Could I request a more exhaustive list, please?
That list only got people over my cube asking me what I was laughing about. My goal now is to see if I can get myself fired. 
: D&R :
Arnold, Gaudere
I understand and am in sympathy with the circumstances which convinced you to post a list of Satan’s offenses. I find it hard to criticize anyone for responding to intimations (or even outright charges) that they are less than honest in the exercise of power. It is never pleasant to stand quietly and accept abuse. Nevertheless, I think that it is a bad idea to publish such lists.
My reasons are pretty much those that you yourselves have mentioned: the ethical questions surrounding disparagement (even using public documents) a person who cannot speak in his own defense and the danger of folks pointing to such lists as a “standard” for banning/non-banning offenses, as if the community were somehow frozen in time and all situations were created equal. I think th ebest course is to make your call, present (in abstract) whatever reasoning behind the decision that you deem appropriate for public broadcast, and then suffer teh slings and arrows of outrageous dopers. I cannot even promise that I will not sometimes be among those who criticize a decision, though I hope to always do so (and to have done so) in a thoughtful and respectful manner. Sorry.
I hope those mod hats look really sharp, because it seems like they can be awfully heavy to wear.
Hey, he’s still got more posts than you, and you’ve had two years to catch up.
Slacker. 
Poly - your recollection is correct, in my case. Also, Libertarian expressed similar sentiments in support of the mods.
Ah yes, but I’ve already won the fair maiden of my choosing. Damned if I know how she puts up with me at times, but that’s another story.
Thank goodness. The list you ultimately provided was extensive enough. :eek:
OK, I see.
Well yeah, but Stoid wasn’t talking about that - she was referring to the sentiment oft-expressed in this thread that this discussion would tear us apart.
And having looked at just the first page of the Pit thread jarbaby started about DDG yesterday (I hate it when two posters I like are at each other’s throats :mad:), I think she’s got a point. People rip each other to shreds in this forum all the time, and others jump in from all corners of the board to take sides, and all that. This thread really isn’t that exceptional, IMHO.
Presumably the actual posts being posted by proxy don’t contain any such infractions. Otherwise you would (& should) warn or ban the proxy. In general, no one is going to continue to maintain anything resembling an ordinary member status by proxy - extremely impractical. What we are discussing here is merely allowing them to have a few words when they are the very subject of discussion. As you yourselves have indicated that you are concerned about posting about people without them having the opportunity to defend themselves, I would think that perhaps it might be a better idea to allow this limited opportunity to do this, rather than take an overly legalistic view of the banning. YMMV (& apparently does).
Going against Spiritus’s line of thought here, I think the case can be made that this list is worth posting. In a general sense, I think you are right to not dig up points… while the poster is active, we can all flame the poster and the mods and admins can admonish in official capacity, warn by email, etc… in short, the usual behavior. Post-banning, though, I think the decision to avoid specific references in the public forums is spot-on as a first approximation to good conduct, mostly for reasons others have already mentioned (primarily, that the poster cannot respond in kind).
Would that this were that circumstance. Since it isn’t, another set of guidelines (not rules) must be appealed to. In most cases I would think that requests for specific offenses could be easily dismissed, but in this case—with a popular poster—I don’t think we have a Prime Directive here to appeal to any longer that makes any sense. In this case, the judgment of you all has been severely called into question (a second time, no less). Of course the usual route of not posting specifics was tried, several times. As this had proven unsatisfactory to a large number of vocal supporters, it was IMO a wise move to list some specific grievances. I, for example, had a rather rosy view of Collounsbury: I like the guy, and so I tended to take what he had said with a grain of salt. But I am not a mod, and I am not an SDMB stalker, so I in fact missed a lot of the more disgusting posts of his. My view of him is not quite so rosy. I recall the Satan banning, though not the poster in question. I personally never knew the offenses he had made, but at the time I deferred to your (mods + admins) judgment. Nothing a mod or admin has ever done while in that capacity has ever demonstrated to me that accepting those decisions in lieu of finding out the facts for myself was a bad move, and this case is no different.
I am not accusing dopers of only seeing the positive side of Satan and ignoring the rest—I think too much of my fellow dopers to do that without just cause. But that is not to say we don’t tend to forget such things, or think they are able to be excepted in specific cases. What we forget—and what Arnold’s post reminds us (or should remind us)—is that exceptions were already made at the time. That should be painfully obvious to anyone that reads that list.
It shouldn’t have to come to posting such a thing. It is never necessary. But I think, in this circumstance, it was a good idea.
I agree with all of what you say, Spiritus Mundi, which is why we usually don’t go into this amount of detail. But if we don’t, we see people like JerseyDiamond or Stoid or others in this thread who will walk away with the feeling that we are being arbitrary and capricious - banning people for no good reason. Is that better?
I’m not happy with the jarbabyj vs. Duck Duck Goose thread. I wasn’t happy with lee’s Disney discussion thread.
