So not only do you let Czarcasm take a poke at me, you join in. You’re a class act, ms fearless leader. But despite your efforts, this thread is about the itchy ban finger you guys have - not about me.
eta: cerberus, he was basically doing a “hello, I’m new” post which included a song about joining a message board. It really isn’t spam even if the mods think he was annoying.
Thrustin posted the screenshot on The Giraffe Boards, which is where I assume that chacoguy got it from.
I like the bacon kind. With miracle whip.
Thank you for this clear and concise mission statement from the Customer Service Department of the Straight Dope Message Board.
Even guests and people who are just clicking through out of curiosity generate income for this business. It is nice to occationally get such an honest statement.
The owners must be so proud.
**samclem **hates us all. Sweet.
Aw, come on. He doesn’t hate us. He just thinks that our posts are worthless shit.
Oh, he just hates our posts. Okay, I’m totally cool with that.
I’m really hoping that samclem will come back and clarify that – I’m personally guessing that he was just having a weird sense of humor day and it was an attempt to be funny/ironic that fell kind of flat, because that came across as pretty out of character from my previous experience of him as a mod. I can’t imagine he actually thinks most of the posters here post worthless shit.
Sorry, and I apologize to everyone on the boards.
I was having a hot and humid bad evening.
Just for the record, I never said any posters were “shit.” They aren’t. But most of the posts to the Board in general are mindless chitchat. My thinking progressed from “We posters provide the content here so treat us with more respect” to “moderators all suk” to “your bizness model sux.” Then I let my bad evening cause me to post in a nasty way that isn’t me.
Again, I apologize to Ed Zotti, all the other mods/Admins, but most of all to my fellow posters.
samclem.
Hope you’re feeling better, sam.
Hey, I resemble that remark! (Thanks for the apology).
Glad you’re feeling better, sam. That was so crazily out of character that I figured you were having a bad day. I can sympathize. We’ve been overcast and hovering between 68 and 72 out here for weeks with no end in sight.
You are a monster. 
Good job on the clarification, sam, and don’t feel bad – years and years of awesomeness can’t be erased by one grumpy post. It takes like four.
Yes, apology accepted. Now go forth and sin no more.
We cool.
Sorry about all the magazine subscriptions.
samclem, thanks for the apology. Things like that make for good moderators.
And just chiming in to say that I think it was *ridiculous *to ban someone based on posting a *single *thread *in the appropriate forum *that would have been 100% innocuous if it came as anything other than a first post.
The new member was given no opportunity to contribute. And if that single thread was it… So what? How is the board harmed in *any *way by someone making one (one!) thread to share a song they wrote about… joining forums?
Or a threadful, Like I did.
And I apologize for implying more than I meant. I just hate the “If you don’t like the way we moderate, then go away” style posts. Yeah, you can leave if it’s that important to you, but if you like the content, is it that hard to follow the rules you don’t like?
Oh, and sorry for not coming here sooner. Ever since that one explosion, I’ve been staying more out of ATMB. Plus, for once, I’ve been feeling somewhat better and have actually had a bit of a life.
And, yes, this is a public apology since I apparently offended you in public.
Thrustin’s OP, by itself, actually only looked a little inane, but not banworthy. Think about it: here’s a new member who evidently hasn’t joined to ask a question or discuss a topic, but comes on with, “Well nobody’s welcomed me, so I’ll have to welcome myself.”, witih nothing else in the thread but his link. What is that, anyway? Even so, in and of itself, that’s not something that would normally incite me to ban someone, or even take any moderator action at all, at least with a first ever post.
However, in subsequent posts downthread, he mentioned “auditioning” for other message boards. What tipped me over the edge was that the top hits from googling his email address were all self promotional sites touting his services as a drummer, which led me to the conclusion that he was here only to promote himself.
We’ve had a number of threads where the OP invites members to show their chops musically. That sort of thing is fine, and it’s usually OK to post a link to yourself playing an instrument or singing, provided it’s done in the spirit of sharing with the community here. Lots of us here, myself included, have been mentioning here and there for years that we play this or that instrument, or write short stories, or whatever.
But if it appears that the OP has opened a thread only to solicit hits to his or her YouTube video, and you don’t offer any additional commentary that’s not good. If you exploit the way Google works with the SDMB to draw outsiders to your thread so they can listen to you play, then that’s not OK. (FTR in this case it doesn’t appear that Thrustin was trying to manipulate Google.). I
Some have questioned the use of the term “spam”. Admittedly it was an overly-broad usage of the word, but it seemed to fit in terms of the OP’s apparent effort at self promotion.
So what?
Why not let him *actually demonstrate through his posts *what he’s here to do? If all he does is link back to his own work, great, then ban him. But to condemn him for self-promotion before he even gets around to doing anything that couldn’t have other interpretations strikes me as being very, *very *quick on the ban-hammer.
At most, this should have been met with a friendly suggestion to contribute in additional ways.
thrustin’s experience over at the Giraffe Board, IMHO, just backs up our original decision. He was boxed(a great tool) shortly after getting there. He was just let out with quite a few conditions, one of which was to limit his self-promotional videos. Time will tell.
After he was banned here by spectre, I followed up in the next few hours by searching the internet to see if he was a legit poster, a troll, a spammer, etc. I determined that he was a combination of a self-promoting spammer and tended to troll other boards which he had belonged to. Based on my findings, I let the ban stand. If I hadn’t found what I did, then I would have suggested in the mod loop that we reinstate him.