If the user name has a line through it, that member is some flavor of banned, and there are different flavors. It may be a permanent ban, a temp-ban, a time-out, etc.
its because they've got a custom title .. like where Wrey's says thrice retired..... if we banned you the system would replace senior member with banned, but if we banned him he'd get the cross through but the software wouldn't replace thrice retired with banned... its a glitch in the software basically. generally when someone is permabanned we delete the custom title so that 'banned' shows (although sometimes we forget), but obviously we don't do that with temp bans
Is it a common case for members asking to be banned? Just I've seen a few members with lines through their names soon after seeing them post about wanting to delete their account. Is it used as a substitute for that?
We don't discuss why individuals got banned, but not generally - the vast majority of people who get banned have broken the rules in some way, commonly more than once since we don't ban for a first offense unless is heinous in regard of account deletions the rules say the following "Accounts will be deleted on request with all personally identifying account information (name, date of birth, email etc) removed. Posts will not be deleted but will instead be assigned a random user name. If you are requesting account deletion and you have personally identifying information in any of your posts, please send a message to the mod team or use the Contact Us form with links to the posts concerned and we will remove that information."
I can't speak for what goes on here but I imagine the site wouldn't ban someone for just saying they want to delete their account. Someone saying that is usually saying it in response to receiving posts they don't like. There's probably a lot more going on behind the scenes than you or I see, probably involving angry or threatening PMs sent to the staff.
In general the most likely thing that would get someone banned during account deletion discussion would be if they started deleting multiple posts thus trashing umpteen threads in contravention of the rules (we can and will restore them but its a PITA we can live without).
I'm actually surprised that there's the option to delete your posts at all, at least not after a certain period has passed. Most forums I've been on won't let you edit your posts, let alone delete them.
its set to 15 minutes for new members and indefinite after that...personally i agree with you, but that's how daniel wanted it (and no one else can change it)
