![Mad :x](./images/smilies/icon_mad.gif)
(*) That list is still less than 5 people long despite me being over 40 years old. I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to "stupid" but I do have a very long memory.
So just to clarify (once again), here's how moderation works around here ...
* I want public discourse to follow these sentiments at almost(**) all times: http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html I've posted this link several times so if you haven't read them already, please do so. The rules of decent online behaviour should be obvious to most people, and they are to most people, but a few always seem fall through the cracks, and so these are my common sense guidelines for civilized online behaviour.
* During the 6 years of the forum's existence, only ONE person has ever been banned for consistently violating netiquette and that ban was temporary. That ONE person received a 30 day ban/timeout and could have come back by now but hasn't done so, so far. Indeed, this 30-day ban only happened after several people had already PM'ed me to complain about the behaviour of that person and only after I've tried first to subtly warn him/her and then PM'ed him/her with direct consequences if he/she kept it up. Which he/she then proceeded to do two weeks later. That one person is not the backstabbing person above. In fact, the above person has never violated netiquette although I have disagreed with him/her on these forums twice IIRC.
(**) Well, actually at all times, but I do recognize that we all lose our heads from time to time, therefore ...
* I will very occasionally delete specific posts if I think they just serve to piss people off. Think hot-headed "personal attack"-one liners. Here I usually rely on other forumites to turn the other cheek the first time around. Mostly people are tempered and smart enough to do just that. Something which I think makes this forum quite unique. It's my hope that the antagonist will have cooled off again in the mean time and won't do it again. If it does happen again, I will kill that particular "second-strike" post. In short, I'll let people fire one round, and then let the other person fire one round back. Much like a duel. However, I don't want a flame-war or a thread-annihilation on my hands, therefore my idea is to put out fires before they develop into something bigger once I detect any escalations. In particular, if you ever found that your post somehow "disappeared", figure either: 1) most likely: software/cache error; 2) you said something you probably would have regretted a couple of weeks from now---should be obvious when consulting netiquette; 3) you said something you probably should have regretted a couple of weeks from now---ditto netiquette. I'm not gonna "X" your post if I think there's anything to be learned from it ... The recent Brexit thread was a good example of me temporarily interfering by deleting a couple of remarks, in case anyone noticed. I also locked it for 1+ days to allow people to cool off.
* I will never ban anyone from the forum for simple disagreement... especially not a simple disagreement with me alone!
* Except! If a thread goes on long enough to become clear that what's presented is 100% pure agnotology where provable falsehood's are repeatedly presented in a way that hurts the uninformed public. In this case, rather that deleting factually wrong posts, I will let them speak for themselves for the record and rather close/lock the thread either temporarily or permanently and tell people to start a new one should they wish to continue. This usually cools the heads enough. IIRC, this has happened at least once (the climate change thread) but this action is still extremely rare. My point, in terms of locking, is, I will not let these forums be a platform for consistent misinformation. However, I have never banned anyone for this.
* I delete user accounts for spam all the time. You might have seen posts with strange and poorly spelled statements that always come from a user with only 1-2 posts with a link that leads to some spam site. These accounts get killed off within hours in 99% of the cases. I do have some questions that require human interaction to create a new account but apparently some do get through. Maybe they're all the same person?! This is trivial stuff. I figure pretty much every forum manager has to deal with spam. Only reason this still happens is that spam filtering isn't 100% accurate yet. As such I would strongly urge new posters not to introduce weird links before they have at least 10+ posts under their belt, just in case they might suffer a false positive. However, given that the person who inspired this thread has written more than 100 posts on this forum, this is not the case here.
Dealing with occasional shite-behavior like this is one of the main arguments against maintaining the forum and being a public figure in general. I try to let it slide every time it happens and I'm getting better and better at it realizing that some humans are just that scummy, but still ...