What Went Right

• The community correctly identified the comments as non acceptable, and brought them up for review.
• Our Code of Conduct, while rudimentary, covered the situation and gave us something to point at for enforcement.
• Suspending the account was a quick process.
• The situation was addressed without escalation on the threads themselves.

What Went Wrong

• Our reporting system doesn't distinguish between "this is worrying, but take a look at your own leisure" and "this is an active incident, please take a look as soon as possible".
• People had to ask where to report an incident, which might point to the need for more visible tools.
• Webmaster had to de-anon on threads she had already joined in order to comment.
• Since this was our first incident, queries had to be written to cross-reference the author of the comments (and then de-anon).
• While the de-anoning process had been outlined before, it isn't currently written down in an easily-accessible and visible place for people to review.
• More generally, the creation of moderation tools was delayed because by Webmaster's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad End/Beginning of Year.
• Figuring out the chain of recommendations/events that lead to this user's invite is not an easy process (and is currently ongoing).

Where we were Lucky

• If webmaster had not been available, there would have been a significant delay before the situation could be addressed.
• The comments were made in a short amount of time, which made it easy to decide to cross-reference and check that they came from the same person.
• The situation was extremely clear cut.