I was banned from the “Discussion thread for the Hamas Attacks Israel thread, October 2023” for pointing out to someone who had been misrepresenting my posts that they were misrepresenting my posts.
I had assumed that a ban from the thread would mean that the board software would prevent me from posting in the thread. Yesterday, I wished to reply to a post in that thread and went to copy it with the intention of replying to it in the Pit thread. I saw I could reply in the thread and did so, erroneously thinking the ban had been temporary or that it had been lifted.
While I’m here in the appropriate forum, I would like to say that I feel my banning from the thread was an unjust and incorrect decision, but I’m not going to get into a debate about it myself, as I feel I will be wasting my time.
Just because you are capable of doing something doesn’t mean you are allowed to do it. Especially when you have been specifically told not to do it.
Imagine trying that theory on a cop, “Yes, Officer, I saw that speed limit sign that said I could only drive at 55 mph. But when I stepped on my gas pedal, I discovered my car could move at 80 mph. So I assumed this must be allowed or why else would my car have that capability?”
You know for multiple times attacking other posters in the thread.
Looks pretty clear you were thread banned, especially after the first temporary ban.
It would be sweet if the software had that functionality. But as @Little_Nemo says, thread bans are like speed limit signs. They have the force of law, but you have the ability to violate them.
I think you should have gone with “I didn’t realize what thread I was posting in”, which would have been a better excuse. That’s what I assumed was happening, since when you were banned you created a Pit thread with an almost identical title - something that I think is annoying, I search by “Latest” not by forum, and often mistake one thread for the other.
If you knew what thread you were posting in and assumed you were unbanned without checking, the warning is 100% justified. It behooves you to check.
So you were told not to take any cookies from the cookie jar, but then you saw that the cookie jar had been left on the kitchen counter. You decided this meant you could take cookies from the cookie jar.
I feel I must point out to you that you are misrepresenting your posts when you claim that you were banned for pointing out to someone who had been misrepresenting your posts that they were misrepresenting your posts.
Each subreddit is its own forum with its own mods and rules. Getting banned from any given subreddit is the equivalent of getting banned from the SDMB.
I don’t know if redditor mod tools are granular enough to ban a user from just one thread.
the bulk of my experience in this area is with Wikipedia, where I was an admin for years.
At Wikipedia we had bans and blocks, and they weren’t the same thing.
A block was a technical thing. If you are blocked, you can no longer contribute. The whole site is effectively read-only for you. Blocks could be for a particular duration or indefinite.
Bans on the other hand were a behavioral restriction. You might be banned from a page, or banned from a topic. Generally it was because a person was okay as long as they stayed away from certain things. Like a person who has a grudge against a celebrity and can’t help posting biased negative info, or someone who has a pet theory about a topic and can’t help but try to slip their own original research into articles about the topic.
There’s no technical ability to stop someone from doing what they are banned from doing, the system just relies on an admin noticing a ban violation or someone reporting the violation. Then the admin brings sanctions as appropriate; warnings, then blocks of escalating duration, etc.
There are also “site bans” which are permanent blocks from the web site, it’s just another term for a type of technical block.
I’ve never been a mod here (everyone sigh in relief) but in my observation things here work very similarly to how they do on Wikipedia. You can’t assume that if you can do something, you’re allowed to do it. That’s just a bad approach to life in general. If you know you’re not supposed to do it, don’t do it anyway just because you can.
I see babale was moderated for attacking a poster in the Israel-Hamas thread and was not banned from it, yet I was. The fact that this poster is still allowed to post in that thread and I am not is inconsistent and unjust moderation.
In my opinion, that poster’s behaviour in that thread has been far more worthy of banning than my own, which is one of the reasons I am stepping away from this board.
To be fair: it would be much more desirable for all involved if a thread ban could be enforced by the software.
To me this is so obvious that I even can understand the argument.
To continue the car analogy: officer I drove too fast because my speed limiter malfunctioned.
(The concept that random people regulate their car’s speed on the honor system when they are driving through a residential area is absolutely mindboggling stupid)