Tensions High As Strike Deadline Looms

At midnight tonight, Bronx time, IT IS HIGH bloggers and commenters will launch a 24-hour content-stoppage to protest irregularities in this month's Yankee Employee Of The Month election. The strikers' legitimate concerns center on a hasty, perfunctory nominating process further marred by an escalating series of abuses.

• On Saturday, El Duque solicited nominations.
• That evening, before voters had time to deliberate, he mounted the poll, ignoring most of the few nominations he had collected.
• An immediate and fierce call for a truly representative poll led Duque to post misleading, "anonymous" comments that bear his unmistakably ragged prose style, and--as if those sock-puppet comments weren't travesty enough-- at least one false news story.
• Someone keeps moving the strike notice down the sidebar. Suspicion centers on Duque himself, acting alone.

The two sides aren't talking, and the deadline is just three hours away. Worse, this is the second consecutive YEOTM election to suffer from Duque's authoritarian approach to blogging. Last month, he caused an uproar when he unilaterally appended an asterisk to the name of the democratically elected winner. That winner: John Sterling, the inspiration for, and human embodiment of, the very blog you are reading--and will have fewer reasons to read tomorrow.

UPDATE: The strike is on. Don't scab, don't blog, don't comment, don't link. See you Wednesday.