Hi, yes I know, 
which is kind of why I asked. So no one is ever really banned ? One just can’t post for 30 days? And if someones ip is blocked what stops them from opening a new account under a different name and device?
obviously not suggesting that’s groovy.
Thanks for the background:)
Thank you, my question wasn’t specific to DT. I do appreciate some blanks being filled in though:) all pieces to puzzles help with the picture for me
Generally speaking, those who are suspended are banned upon the next warning. That’s not a rule, just an observation of mine. Though the mods have slapped down the lather-rinse-repeat proposal: they took a dim view when I and others suggested simply tossing higher and higher suspension periods for problematic posters. I tend to trust their judgment on this more than my preference, though my preference remains.
Sure: you post your posts and you takes your chances. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.
I just want to point out that the rules essentially evolved to facilitate Der’s banning. To put it in the harshest way. More accurately, many grew tired of a certain style of harsh and incivil posting in GD, and recommended that goalposts be moved accordingly. They were. Der obeyed in-thread mod instructions for years, showing a discipline that most problem posters lack. But he found himself on the wrong side of [del]the mob[/del] evolving standards when new lines were drawn. Also, humans are creatures of habit. Speaking as an adult.
Look. I’ve attacked Der in the past. I’m not doing it now both because it’s unseemly to behave that way when he can’t respond and because of moderator instruction. I’m just stating what happened.
I would however like to make a note about a certain style of posting, one that involves ascribing motivation in GD. To properly substantiate such an argument as applied to a group requires a lot of evidence. You have to show what a group believes (which involves polling data). Then you have to demonstrate why they believe it, which involves a range of evidence. Done right, it’s hard. It’s even harder, possibly impossible, when ascribing motivation to pseudo-anonymous posters on a message board.
As a result, conversations about poster motivation typically boil down to an application of facile and empty cynicism. That, in contrast, is pretty easy. It’s also rather lame whether practiced in GD or the Pit. Not that I’ve never done it.
How familiar this sounds. Posters are not puppies. If a poster doesn’t fit in or has been modded for any reason, that isn’t necessarily a reflection on the poster’s socialization. Like all relationships, there could be a number of complex factors going on.
I hope that the practice of criticizing banned posters doesn’t get instituted here. It gives the appearance that the posters of the board are very cowardly. If people need to wait until someone doesn’t have access to criticize that person, it’s more of a poor reflection on the posters who can’t face the person they’re criticizing. It reflects poorly on the board to casual observers.
I’m glad that the SDMB continues to adhere to this policy.
It just seems odd to announce them as mods before they are already in the loop.
Did you guys even know they were coming before the announcement?
Oh, please. John, you’re a smart guy, smarter than me in all likelihood, and you know exactly how this will play out. If Der trihs comes back after the suspension, he will be hyper-vigilant to remain within the letter and spirit of the rules when posting in political forums for a period of time. Every post he makes will be scrutinized and those who are inclined to get butt hurt over any political opinion he expresses regardless how innocuous it may be, will report him ad nauseum. Eventually, I give it a few months tops, one of two things will happen: 1. DT will relax, revert to form, and post one of his typical passionate responses that will be deemed to have been expressed inappropriately, and be warned and banned, poste haste, or 2. the library of reported DT posts will be reviewed and a consensus drawn that although he remained within the letter of the rules, he skirted the line too many times, which will be used as justification for the inevitable banning. I expect number 1 will be his downfall.
Does it really matter that someone was having trouble with their email or that there was an attempt to ease them into their job? Or for the purposes of this thread is it enough to just know that the two new mods were not involved in this discussion at all?
I disagree that the rules have evolved. I think its more a matter that many may have read the rules long ago or never really bothered. Because in the rules there is the following:
Before my email was worked out and got on the mod loop I had access to the mod forums. I was reading the technical “how to” stickies, looking at past reported posts and how they were resolved, learning about the various tools and generally getting to know the lay of the land. Once I had access to those materials “moderator” appeared under my name, so it would’ve been strange to not announce it.
Not having full access to mod loop for 48 hours after the announcement is really not a big deal.
You’d like us to think, that, wouldn’t you, Ivory–I can call you Ivory, right?
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let’s consider something: The Dope can suspend or ban anyone at will. You’d think it would be an idiotic notion to invent an entire conspiracy to suspend a poster who’s racked up a zillion mod-notes and like 8 warnings, but you’d be wrong.
Consider, colleagues, the following scenario:
WHY would a massive conspiracy exist to deny that Ivory and Asimovian actually voted to suspend? Why, indeed.
First, there was the nuisance issue: Trihs had racked up more mod-notes and warnings than any other two posters, combined, a fact I just now made up. This was embarrassing to the powers-that-be and they didn’t want it to look like new blood had anything to do with fixing this error. So they let the two new mods in early and changed the timestamps on the server’s cpu byte-flops.. A cunning plan. The old guard, unwilling to ban him previously could save face without having to change their votes.
But, second, that was only a small part of the plan. A tiny piece of the vast Dope conspiracy. The Dope has been looking for revenue streams for years, from pay-to-post, to pay-to-avoid-bad ads, nothing worked. But you, Ivory. You had a plan.
