If you could forward this to Lynn the Admin I would really appreciate it. Thanks.
Lynn,
This is referene to the “Legalize Drugs” thread in GD. First and foremost I wanna apologize for being out of line. I fully admit that I went beyond the spirit of GD and should have reserved my comments (at least worded the way they were) for the Pit. I am sorry. I am glad that others in the thread did not come down to my level and kept the thread alive and kicking. Its their thread.
I do have a few questions though.
First, you gave me an official warning in the course of the thread, but not an email to my email account. My email account is part of my profile so I tend to think that an official warning would have been sent there. Truth be told I actually avoided my email account for a coupla days thinking I was banned or something. Not that I want you to send me an official warning to my email account, but if I never read that thead again, how would I know of your warning in the thread? Is it possible for a person to tread too heavily in too many threads (getting per thread warnings) that a “thread on the camel’s back” gets a person banned and they kinda don’t know why?
Second, the fact that it came from an Admin instead of a Mod is kinda odd to me. Did a Mod ask for your opinion? Your warning (warrented as it was) was terse. Usually mods flame on the offender, at least a little. I was just wondering how you came to be aware of my tirade.
Lastly, I remember a post from a banned poster that included a message from a Mod threatening his access to the internet. The Mod threatened him with messages to his ISP to get his account closed. Ouch!! Do you really (think you) have that kind of ability?
Please consider this post in the spirit of honest query. I am simply looking for insight into the working of SDMB.
If you want to email Lynn, you can through her profile, which is linked to at the top of the Pit page.
Additionally, although this observation is obviously unofficial, I don’t recall any discussion of contacting a banned poster’s ISP except in cases where the poster was being clearly and repeatedly harrassing. Most ISPs include some sort of “don’t be harrassin’ other people” in their TOS.
Well, I’m not Lynn, but I can offer a few observations. First, none of us reads exclusively in our own forum, so it’s quite possible that Lynn just happened to be reading that thread, and happened to get to it before any of the moderators. Of course, once she had her say, there was no need for anyone else to say anthing after that.
Secondly, it’s certainly possible for a person to get banned and “kinda not know why”… I think that concrete and peace still haven’t figured it out, for starters. Unless we’re absolutely certain that the person is a repeat offender, though, there’s always at least one e-mail that goes along with a banning.
Third, as to e-mailing ISP admins: Of course we have the power to complain to them; anyone does. Whether this actually accomplishes anything depends greatly on the attitude of the ISP and the nature of the posts. One or two times when a person was being extremely harrasive, we have managed t get their accounts cancelled. As zut says, though, this really is an absolute Last Resort, and we usually don’t pursue it until the behavior starts verging on criminal.
Well, actually, if it’s a spammer, I generally don’t bother to send an email to the offender any longer. I used to, and I’d only get people telling me that I’m restricting “freedom of speach” by not allowing them to post whatever they want. If I bother to send an email about spamming at all, I send it to the spammer’s provider.
If it’s bad behavior, generally I put a warning in the thread. Sometimes I follow it up with an email. Some people don’t check their email for days or weeks at a time, while most people DO check threads that they’ve posted to. I’m just trying to do things as efficiently and fairly as I can. If there’s a pattern of bad behavior, sometimes I’ll remove posting privileges while I review everything and talk it over with the other mods/admins. I don’t read the whole board, and I might be completely unaware of something going on in MPSIMS, for instance, if I haven’t checked that forum lately.
All in all, it depends. USUALLY I will send an email warning before banning a nonspamming poster. Not having a valid email address will get your posting privileges revoked at least temporarily.
And JamesCarroll, I’m glad that you realize what you did wrong and you’re sorry about it.