Exactly.

Not all forums would have banned the members we have banned, I dont think. But every other forum I have been a member of has sucked. I think thats the difference.

Thats okay Conan, I don't think you really did anything wrong.
I'm still sort of a child in a lot of ways but I think I can handle the emotional impact of being photoshopped next to a hotdog.

If you're going to push buttons at random, you have to accept when one crashes your ship.

He'll be back soon enough. No need for fuss.

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?

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Listening to: Radiohead - [I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings CD1 #06] Everything In Its Right Place [foobar2000 v1.0.3]

Boo should not be compared to Dirty. Boo was here for a long time and a huge contributor. Dirty, not so much.

Boo might have contributed, but the reason he was banned was the same as it was for any other member - He broke the rules and ignored warnings. Whether either deserved the action taken against them isn't my call, although I would say yes.

What I was trying to illustrate is that despite the outcry over the respective bannings of each, there IS a lot that goes on BEFORE a ban is even considered in order to provide for everyone a fair chance to become and remain a contributing forum member whose actions can be relied upon to be at most times if not all, reasonable and inoffensive.

In other words, it was an attempt to help illustrate to everyone, as the mods have been saying, that there is no threat to the forums established levels of free speech, nor is there a threat of being banned on one moderators whim or sayso. Anyone who gets banned gets banned because all of the other options available to the mods have failed to curb their unacceptable behaviour. Thats what a lot of people seem to be missing here. They see the ban at the end of the long process of moderation, and assume that all moderation is banning.

Just because they don't see the hard work our mod team put in to AVOID banning members, doesn't give them a right to make threads like this that put the mod team in an awkward position, every time a controversial member gets banned and someone feels the need to hold up a flag of protest against it. Thats not to say that I disagree with us being allowed to make threads that question the mods, of course that should be allowed, but it seems to me that people are trying to hold boobs and dirtys bannings up as if they're abuses of power, without considering that these are decisions made after reasonable and in some cases extensive deliberation and multiple chances are given.

Dirty deserved to be banned, don't think anyone could deny that.

I have to say that the situation with Boo wasn't all that cut and dry. There was a lot that lead to the culmination of that situation and a lot of members who cried foul after he was banned actually contributed to that situation.


In defense of the other mods, I acted quite hastily and independently of the other moderators in the banning of dirty and I probably shouldn't have done that. The way that I dealt with the situation was not according to protocol. I just saw that the event that was ultimately the impetus for his banning as one that required immediate action. I can't say that I necessarily did the right thing, only that I did what I felt was necessary at the moment.

Hi! :)