I guess I'm uncomfortable because this is the first forum I've been involved with (including those I've run/administered) where details have been discussed. I think it's possible to detail reasons why any member could be banned without pointing to individuals, particularly when they aren't able to respond.
It's not that personal, @shadowwalker. If someone breaks the law in real life, you hear about it in the news. It's public information. We do not want to run a forum in which members are banned without explanation - that feels like tyranny to me. People disappear and the members don't feel they have the right to know why - that's what makes me uncomfortable. So we're willing to explain, at least within reason. It might help others avoid the same mistakes. At least, that's what we hope.
Yes, I agree with this. I don't want to bash people behind their backs either, but if somebody disappears it's good to know why. I have every confidence that our mods are fair-minded. They give the calf plenty of rope, and when they do ban somebody they're upfront about it. I also feel they try their best to deal leniently with people who are NOT trolls, but who simply have abrasive personalities. Eventually some of these folks go as well, but not without plenty of warnings and second chances, etc. Nobody has to belong to this forum. Most of us join because we are writers or writers-to-be, and we want to link up with other people who share this interest. Myself, I've had a wonderful time so far and have made lots of new friends and learned a LOT. I look forward to getting on the forum every day, to see what people have posted and to get involved in the conversations. Maybe even start a few myself. I don't want to feel my posts (or anybody else's) are constantly under attack from a snide member who is just trying to stir up mischief. I don't mind defending my position against genuine people who don't agree with me—as haters of italics-for-thoughts have found out!—but if the attention-seeking attacker is deliberately creating upset just for fun ...well... what's the point? Trolls make for an unhappy atmosphere and the forum is a lot less welcoming when they're around. And they're not genuine. They're stirring the pot. There isn't any upside to this. I'm glad our mods are on the case. More power to their collective arms. Trolls have a short shelf life here.
Well, I just wanted to express my discomfort at this whole thread. Like I said, it's the only forum I've been involved with where naming individuals and their details is allowed, let alone sanctioned, by the admins. It's disturbing to me, and something I need to think about.
Yes, I understand your concern, and share it to some extent. That's why I try to stay out of post-mortem discussions about the barred individuals. But I'm glad the mods tell us what's happened.
Totally agree. I haven't been on the forum much in the past couple of days. Although I wasn't completely surprised by the ban, for various reasons, I appreciated the clarification and the knowledge that warnings had been given prior to. Like @Wreybies says, anyone can have a bad day, we are all guilty of that. But any poster who delights in baiting with regularity (as opposed to, say, playing Devil's Advocate, as many are wont to do, especially in the debate threads) is gonna raise a lot of heckles. It's never nice to see a member banned but sometimes, despite the warnings, they continue on the same course and make their own situation untenable.
If a member asks when or why -- and I think I can speak for all the mods -- we'd rather give a straight answer than draw the blinds and hope it'll blow over.
My experience here has been that the whys and wherefores of someone being banned only becomes a topic for discussion when members of the forum raise the question, as @Jack Asher did here. It's natural to be curious when a familiar name (whether that familiarity is for good or ill) suddenly disappears, and it's better, I think, to have questions answered than to simply not talk about it. I also think that the mods here are very open and accessible, as well as fair-minded. THIS!^ I have on several occasions likened this forum to a study group. We are, most of us, here to advance ourselves in becoming writers. Because we come to the table with widely varied interests, experiences and expertise, we all have something to teach one another. Like Jan, I feel I've made some very good friends here, people whose opinions I respect and care about, even when we disagree.
I'm not saying actions shouldn't be discussed. But I don't think it's right to link them directly to any individual. The thread first linked to explained, sufficiently to my mind, what action(s) warranted a ban. There's no reason to discuss the individual members who get banned or why that individual was banned. That's nobody's business except the member and the admins. Anytime someone questions why an individual was banned, it should be seen, IMO, as an opportunity to remind all members of the rules of conduct, not discuss the individual and their transgressions. I kept waiting for the mods to squelch this thread and was unpleasantly surprised to see them embracing it. There's information important to the group - there's information that's none of our business. What else do the admins feel is appropriate to discuss regarding individual members?
I think it's when the poster in question breaks the rules on a public forum, that this sort of thing is warranted. It's not like we're celebrating that MLM is gone, it's more like us understanding why he's gone and making it clear that his conduct was unacceptable. Think of it like the news, as minstrel said. We hear of a crime going down, the news report it, and people talk about. That's exactly what's happening here. Now if they revealed all the PMs MLM had with the mods, then that would be a different story. That would be none of our business. Plus, it satisfies the curiosity of those who were likely going to be wondering where MLM had gone off to, and whether he'd be coming back (if at all.)
I think it depends on circumstances. We none of us act in a vacuum, here. All of us affect others in what we post, some positively and some negatively. There are going to be cases when some of us might think that a banning wasn't warranted, and in such cases knowing the specifics is helpful. In one recent case, the offending post that caused the banning of a member was so egregious it was taken down, and many of us who were familiar with the banned member didn't see it. The discussion following the banning helped to clarify things.
And just to add to this @EdFromNY, and to point out another way in which our forum differs from others in the rules concerning remonstration or eviction: Daniel was good to his word when he said he would give the person about whom Ed is speaking a fair chance to refute the banning. I was made to put my case together, gather my evidence of past situations, infractions, other behaviors. I was held to account and made to present hard facts. The back and forth conversation between Daniel and I lasted a week. In other forums, the rules make it clear that infractions and banning are unquestionable and inarguable. That is not the case here. @shadowwalker, I understand why this makes you uncomfortable. I do. It's not the norm and I know it from belonging to other forums as well where this topic is taboo. I know the norm is that this isn't allowed. We feel that that norm is wrong. Bannings can happen for reasons that aren't always apparent to other people. Behavior can take place in areas of the forum where others seldom go, or in a thread wherein only a few are participating, or via PM where the behavior is completely invisible to others. Frankly, I (I won't say we this time) feel that that norm exists to give mods a shield behind which to hide from accountability. I would much rather have this admittedly uncomfortable conversation than be the kind of mod who imperiously hides behind "Because I said so."
