I think, as a matter of general principle, you’re right. I’ve seen plenty of times when people have stepped over the line in non-Pit threads and simply been told to cool off. As you say, a mild slap on the wrist.
A while back, i made an inappropriate post in an MPSIMS thread because i was posting in multiple threads and forgot that this particular thread was not in the Pit. I realized my error, reported my post, and made an apology for my mistake, and everything was fine. Here’s what i actually said once i realized what i had done:
That’s actually the thing that gets me most about this whole situation. I’m not arguing that twickster should get anything more than a slap on the wrist for this. What i’m arguing is that the whole thing was handled poorly from the start. Here’s what twickster wrote when she realized that she had insulted someone outside the Pit:
This sort of self-admonition just comes across as disingenuous and insincere. What would have been far more appropriate is a simple and genuine apology for the fuck-up.
Here’s what a reasonable moderator might have said under similar circumstances.
If twickster had posted something like that, i would have shrugged, put it down to the sort of mistake that plenty of people have made in the past, and moved on. Simple, really.