1 - This is a forum of altogether cool people who get on with each other. Bannings are exceedingly rare and in my opinion I think the moderation here is among the best I've ever seen. All moderators here are engaged with the community and are not operating from outside of it. This is a VERY GOOD THING. When you get mods that don't understand their community, you get hellholes like the TVTropes fora, which are overrun with trolls, and their prey, and very little else.
2 - Dirty and Boo Boo were given multiple warnings, multiple chances, and multiple excuses were made for them by other members, but in the end, they continued in every instance to display behaviour that many members, myself included, found in bad taste at best, and blatant trolling at worst. In Boo Boo's case, that means he can come back in 9/10 Months. In dirtys case that means he can come back in 2 weeks. They are both quite able to take their second (Or in Boobs' case, umpteenth) chances when it comes to it, and if they can change their behaviour they will not be banned again. If they can't, they'll be banned as many times as it takes until someone steps in and makes it permanent.
3 - My understanding of the moderation process here is as follows -
- Moderators one and all, have the power to instantly ban any member for any reason.
- Moderators answer for their actions to every other mod. This prevents mods 'going rogue' as happened with Boo Boo, since if they were to do so, the other mods would put a stop to it.
- Mods work according to our very basic rules and largely use their own judgement as to when infractions are handed out
- Most if not all mods, unless the situation is in need of immediate attention or the offensive behaviour is so blatant it can be safely assumed no other mod would object, CONSULT with other moderators before taking any serious action such as a ban, even after reviewing the facts they have available to them, which leads me to...
- moderators are able to leave infractions on a members account, which are visible to other moderators and to the person in question. This means a mod effectively has a full history of any and all behaviour that member has engaged in that has been sufficiently bad to warrant a warning.
- Therefore, we can conclude that any banning of a member is not an isolated incident, nor is it a single mods power trip. All bannings are decided upon by what is effectively a comittee in posession of a large number of facts, to say nothing of that members posting history, which as we all know, we can search even without mod powers
Do I have this right? Because if I do, does this process not make for a pretty convincing argument as to why people shouldn't be concerned about personal censorship? Does it not make a pretty convincing argument against the idea that the mods are ever out to 'get' any single member, regardless of the hole they've dug for themselves?
----------------
Listening to:
Radiohead - [I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings CD1 #06] Everything In Its Right Place [foobar2000 v1.0.3]