You are getting really hung up on the thread title.
Since when does the thread title alone say what the topic of a thread is about? Titles are limited in length. They need to be descriptive and give a general idea of what the thread is about. The OP of the thread specifies the actual topic.
In my opinion the offending post by @Darren_Garrison was a very minor thread shit and drew a note. Meh. No big deal. But DG clearly was trying to dispute the moderation in the next post. Which is fair IF he had done it Here. But he didn’t. So I’m all for him losing the thread ban if he wants to pull an official warning.
As for the defence he used regarding the title: just no. Thread titles are at best a summary of a thread intent and IMHO the actual op was sufficiently clear.
Getting banned from a thread is done when we believe that a user has a problem with that particular topic and cannot be expected to post reasonably in that thread. The user might otherwise be an excellent poster and a member in good standing.
Topic bans are tracked, so in that sense they are more severe than a mod note. But a topic ban is not a warning and is not treated as a warning.
Topic and thread bans can be accompanied by a warning, and often are. If a warning was also issued, that would be considered a more serious offense.
A thread ban is different from a warning. It’s a much smaller punishment than a topic ban, imho. It could be more or less serious than a warning, depending on the reasons for the warning or thread ban.
fwiw, as a mod, I feel like I can impose a thread ban on my own, like a mod note, but would want to get buy-in from the mod-loop to impose a topic ban. And as a new mod, I often seek guidance on whether or not to issue a formal warning.
What it looked like to me was that you misunderstood the premise of the thread—perhaps partly because you decided what you thought it was going to be about based on the title, partly because the OP wasn’t as clear as he could have been in specifying what he was looking for in the thread.
But when this was pointed out to you, you doubled down, insisting that the premise of the thread was what you thought it was while saying that premise wasn’t a worthy one for a thread.
There have been times when someone in a thread has needled me, intentionally misinterpreted my post or just flat-out lied about what I said, and I lost my cool. And might draw a note. In those cases I’ll often thread ban myself.
A thread ban is far less than a warning. A thread ban is saying, stay out of the thread or you might be disciplined. It’s a way to keep a poster out of trouble. A warning is already being in trouble.
A thread ban isn’t worse than a Warning, but it is worse than a Mod Note, which is the usual response to someone disputing the moderation in the thread. You usually get one of two responses: the mod actually responds in thread (usually to a minor thing), or they give a Mod Note telling you to take it to ATMB. (It is almost never a Warbavle offense: that only happens if the poster refuses to listen to Mod instructions to take it to ATMB or the poster actually engages in a personal attack.)
So a thread ban does seem like an escalation from the norm. I get why that would feel insulting, like your being treated differently than other posters who do the same thing. That is why I am a fan of consistency and trying the minimum necessary moderation.
I would also suggest that if the title of a thread can lead to people misunderstanding what the thread is about, that’s an indicator the title could be more clear. It is not remotely uncommon for people to respond to the title and not the OP.
Still, when you’re told you misunderstood the thread from the title, you should probably listen.
One thing I’ve noticed (this might be a perception bias, though) is that thread bans seem to issued more often now than in the past, and so, it seems to me, their relative severity has gone down.
Although they’ve always been less severe than a Warning, IMO - most threads have a very short lifespan, really. Warnings stick for a long while.
This place was a lot more fun back in the IRC, and aol days And ya i was there. And I’m sure that’s why some people fled to the Giraffe Boards and yes was there for that kerfuffle too.
The moderators are doing a good job to keep everything flat and level. We don’t want this to turn into YouTube comments.
Seems like ‘Secular 10 Commandments’ might have channeled the discussion to Commandments rather then Atheists.
Might have.