All right, I'll ask. Being a jerk via PM?

[Marley23]

@MeanOldLady

Really? Really? She said because she was warned she was going to accuse **Marley **of mod harassment? To who, exactly? Other mods?

To be honest I don’t think I have to figure that out, since she didn’t have any kind of credible claim: she asked me a question, I answered it, and then she said any further communication would be construed as harrassment. I assume she was saying she’d complain in ATMB regardless of the fact that there was no validity to it. I don’t think posters are entitled to try to stop mods from doing their job by threatening to cause a problem.

@Arnold_Winkelried

Or she knew it was meaningless and only did it to irritate the moderator because she wasn’t happy about getting a warning?

The second one.

Here’s the general sequence of events that lead to this:
Cisco was arguing with Sleeps With Butterflies (among others) in this thread. Cisco gets very insulting and gets warned. I then made the following comment directed at all the other posters:

@Marley23

I know weight issues tend to start fights around here, but the personal comments should be left out of the debate regardless. Everybody else is advised to keep that in mind.

I figured the thread was moving quickly, so I made a second mod note and addressed Sleeps With Butterflies specifically. Then I logged out for the night.

Cisco and Sleeps With Butterflies kept arguing. Cisco gets another warning, this one from twickster. Sleeps With Butterflies then reported one of her own posts from the same thread. The decision on whether or not she deserved a warning was left to me, since I’d given the instructions about dropping the personal comments. I logged in at around 10 the next morning. It was a little bit of a late flag, which I don’t like to do, but I thought about it andI decided her posts deserved the warning. Sample post:

@Sleeps_With_Butterflies

Once again, I have no idea what you’re rambling about, but not because I’m playing innocent. It’s because you’re not making sense. Oh I’m sure it makes sense in your head, but the rest of us who are here have no idea what is going on.

[…]

Now, you calm on down and type it out for me so I get what you’re saying and I’d be glad to answer.

@Sleeps_With_Butterflies

Well why didn’t you say you meant one of the snarkboards instead of playing vague? Seriously, what in the world?

And let me get this right. Because someone there posted “YOU TAKE THAT BACK!” it had to be me?

Even though she’d reported her own post, she didn’t take the warning very well. I gave her a second warning for being a jerk in her response to that first warning. She answered by asking about the timing of the warning I’d given, and why I’d been busy posting other threads while her argument with Cisco got out of hand. I pointed out that she was wrong, and she responded by saying not to PM her any further, and any other messages from me would be considered harrassment.

She was making a reference to some other discussions about protracted PM conversations. I guess she thought this would be a clever way to shut me up, but I felt she was continuing to be a jerk. So I asked the staff if they thought a brief suspension was in order. (I initially suggested 24 hours.) Everyone who responded to my question agreed, and most of them suggested a week instead of a day. So that’s what I did.

If she was done talking to me, she could have accepted the warning, or said she was going to dispute it in ATMB, or just not responded, among other things. Making threats and being a jerk is not an option as far as I’m concerned.