"The main thing on my mind would be how do I make this up to the members and the people who were in the running to win the AOY. Not to re-instate the poll because a few angry people think the whole world is out to get them." Good question. I want to say that no, I don't think the world is out to get me, and honestly I didn't even bother with the AOM/AOY thingy until this erupted... mostly becuase I consider it a learning experience to ask questions. Personally, I think they should re-instate the poll as a public one not because of a few angry people, but because they started it that way, and should, for the sake of consistency, end it that way. There is also the legal aspect, which Legume brought up... if you begin a contest, once it is begun you cannot change the rules mid-way; if there was a problem in the way the rules were originally set up, in most cases you are forced to either end the contest entirely, or to continue with the rules and conditions that are already in place. If Legume won, big deal... there would've been a few hotheads who would complain loudly, but the complaints would only reflect on the choice of the public, not on the PTB. The PTB could at that stage simply point to the poll and say "hey - the people have spoken, go yell at them." Also, there was no guarantee that Legume would've won, no matter how many Slack folk stood up to vote for him. This situation is slightly different OTOH, in that now you still see angry folks (not necessarily the same ones), but now they are pointing the finger straight at the PTB as the cause, and the PTB have no one else to point to in this case. I guess what I'm saying is, if someone is going to be the object of a flame war (which is the implied consequence), then it would be far better if the flames were pointed (correctly) at a simple case of bad taste than at an administrative action. In the spirit of letting things calm down (but not die down - they still need to be addressed), I have removed the more offending posts I had put up, in the hopes that no one else gets inflamed by the more pointed questions within them. /P