Disclaimer: this isn’t about this board. It’s about another messageboard that I moderate. I’m not going to link to it because I don’t want to have the appearance of instigating a board war.
That said:
Jesus fucking Christ, people! We’ve gone well over a year with many thousands of members and not a single banning of a long-term member. Our rules are straightforward: no insulting other members, no politics, no religion, nothing that you wouldn’t want the archetypal Grandma to see.
Suddenly, though, we’ve had to ban one member permanently, and put another member on a temp-ban; and it looks like we may have a third and possibly a fourth on their way to bans.
We’ve posted stickies that tempers are flaring and that we’re going to start modding with a heavier hand. We’ve warned users before banning them. We’ve emailed users with details about why, exactly, their behavior was such a problem.
So what the fuck is wrong with them?
The perma-banned user became convinced that another moderator had it out for him, and emailed me explicitly to say that he would no longer recognize that mod’s authority. I told him, “This is not acceptable. You MUST follow the guidelines issued by all moderators. This is your only warning on the subject.” So what does he do? He writes back to insist that he won’t recognize that other guy, and then he blatantly defies me in another thread.
When I ban him, explaining why, he responds, “Oh, so the mods are allowed to abuse their power and attack members?” and proceeds as if I banned him for sarcasm.
No, dipshit, I banned you for saying that you weren’t going to recognize another moderator’s decision, even after I warned you that this was unacceptable. I TOLD you that in the message about why I banned you.
Now, I’ve got two other members convinced that their warnings are because we disagree with their opinions, and who are likely to get themselves banned because they can’t see that it’s their rudeness, not their opinions, that are causing trouble.
One year, people! One year! Why all the sudden dumbassery?
okay, I feel better.
Daniel