My impression of this matter was that BG slipped in a personal insult and received a warning about it. A day or two later he slipped in yet another personal insult. Yeah, this is completely damnable. As far as I’m concerned, this is just flat ignoring the moderators and that cannot stand. It’s as though BG intended to break the rules, I just don’t see burdening our volunteer moderators with this kind of bullshit.
I liked BG, enjoyed reading his posts. I’m sorry to see him banned but that’s life … I will get over it.
I just thought he was pretty innocuous, despite his massive post count and apparent warning collection. I often gave him crap for his <url=salon-link>This sums it up </url> posting style but his insults always seemed more eye-roll worthy than “tut tut” situations.
I didn’t find his violations of the rules particularly offensive, but I can’t disagree with the ban. Rules is rules.
Now we will never know the eighty six different divisions of Republicans, why we are just about to invade Iran again, and what Michael Lind thinks. The SDMB’s loss is RationalWiki’s gain.
Personally I think bans should only be reserved for trolls and spammed where rule violations are treated with suspensions of increasing length. That’s just my opinion though. With the current rules the action is cut and dry.
He also had two in 2005 and two in 2006 under the previous system, making a total of at least 20 in all since he jointed in 2003.
The question with a poster like BrainGlutton is when you say enough is enough. While he wasn’t often a major problem, he was a continual one. We really don’t want to have to go on warning someone every six months indefinitely while never seeing a change in behavior.
We really don’t like to ban posters. But I think at some point we need to draw the line. BrainGlutton was given plenty of chances.
Why is a warning every six months and 5000 posts such a bad thing? I mean, there was nothing served by this banning. You lost a active poster, in exchange for ten minutes work every six months. That’s a bad trade.
More or less. If there are rules with no consequences, then the rules serve no purpose. And, once again, It ain’t that hard to not break the rules. The vast majority of posters here do that all the time.
We had considerable discussion about this in the mod loop previously. While a few people such as yourself disagree, a lot of others agree with the decision or at least don’t object to it. I don’t see this as being very controversial, nor do I see a reason to reconsider.
As far as I know, BrainGlutton himself hasn’t asked for reconsideration. And I am not aware that he has ever apologized or indicated he would change his behavior after a warning. In fact, his attitude to the moderation staff has usually been “you’re not the boss of me.”