of places you can do that. But not here.
