I like **mswas **just fine, sometimes. Other times, not so much. But if you can’t see that he woke up this morning and had “Get Banned from SDMB” right at the top of his calander, you’re fucking blind.
It’s absolutely a cheap shot. You can at least be honest and admit it.
I don’t dislike mswas. I also don’t care about his being banned. Any of my comments here are not for my own entertainment nor are they based out of some bias against mswas.
The entire point of posting is that mswas decided his own fate. It does not matter one whit whether you agree or disagree.
He is entirely to blame for his situation now. I have zero respect for someone who paves their own way to the exit and then taunts the mods to take action.
You wanted him, you got him.
Well done Marley. Well done.
I can see where you got that out of my post, yes.
Perhaps some context is required. That post was in direct response to me, when I stated:
Now that may well be slightly hyperbolic, but it remains my opinion and I own it. The question is: why should tacoloco be restrained to voicing his opinion in one place and one place only? This attitude that one must embrace one board and one board only or be branded a traitor or devoid of credibility is the stupidest brand of tribalism I’ve encountered. He didn’t even say anything contrary in that thread to what he’s said here. He didn’t wish mswas any ill will or snark on him so much as admire his flame out style.
You make it sound like he had it in for mswas when it seems to me he just posted a lot of things that got him warned. If he’d really wanted to stay, why not just post his opinions but do so in a polite and friendly manner? It’s not all that hard to do in a written forum where you have time to go back and read over what you say to make sure it’s not incendiary or offensive.
It would have helped if you had linked to that thread in the announcement of his banning.
For those who haven’t seen it, look here:
Such behaviour after being warned for the last time made his banning inevitable. He could have survived if not for the above thread, but you can see that he was deliberately piling on straws, looking for the last one.
He should have been banned for excessive use of winking emoticons alone.
That, and his recent habit of LOLing at everything.
Seriously, he just could not stop insulting people outside the pit. He frequently got angry and frustrated, and flung insults around. He could not help himself. This was not the right place for him.
mswas was obviously looking for a banning, but it was a particular type of banning he wanted. He wanted his last infraction not to specifically violate the rules. And he pulled it off. You can say he was insulting, but as I’ve often lamented, that isn’t against the rules. I’ve been told that “Personal insults” specifically means calling someone a name, which I have seen no evidence mswas did. He was being jerkish, but no more than anyone else I’ve seen, to the point that I’m even doing it.
I also am not impressed by the “We all agreed, so it wasn’t arbitrary” deal. Y’all are good guys, but I’ve seen very little evidence of you guys disagreeing. It’s not like the Supreme Court or anything. So, in my mind, it comes across as a bunch of like-minded people all agreed on something. Is that supposed to mean something?
I think to get across what you intended to get across, you would need to point out that a particular mod, who is very hesitant to ban, agreed that a ban was indicated.
So that’s my opinion on the matter. It’s why I post in ATMB: You just don’t have the right to complain about something not going your way if you didn’t object to it when it happened to someone else. It would be like not voting and complaining about the results of the election.
Still, I don’t object to mswas being banned as much as his last warning that caused it. And I honestly do hate to see him go.
Is that not a rule or has it changed?
This is ludicrous. mswas had boarded the ship, left territorial waters, and was screaming into a microphone over a radio hookup far from land. He (or she or it: somebody needs to decide) couldn’t have been more gone aboard the International Space Station.
I don’t post in GD or the Pit, so I have no history with either of you and no scores to settle. I can read, however. mswas was pleading to get banned as a way of showing his contempt for the SDMB. Of course a banning happened shortly after. This is exactly how this board or any other sane board should function.
I can’t agree with every decision the mods make, but there simply isn’t another side to this one.
This is most unfortunate; it was mswas who reassured me that Maeglin wasn’t such a bad guy after my debate with the latter got a little bit heated.
tacoloco, if you think someone is junior modding, please report the post instead. Also, name calling is not permitted in ATMB. Please don’t repeat this.
ajb867, if you have an issue with what someone posted on the Giraffe Boards, please address it on the Giraffe Boards.
-xash
Administrator
All three of these comments were made by magellan01 in the same post:
magellan, you have shown no actions or words of Czarcasm that were against board rules and you admit this in the first two comments. Yet you seem to fault him more for mswas’s banning than mswas himself.
That is an insult to mswas who is a grown man and knows full well that he is responsible. Don’t treat him as if he were a victim or a helpless child. He is neither of those. Maybe he will come back someday when he gets it all together again and has his pride still intact.
This isn’t the pit, and I won’t kick a guy who can’t defend himself, so I’ll just say I support this banning more than any other since I’ve been here.
I’m not going to comment on the banning, because I don’t know all the details of what transpired and what the backstory is behind all this.
However, I just want to say that I thought mswas was one of the better posters on this board, and if you asked me to list the most abusive, rule-violating posters on this board, it wouldn’t even have occurred to me to put mswas on the list. Not even in the top twenty.
The board administration should remember that the users on this board are your stock in trade, and that the good ones who post a lot and are generally thoughtful and civil and intelligent are pretty hard to come by. Don’t let them go lightly.
Now, perhaps you didn’t. There seems to be a long history here. But at the same time, I find it depressing and disturbing. Is it really that much more work to simply give out more suspensions? Banning someone with ten years of investment in a community is a pretty harsh act.
I hope the mods consider a different model for dealing with posters who have long records of good behaviour interspersed with periods of outbursts. Cool 'em off, sure. Give mswas a one month suspension. If s/he comes back and steps out of line again, an instant one month suspension again. Continue as necessary. A banning should really be for an infraction extremely severe, such as physically threatening another member or attempting to hack someone’s account or repeatedly posting illegal material.
I understand you’re volunteers and there are so many hours in a day and dealing with this is a hassle. But you also need to remember that for some people, the Straight Dope has been a tremendous investment of time and effort, and they have forged real bonds with other people here.
Sam, he had two one month suspensions already. And I don’t understand why he was such a good debater. Most of posts were just arrogant condescending jibes about how stupid we all were for failing to understand the lofty plane on which he dwelled. I’ve never seen a poster get away with insulting people as much as mswas did.
lawl. Thanks for the laughs.
He has been banned. If he were to come back, it would be as a sock, and that account would be banned as well. If you want to hang out with him, check the splinter boards.
Take a look at his posting history over the last year. Neither “thoughtful” nor “civil” would be among the adjectives I would use to describe his behavior. What he was like 10 years ago, I don’t know, it was before my time. Of late, he’s been rude, insulting, and bull-headed.