The difference between those threads and this one is:
a) From a purely selfish standpoint - this thread requires me to explain myself and defend myself against charges of being an asshole. The other ones don’t. As an administrator at this message board, I spend more time than most of you reading and posting here. I don’t enjoy the extra work. In addition, this is my job. People that don’t want to participate in the jarbabyj thread don’t have to. I feel obligated to post a response in here.
b) Threads saying the moderators are nazis are going to have a significantly larger impact on the membership than those that feature a dispute between two posters. For example - after Satan’s banning EdZotti received an e-mail saying (I paraphrase here) “fuck you and your message board. I’ll never read your books again.” One of the purposes of this message board is to publicize the books and maybe have people buy them. Not have people refuse to buy them. To you that probably makes little difference, but to the Chicago Reader, paying for this board I think that would make a big difference.
When Melin was banned, a large crowd of her supporters came in to say “First she was unfairly fired as a moderator, now she’s been unfairly banned.” The thread became huge, tempers rose, and bunch of people left the SDMB and followed Melin over to Fathom. I am certain that we wouldn’t have seen the same number of defections if it would have been two posters flaming each other over something Melin had said. If there hadn’t been a public discussion on the Melin issue on the board I assert that many people would not have gotten so angry about it, in the same way that if jarbabyj had been able to contact Duck Duck Goose privately in some way we wouldn’t be seeing a multi-page flamefest in The Pit right now.
P.S. In addition - we never said that this type of thread is not allowed in The BBQ Pit? Instead, we advised that this type of thread is a bad idea. For the same reasons that the jarbabyj vs. Duck Duck Goose thread is not the best way to resolve their differences. Or that it would have been better for the board if the lee / Ukulele Ike / Disney thread had not been public.
Polycarp - yes, I realize that you are expressing support for your friend Satan without criticizing the administration. Which is why I haven’t thrown a :mad: in your direction. Instead I’ll honour you with a 
.
Gaudere, I have to agree that, in this particular case, allowing the link to Satan’s LiveJournal was appropriate. You yourself say you were trepedatious about this thread from the start, and one reason was that Satan would not have the opportunity to defend himself (Arnold agreed). Yet the thread remained open, so it seems a reasonable compromise to have allowed the link (and I, for one, thank you for doing so).
In any other case, I would 100% agree that any kind of posting by proxy, be it implied or explicit, is not permissible - that is, as you pointed out, the whole point of banning someone. But since the topic was allowed to continue, the LJ link seems appropriate.
Esprix
I think it’s possible there needs to be another level between warning and lifetime ban. Aren’t the Mods human? Might they want some poster just out of their face? What are their tools? Three final warnings and then lifetime suspension into the brig?
I call it a brig, but it’s really the personal isolation cell; no contact with the moderators, and, as Satan also noted, no ability to get the e-mails means no contact, no appeal and no explanation. It’s not exactly my definition of a parole hearing.
Perhaps instead of: pentultimate warning, last warning, final warning, last chance warning, lifetime ban, we could have a “Suspended” category, to give the poster in question a chance to consider and reform their actions.
I believe this would’ve worked much better with Satan.
I suppose you could claim the self-imposed time-outs which he did have are identical in nature to a board-imposed one, but I don’t believe this to be the case. Reform needs contemplation of the palpable (yet fair) consequences. Under a suspension, it would be gravy if there was still a channel to the moderators for apology, contrition, or chocolate – take it from me – chastisement to banning is like moving from a fine to lifetime imprisonment in personal isolation! A warning is ephemeral consequence and ill-suited to demonstrating the future sanctions that would happen after future similar behavior. A suspension would allow for smart posters to have room for growth and change in the face of punishment with a way to return to grace; and it would still “cool off” the immediate situation. I think it would result in happier Moderators, happier posters, and a better SDMB. If we’re conflicted, as it sounds the moderators as a whole are, and as I am, with the ill-fit of the punishment to the crime, that might be what we could do about it.
Arnold
Just curious. What sorts of books does Ed write?
It is an effective suspension, because we do allow banned users to return, subject to our own discretion. If it was a lifetime ban with no possibility of parole, no one would have come back. I tried the suspension idea with Kirkland with less than spectacular results. Based on what I’ve seen on other MB, I don’t think suspensions are effective. I think they would just add another degree of complexity to our job by having another level of warning, thereby lessening the impact of our warnings since they’re then not able to result in a “permanent” ban, it’d be like “oh, it’s not serious unless you’re suspended”. Also we would have to decide who gets suspended and who gets banned for real (unless we want to suspend trolls and socks and people who just go absolutely bonkers over the line). No, I don’t think suspensions are the way to go.
get ready for the edits…
And why do you think banned posters have no contact with Mods or cannot get emails? Of course they do, how do you think they get reinstated in the first place?
As this thread demonstrates, NO.
In the general case - we have suggested to people in the past that they take a temporary leave of absence from the board.
In Satan’s particular case - his board history is that Satan slowly became more combative on the boards, took off for a while on a self-imposed sabbatical, came back as a decent poster at first and then slowly changed his behaviour to be even worse than it was before he took his self-imposed sabbatical.
You sly dog you!
The irate poster was obviously so consumed by anger that he forgot that Ed Zotti doesn’t write the Straight Dope books, he edits them.
Wrong, Mr. Wilkelried, WRONG!
Ed Zotti wrote and published a book called Know It All which is a sort of Cecil-For-Younger-Readers book.
I submit that this is proof of a vast evil Mod conspiracy and I intend to hold this over your head (blackmail is such an ugly word) for future consideration.
Fenris
Oopsie…kinda mistyped a letter and therefore gave up the right to blackmail there dintcha?