You knew that the Dowager Widow Gillespie was a “long time lurker” who read but didn’t post. You knew that she was rich beyond the dreams of Midas. And her only vulnerablity…her one weakness was the hatchet that Der Trihs had locked in his private messages vault. You could kill two birds with one suspension. You suspend Trihs, letting the old guard mods save face AND you get access to the hatchet in his account. Allowing you to woo her, get her to change her will and then chop her up into salsbury steak!
You knew that her untold wealth would not only fund the boards for decades to come, you knew that it would advance your other agenda…one known only to the cabal…the mod’s star chamber…your plan to bring back General Fransico Franco’s fascist government in Spain. And you knew, you KNEW if you did that, Der Trihs would speak out against it. So it all tied together into a package of lies wrapped with a bow of bad metaphors.
And it was all so simple. And you would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for a few courageous Dopers who were willing to push forward some kind of conspiracy theory. Without them, Der Trihs might still not have been suspended, the Widow Gillespie would still be alive and Spain would not become a fascist dictatorship. Well done, Dopers, on unravelling this conspiracy of evil. Well done!
ETA: Huh…I didn’t know you could put a link in a smiley and be able to click on the smiley and have it work. Learn something new every day.
I prefer Dr. Denizen, but no matter, go on.
Dammit, Fenris. Why’d you have to be so clever. Why couldn’t you have left well enough alone.
We would’ve gotten away with it if hadn’t been for you meddling kids!
And their dog.
Not to mention the horse they rode in on.
That cracked me up. 
My little tangent on Colibri’s post #77, I took to mean the decision had already been made that DT had to go. If not the case, I’ll take your word for it. You issued 5/7 of the warnings with the last five from you, with two by a previous moderator going back to Dec of 2012. I don’t visit GD often, so don’t have as much feel for it anymore, but noted there are still two other moderators in GD besides you, are they not as around as much, or do you call things quite a bit differently than they tend to do?
Having moderator powers is separate from being in the mod email loop. As IvoryTowerDenizen says, it makes sense to make the announcement as soon as the Moderator title is given, otherwise people would be asking about it. It can take several days to get someone integrated on the list. As I recall, it took me a little while to be added to the loop after my moderatorship had been announced.
Think of it as getting your employee ID before your email account is set up.
:dubious: All moderator nominations are discussed by the Staff before a decision is made. It would be pretty strange if this weren’t so, since we all need to work closely together.
I have over 10,000 posts, and I have ZERO warnings. It really isn’t that hard to not get Warnings. Don’t be a jerk.
Or, to be more specific, don’t rush to post the most inflammatory thing you can think of. Don’t search for ever more creative ways to insult your opponents and their kin. Don’t paint with a broad brush. Don’t impart motives to other people without solid evidence to justify it. Be willing to admit errors and apologize if you misunderstand what someone says. Ask for clarification rather than assert someone is wrong. Give people the benefit of the doubt, even if you don’t think they deserve it.
This would probably go better as a separate thread to discuss that topic. You know, so people can find it, rather than hiding it 3 pages down in a thread about a specific poster who isn’t even banned.
It goes to show he is a frequent repeat offender. One could post a specific number of infractions in a specific time window and display similar content, but the idea is to show he did not rack up 27 warnings in 1 week, but did rack up a number of moderator actions over time when the average number is significantly less than 1.
Why is it silly to expect him to behave within the rules that everyone else is expected to behave within?
Um, yes, people are really banned. Der Tris has not been banned. Blocking the ability to read the board is problematic and not particularly useful. The important point is if they can post here. That’s what banning means - they can’t post.
So when we elect a President of the United States, he is elected in November and the result is typically known the next day. However, he is not sworn in to begin service until mid January. Are you suggesting we shouldn’t announce the winner of the election until January 20th?
They were selected to be moderators, that result was announced.
Now those are some rules we can all understand.
Sadly, they are not the rules.
To be fair, there has been questionable–even ridiculous–moderating from time to time when the warned poster had not been jerky. Sometimes the moderator concerned apologizes, sometimes the mod retracts the warning, and other times it remains as a blemish for the poster’s “board record”. So long as the posters are not part of the moderating loop, that situation will not change. I actually do think the current moderating methodology is the best. That’s one of the reasons why this is one of the very few boards on which I participate.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
A number of posters feel that apparently he really wasn’t expected to do so until the most recent action. Check the threads dedicated to him in the BBQ Pit over the years for particulars. The online equivalent of holding one’s finger an inch away from one’s sibling while saying “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you” doesn’t seem to those posters–and, yes, I include myself in that group of posters–to be non-jerkish behavior, especially when, continuing the metaphor, a poster, in their opinion, actually is “touching you”.
I thought it was January 6 when the actual tallying of the electoral vote occurred.
Yep. Although I have no more say than you do in how this site is managed, I like the idea that the announcement of new mods not be declared until they’re actually ready & able to do their [del]ban hammering[/del] moderating.
I really don’t see why it’s a problem for new moderators to require a few days to get up and running.
It’s common in the real world as well, for a hire or appointment to be announced before the appointed fully takes on all duties.