Recently Simple Linctus Pitted another poster for (in his opinion) pretending to be a lawyer. (He had also questioned the poster’s credentials here.) A fair amount of information about that poster was discussed in the thread because the poster chose to disclose it on the SDMB or on other websites. Simple Linctus decided to take this a step further by calling an office number he believed belonged to that poster, leaving a “code word,” and asking the poster to call back to confirm his identity. While the phone call itself (obviously) didn’t take place on the message board, it was pursuant to an SDMB thread and the call was disclosed on the board.
After some discussion the staff concluded that in addition to being transparently stupid, this was a violation of the “Don’t be a jerk” rule. The attempt is an invasion of privacy. Simple Linctus’s phone message doesn’t sound threatening based on his description, but we don’t want arguments on the board to turn into any kind of real-life problem or harassment or stalking. The line between those things blurs if we countenance posters taking SDMB arguments off the board this way. We’ve always discouraged people from taking off-board fights to the SDMB, and taking SDMB disputes off the board as Simple Linctus did is also discouraged.
The staff decided to give Simple Linctus a formal warning for his actions, and if he’s had no other rules violations (or few) we would have let it go at that. However he also received four other warnings in late 2012 culminating in a suspension in November. Based on that track record and this latest warning, we’ve banned him.