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I don't want to multiquote because that's usually the failure mode of long discussions here that are contentious but there are a lot of questions here which I'll assume are not rhetorical. I want to make clear that I've mostly been talking about WhiningCoil and Steve just stems from that. This is a thing I've seen many times and it's probably why I've come to believe that the mods can never admit they're wrong and it's that someone new or unknown to me insults an active poster and they completely get away with, no warning, no ban nothing. The active poster insults them back and they get banned. And If I argue that this is unfair the mods will come out and tell me that I am wrong, and stupid. Both of which I accept and know but I also feel it's kind of a bad look to just break the rules in this way but I'm actually not in favor of banning anyone for anything except spammers and trolls who are specifically trying to disrupt conversations so I think it's just something I need to get used to or along with.
I don't know why you think I am your enemy or am acting as such but my disagreement does not represent that nor is my idea that you should admit that WhiningCoil's ban was made in haste and basically guilt by association with a post that shaped its meaning showing up after and appearing next to it related to owning the mods or anything like that. I think it's incredibly bad moderation to do something like this because it changes the rules to be more than they are stated. If you want the rules to be different there's a sidebar, I mean there's no explicit rule about calls to violence at all or "fedposting" if that's what rule Capital Room and WhiningCoil were banned for. But there's certainly no rule that says even if not explicitly stating a call for violence if it looks adjacent to it then you will also be banned. As I've said in another comment I believe that he was actually controlling his rage and bile when making that comment and if you wanted to ding it for being low-effort, sure, but somehow it's about breaking a rule that doesn't exist if you interpret what was written uncharitably. And if the end result was simply this single day ban I would not care because I generally don't care about bans that happen that aren't about users personally insulting other users. But I meant what I said that this ban will be used as reasoning for a longer ban in the future, so it absolutely does matter because long bans are one of the big reasons why people choose to never come back. The "never admitting wrong" is about this.
I get that you feel that Steve needs to be banned for breaking that command. But when a ban like this happens it's like something designed to get Steve banned. Like how apparently, I, because I don't post enough, am allowed to insult other people, but if someone insulted me back they'd get banned and I would not even get a warning. If what I'm doing right now would get me banned save for the fact that I mostly lurk then by all means ban me, I actually am extremely uncomfortable making posts in the first place and would prefer to be warned off or sever the possibility. I end up making comments like this because I am incensed and severely wish that I hadn't in the ensuing replies.
What are you supposed to do when people violate rules over and over? It depends on a lot of things. I think letting it go is the most optimal situation since I generally don't care if someone violates rules that do not impact the level of discourse here. At the end of a comment chain when people get jokey, no I don't think they should all be banned for low effort, but if they start conversations that way it needs to be curbed. Steve being mean to you guys may affect how other users respect you, sure, and you've gave him a specific rule about it. But to me the context actually matters. Just like you give lurkers or newbies leeway that you don't for regular users it might make sense to give leeway based on the context of the situation. You banned someone for a rule that doesn't exist which they may or may not have violated depending on how uncharitably you take their post. Steve breaks his rule. I get it you have to punish him because you've tied your hands but 30 days when I've seen nothing to suggest from any mod that WhiningCoil actually broke a rule except for the initial ban post that just seems to say "well, i feel like i should ban you too because this is a little too close to the other post that actually broke the rules," which again I'll point out that this annoys me but wouldn't get me out of scrolling if it didn't mean that it's another step toward that user being gone forever because in a year this will be part of an incompletely cited list of situations in which WhiningCoil has broken rules in a specific direction leading to a long ban. And that's why I think it's not a 1 day ban that doesn't matter. If this place operated differently then I would believe differently and not respond like this.
I don't think that you should ban people forever because you hate their opinions but luckily, I'm not Steve so I don't have to pretend that this should reflect on what I think. And I should make clear again as well because of the implications in your post you're not my enemy. My opinions are not really that aligned with Steve or WhiningCoil or the people that think you mainly target right wing posters and are trying to get them off the site. I think that it's more reflective of the fact that Steve and WhiningCoil (or from the other side who just got banned token_progressive) are very emotional about their beliefs and for some reason being emotional about beliefs gets you banned. I hate to use Dase again but if he unemotionally calls a poster an idiot or despicable, or Trump a retard, it barely registers amongst the other AI content because he genuinely seems to not care about whether he's insulted you or broken any other rules. But if you care and say the same things, god help you. How do you deal with it? Just moderate with the same charity and context you're apparently giving me because I don't post often enough. Or with the same leniency and blind eye given if someone isn't that invested in the rule they've broken. I can't ask you to be anything more than fair and I don't want you to be harsher and I'm not going to change the system or rules so that's where we are.
Or simply do what you're going to do anyway, my incensed reaction is completely impotent. It's easy to comment from the sideline, I know, but that's the only view I have and like your tough shit comment about me not seeing the sausage getting made for a myriad of reasons, I think it goes the other way as well, if you're reversing bans or removing things from people's record and not telling people then you can't expect them to take that into account when judging the situation.
To clear up some things:
You are not getting any form of special leniency.
What I was trying to say is that there is a law of large numbers effect going on. If user A and user B both have about a 1% rate of a rule breaking post. But user A writes 1000 posts and user B only writes 10 posts then user A is way more likely to get in trouble and get banned. We don't want this outcome, so we will try and get a sense of the rate of violation (that 1% number).
Having upsetting beliefs is allowed, because to do otherwise creates a failure mode for all discussions.
There are often times where someone comes in and makes a post with clearly upsetting beliefs. Sometimes that person is a Nazi, one time that person was someone that believed child molestation should be allowed, most times it's just a belief that your political opponents should suffer (and some of those political opponents are on this discussion board).
What then happens is someone makes it personal or attacks them "you are a Nazi scumbag" or "you should be castrated". They then get banned. It looks like we allowed trolls to bait a response and get someone kicked out.
The simple alternative to this is topic bans of anything that might upset a bunch of users. This is the alternative that most of the leftist web embraced in the mid 2010's. The leftists then weaponized this, and got most topics that they didn't like banned from their spaces.
We don't do topic bans. We've tried to find another approach where we don't ban any topics but we try to find etiquette rules where people don't write the original post in the most inflammatory way possible.
We do not like permabans. They are an option of last resort.
I think we average like one, maybe two permabans a year for power users. They are rare. They are often proceeded by a dozen or more warnings and tempbans and usually a complete lack of quality contributions. The mods usually have multi day long discussions and usually we have full consensus before we carry it out.
A one day ban like this would not sway anything in regards to a permaban decision.
You are not my enemy, and neither are most users. Some users choose to be our enemies.
They mostly are not a good fit for this forum and they want us to do things differently. Usually not enforce rules against them or their allies, or enforce extra rules against their other enemies. Their method to get changes to happen is often to badger us and annoy us anytime we do our standard duties. And undermine anything we do. Their feedback is always "this ban is bad", and thus their feedback is useless as a comparative barometer.
The most mature of users who don't fit do not become our enemies, instead they voluntarily leave. Sometimes they will ask us for a permaban that we will grant to them.
Those that stay and cause trouble like to be rules lawyers and twist everything we say against us. It's exhausting and annoying, which is their exact goal. The more annoying it is for us to conduct moderation the less we will do of it. I have no doubt that I will regret writing some part of this open view into moderation here. Maybe I'll tag you when it happens to show you what I mean.
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