No, of course not. I guess I’m having trouble getting past the idea that I thought the warnings were bogus in the first place. The fact that they were given and the fact that they had a rule just for this particular poster leaves me not exactly shocked that he was banned. But if I think that the warnings were bogus to begin with, then I’m not going to exactly be on board with the banning, you know?
Well, exactly!
That all being said, I don’t know what else I can say on this issue. I expressed my opinion about the banning, I explained why I thought the warnings seemed bogus, and that’s it.
ETA: Oh, one more thing…I appreciate Marley23’s coming in here and giving a mod perspective on this. I wish a mod who was more involved in the decision-making on this particular issue would do so, but I of course will not hold out hope for that.
I understand. I remember feeling similarly once about another departed member and in the interim, I’ve tried to look at it from the other side of the fence. Yanno, if I’d thought s/he had been warned and warned and warned and apparently nothing ever happened. How pissed would I be at the moderators for not backing up their demands? So I’ve come to realize that whenever they tell us, in an official capacity, something that must be obeyed for whatever reason, then we’ve got to comply if we want to continue to play.
Because otherwise, we’d be let down for them not following through either. And considering the fact that probably most people here post away without ever even catching moderator attention, I’m not sure I understand what’s so difficult to correct if you can do it in one forum but not the next.
Anyway, thanks for your explanation. Maybe someday our former friend will be able to balance out his abilities so that he can remain equally entertaining and provocative, but not disruptive to the point of considered trolling.
I’ll give you my opinion on it. TLDR’s last Pit thread was blatant, obvious trolling. Given that he had been warned multiple times before, and had already served a suspension, this was grounds for banning even without the “special” TLDR rule on having to return to Pit threads. I personally agreed completely, and thought it was long long overdue.
TLDR’s formal warnings were only the tip of the iceberg. There were quite a few other threads that were borderline, such as his notorious “What’s the matter with black people” shtick, that did not elicit warnings but were almost certainly intentional trolling (in my personal opinion).
Just because you thought the warnings were bogus doesn’t mean they were bogus. Many people (Manny peoples!) may disagree with you – I do. I’m not quarreling with your right to hold those opinons, but perfect unanimity on who should go and who should stay is unrealistic. Someone has to run the zoo. As long as there’s a reasonable degree of clarity regarding what is acceptable behavior and what isn’t, then IMO we all take our chances with what and how we post.
Five warnings and two suspensions? I don’t care if he was God’s gift to genius, an idiot savant, or just an idiot – good riddance. It’s not that hard to stay on the right side of the line.
That is true. I am only giving my opinion, of course.
I completely agree with you, here. As I said, I’m not advocating doing away with the mods or any such thing. And, of course, we will never all agree (isn’t there a thread about that in MPSIMS right now? ) I guess my problem here is that I really DON’T think there is reasonable clarity. But perhaps that’s my problem.
Yeah, well, I’m not quite on board with the “genius” comment that I think…was it Autumn Almanac?..made. Here’s the thing…I’m not interested in dying on the hill of TLDR/VCO3. The banning happened last night late when I was up working. I was perhaps more surprised than I should have been…as others have said, the handwriting was pretty much on the wall. I had been hoping he would cool his jets so this wouldn’t happen, but I guess that wasn’t in him. So, I started the thread out of frustration that things don’t always go around here the way a person sometimes hopes they might. Today, I tried to give some reasoning behind my opinion, and I hope that reasoning shows a little…well, reason. I’m not saying I’m right, and I’m not saying I’m wrong, I’m just saying that it’s my opinion, and I try to be consistent in how I judge these things.
This is all fine, of course; how could it not be? But I do think in fairness you also must acknowledge that, given six previous chances, the majority of the responsibility for the banning must fall on the poster himself. Those are pretty damning numbers. In fact, I would argue that with those numbers, it would have seemed like favoritism or unfairness NOT to ban him.
Honestly, we don’t ban people lightly here. Only a very small number of Members are banned each year. It normally takes several warnings for the same or similar offenses, a suspension, and then an almost immediate resumption of the same bad behavior for which the suspension was issued in order for a Member to be banned. I mean, you really have to work at it to convince the Admin here that you have no intention of following the rules or cooperating with instructions from moderators.
Personally, I think the banning is bogus. We like to think of ourselves here (or perhaps it is my impression of how we think about ourselves here) as smart, hip, liberal/left wing, irreverent and what not, but the first time there’s a real trouble maker, that broke ‘board rules’ as opposed to laws, we wag the finger until he (or she) submits to the will of the board, or they get banned.
I had no love for the guy and I think he’s nuttier than a treestump full of squirrel turds, but he had his moments, and he had his place. On some level, he will be missed and the board poorer for not having him around.
And yeah, you could argue that he “knew the rules” but what if the “rules” need to be changed?
I think banning people (paying people I might add) over stuff like trolling is lame. Yeah he was an ass but people need to stop taking other people they meet on interwebz message boards so seriously. I mean, jesus christ, does a message board posting really get that under your skin that you can’t just ignore it and move on? DOn’t we have an ignore button for a reason?
I didn’t care one way or another but there are more irritating people than him around here.
) I guess my problem here is that I really DON’T think there is reasonable clarity. But perhaps that’s my problem.