Soon we'll have gangs and factions in here. — Wallows

I blame Donald Trump. — Wallows

Gangs and factions form only in our heads. Never forget that you are talking to individuals that use their own minds. However much those minds might be influenced by the media, by present politics or by in general the outside World we live in.

(Of course you could be talking to bots here... but perhaps AI hasn't reached that level yet.)

Also, there are no temporary bans. That's written in the rules. Which we stick to. — Baden

An attitude I despise, because it's the source of a lot of problems in the world.

Jamalrob and whoever else made up the rules. You can make up whatever you like. You can change the rules any way you like. Treating the rules as if they're something akin to physical law that you have no control over is ridiculous.

I concur. Forum rules ought not to be like the scriptures or like the ten commandments: immovable, carved in stone, forever true. Instead, it should be like the constitution of the United States: amendments are possible, when necessary and warranted.

It's about time we separated Church and State on the Forums.

I have a vague memory of S as Sapientia on the old forum. I eventually put him on ignore, but if memory serves, that was on account of high-volume inanity, rather than obnoxiousness. He must have changed over the years that I've been ignoring him.

I won't miss him, but I hesitate to say that I am not sorry about what happened. For someone who spent so much time on the site, it can be a hard blow.

An attitude I despise, because it's the source of a lot of problems in the world.

Jamalrob and whoever else made up the rules. You can make up whatever you like. You can change the rules any way you like. Treating the rules as if they're something akin to physical law that you have no control over is ridiculous. — Terrapin Station

The rules do and have changed over time so zero points for you. The mods stick to the rules as they are now and they will stick to the rules when they change and not to the old rules.

Sticking to the rules is short hand for treating equal cases equally and it's converse, to treat unequal cases differently. That's about fairness.

That there are no temporary bans in the rules was given as a reason for not introducing a temporary ban. That's not a good reason for not having temporary bans.

Loyalty, familiarity and appreciation of their good points are the reasons S was treated with such leeway.

That's not what Baden said. There are currently no temporary bans because the rules currently do not allow them. A change in rules could make it possible and Baden did not make the argument that because we do not have them now, we shouldn't in the future.

He wrote, "Also, there are no temporary bans. That's written in the rules. Which we stick to,"

The response to give is, "There are currently no temporary bans, but we could change the rules to enable them. That's something we'll consider."

You don't stick to the rules as they are and leave it at that. You change them to make them better. We can make them whatever we want to make them, at any time we want to change them.

I'm not sure why you need extremely simple things explained to you in detail. But you're not going to be indulged any more.

So are we going to change the rules so that there are temporary bans?

I don't see any reason to but if you want to open a feedback discussion suggesting that, go ahead and make your case. The debate is off-topic here.

Banned @Terrapin Station for refusing moderation. He was warned.

:death:

Grateful Dead

That's surprising and unfortunate.

I'm actually not too terribly surprised. I noticed a difference in his posts lately; antagonistic. Almost arguing for the sake of arguing.

Mm. He did seem very irritated at other posters lately. Almost like our speech acts were in a causal relationship with his behaviour... :chin:

Insatiable guy. I was looking forward to him starting a thread... Guess not.

Can I ask what the moderation was? Refusing it is obviously a banning offence but, I've encountered some pretty ornery behaviour here from time to time, I just wondered if people are frequently moderated, but just have the good grace to accept it, or if it takes more than ordinary pugnacity to incur the ire of a moderator.

Sure, of course. He repeatedly reposted deleted posts and responded to a ban warning for doing so with an insult.

Thats interesting, I didnt know he was having his posts deleted. Can we know what kinds of posts he was making that had to be deleted? And the insult, out of curiosity.
So this is the second prolific poster that seemed to reach a “go ahead and ban me” stage where they start kind if daring someone to ban them. At least of the cases ive witnessed.
How often does that happen?

The posts were suggesting I was a troll as was the PM.

How often does that happen? — DingoJones

Rarely. Only those two in the past year that I remember anyway.

Thanks, I'm not sure whether to be reassured that some sub par posts are being caught before I read them or concerned that what remains is the actively filtered residuum.

A troll? Jeez. That's the go to accusation isnt it? Seems like thats what two people in disagreement online always end up calling each other. Ive caught myself a few times. I think I blame the medium.

May I suggest on this note a thing I've seen other forums do: when a post is deleted or moderated or something, a clear note is left in its place that such-and-such moderation happened for such-and-such reason, in obvious admin voice (I've seen some places use red text for this). That way people know when and why moderation is happening.

This had been brought up before and we get the rationale, but the current software doesn't facilitate doing it automatically, and doing it manually isn't really practical.

I'm not sorry to see him go. He just kept repeating the same boring assertions and objections to other's arguments over and over while, ironically, claiming to be interested in other's views.

If anyone challenged his views with points he could not address he would resort to changing the subject and/or asking irrelevant questions to avoid answering the difficult questions posed to him.

I think Terrapin Station was OK. Shame that a long time active member was banned.

This had been brought up before and we get the rationale, but the current software doesn't facilitate doing it automatically, and doing it manually isn't really practical. — Baden

Well, one option of course is to simply stop the posting on the thread. Simply state that this thread is not open for replies and give the reason, low quality etc.

We do close discussions. That's a separate issue though. As in we're not going to close a discussion just because one participant is being disruptive.