I thought MLM was m The bottom line was that MLM was a mildly cretinous poster. He might've gotten away with it if he was funny...
I've worked a forum where some users were inclined to claim "power abuse" if people were banned. Mod guidelines were to remove threads such as this one, "as it was a matter between the mods and the banned user". Problem is that looked to some people like power abuse, followed by a cover-up. It's a tricky issue; I also understand how it can feel like gossiping about someone who can't reply. It's not surprising different forums go different ways on this one.
I guess I just feel like it's a violation of the person's privacy, and shows the same level of disrespect that the member was banned for. If the member's public conduct is that egregious, it should be obvious to others why s/he was banned and needn't be the focus of discussion. If the conduct was private, any questions can be answered privately as well - and then only if the questioner is directly affected by it. Yes, I've seen the "power abuse" tossed about on other forums - typically by already disgruntled members or friends of the person banned. And having been in a position to ban members, I understand the need for accountability. But that accountability needn't be seen as a reason for public airing of dirty laundry. If members have so little trust in the admins that they would demand explanations, there are bigger problems than an errant member. I mean no disrespect to any individual. I disagree with this policy in general. It serves no real purpose, not one that couldn't be addressed in the manner I've mentioned earlier. And now I will bow out of the discussion. As I said, it has given me something to think about.
Since most forum rules tend to somewhat ambiguous, I think providing information about why one member was banned is useful for the rest of us when we don't understand exactly where the line is. I'm a member of a (non-writing) forum that is pretty much 'anything goes'. I've only seen three members banned there in the three years or so I've been a member, and everyone who belongs there knew why the ban happened without having to be told. I suspect the same is mostly true here. That said, I'm not much of a fan of banning forum members unless their behavior is illegal, as long as the Ignore function works.
Believe me, moderators here aren't fans of banning members, either. With the exception of obvious spammers, it very rarely happens. This is an active and well-populated forum, and we've had very few bannings of established members since I've been a moderator. Also, I want to make this clear: No established member gets banned by a single moderator acting alone. All the moderators discuss the case in detail before the decision to ban is made. We function more like a jury than like individual vigilantes. That way, members don't get banned just because one of us has an itchy trigger finger.
I totally missed all this, but I know that mods here are very careful with banning decisions, so I have no doubt that it was necessary. I too am not a fan of banning. I believe that as long as the moderators are held up to a high standard of behaviour and everyone else can be ignored, there really needn't be all that many bannings. Underhand people who gossip, bait and deliver snide comments are, in my experience, a norm on forums. As are Google experts, racists, homophobes, misogynysts, and a whole host of other difficult to digest characters. There's something about the 24/7 accessibility to hundreds of pairs of eyes, that appeals to the attention seekers but as long as I don't have to read it, I honestly don't care. In fact, I think all those are also part of human spectrum of opinion, and they shouldn't be silenced, any more than tolerant people. But I have to have a choice to ignore them, if I don't, the whole experience becomes very painful very quickly.
@shadowwalker already bowed out of the thread, but I'll still quote a few points of her post (after all, it's public and at least she can return and refute my points if she feels there's a need for that) to address a few things there on a general level, partly to comment on a few things as well as to correct a couple. We haven't actually made public or discussed in public any of the PM correspondence we may or may not have had with the member in question. We have alluded to his public posts which are, as the phrase suggests, public anyway, with or without our allusions. That being said, pointing someone to the messages that resulted in the ban is hardly a violation of privacy. And as for disrespect, of course anyone can take anything as a sign of disrespect, but that wasn't the intent and it appears the common consensus doesn't really support that view either, but we can't and don't want to take away any individual's right to take anything as a sign of disrespect. The thing is, some people have well over a hundred posts, so sometimes it is difficult to find out which messages led to their banning, especially if the mods/admins considered/discussed the banning in private for a good while (which we do practically always except with spammers) during which the member continued posting, often enough within the rules, so that's why if someone asks, it's just easier to say why a person was banned than to sift through possibly hundreds, even thousands of posts to find the offending material (especially if it's not one egregious post, but the sum of a long-lasting pattern of behavior spanning dozens of posts). And, as mentioned previously, the posts in question are public. I've seen it tossed about needlessly as well and I have also seen true power abuse by mods/admins on a few forums (yes, even when their disciplinary actions were not aimed at me or my friends or anyone I cared about). I'm not even really sure what the point of the above comment is (to claim power abuse related to the "because I say so" -policy never happens?) when it's pretty much a fact that power abuse does happen to varying degrees on many forums. As I explained above, often it's simply a case of some members not knowing what caused the ban (large post counts, the long considerations among the mod team, and all the other points regarding that matter I mentioned above). In my experience, most often than not, that's the case instead of it being a matter of lack of trust between members and the forum's administration. Of course, the situation may be different on some other forum... ...to you. To others, it may serve other purposes.
Yes. Two of the three banned members I mentioned in my post above about another forum were banned because they used their mad Internet search skills to find and post private information about other members. If you haven't run across one of these slimeballs, good for you, but I have to admit I'm both fascinated and repelled by their abilities.
