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If you think being a mod for a place where charged political discussions happen is a power trip, you are so far off base that you aren't even in the stadium. I've modded a forum like that before, and let me tell you: it fucking sucks. You spend almost all of your time dealing with shitty posters who are spoiling for a fight and deliberately antagonizing others, but who are just on the good side of the rules most of the time. They are the equivalent of a child who runs up to a line in the sand going "haha, you can't touch me" the entire time. They make the experience worse for everyone except themselves, and the moment you give them a warning (let alone a ban) they will raise bloody murder about how you are biased and persecuting them. Meanwhile, the good users aren't giving you shit but they don't really care about the work you do either. The "janitor" analogy is apt here, because people rarely take notice if you're doing a good job but notice right away if you're doing a bad job. In general it's a thankless job which can easily lower your opinion of humanity if you aren't careful to not let it get to you. Any minor power trip you might be able to get from moderating a backwater politics forum simply is not worth it, and nobody is doing that.
Contrary to your assertion, the mods actually use a pretty light touch. FFS you can go look yourself and see all the times Hlynka got temp banned and given a lot of lenience. And in many of those cases you can find people bitching "ah, so Hlynka continues to get away with posts like this and the mods do nothing". So even the "overbearing" mod presence you decry is considered by many posters to be far too light. That by itself should tell you that you are way out of touch if you think that this is overbearing.
Thankfully, we have wildcard rules allowing us to mod people for repeatedly toeing the line, even if they can claim with a straight face no individual line has been crossed. This is rarely used, unless someone has been consistently obnoxious, or low level obnoxious while just avoiding what they perceive as the threshold for mod action.
Regarding Hlynka's second chances (all 25 of them), in general we give additional leeway to longterm users in good standing.
If you have multiple AAQCs, a history of quality posts and are generally in good standing, then if you have an off day, the mods will consider that and go easier on you. A ban might be shortened, or converted into a warning. A warning might be replaced by "knock it off" that doesn't go on the record.
But the leeway extended is not absolute, or infinite. Hlynka pissed me off to no end, beginning with unwarranted personal attacks and casual racism, so if I hadn't recused myself from moderating him, he'd have been shown the door ages ago. But this ban came when his friends in the mod team, people who had worked alongside him for years back when he was a mod, had enough.
Re: racism, I just realized that's funny that he was somewhat racist to you, considering the recent topics he was arguing in.
He's gone to other extremes to demonstrate his hostility against me, including impugning the validity of my medical degree.
Thankfully the medical registration authorities of two different countries respectfully disagree, but if I ever end up working for the VA, his back pain, tinnitus and so on will inevitably turn out to not be service related, and good luck getting anything stronger than motril.
(For legal reasons, this is a joke. Leaving aside that's how the VA does things by default)
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I think you're typical-minding. There are people for whom it is a power trip.
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