Naava wrote:Woods wrote:So I prompted the moderators to think about it, but they just ignored my point.
Hi, just a quick note - since you've felt like you've been ignored, I want to let you know I've seen this thread and will write an answer to you, but unfortunately it has to wait a bit. I'm currently very hungry and need to go make some lunch before I go to work. I'll see if I have time to sit down at the computer later today, but if not, I'll answer you at the weekend (unless other moderators have time to answer before that, of course).
Hi Woods, and thanks for your patience! I'm writing this answer on behalf of the whole admin team, since you addressed your questions to us all.
Firstly, you said you had felt we were ignoring your post. I'm sorry for this, and I hope you believe me when I say none of us wanted that. We all understood your post the same way as Linguaphile. We had nothing to add to what she had posted to you as an answer, and since you didn't ask for clarification or in any other way show that it hadn't been what you had meant, we thought you had received the answer you were looking for. Since you've now said that wasn't the case, I'm writing this post that hopefully will answer your original questions. If it doesn't, please don't hesitate to ask further questions.
Secondly, you asked about Vijay's ban. Unfortunately, we cannot comment on individual cases. We sometimes receive information that is not publicly viewable on forum to other members, and since we do not want to betray people's trust by publishing what they've told us privately, we've decided that we will not discuss any case - not Vijay's or any other - in public.
So, although I can't talk about individual cases, I can describe to you what we do on a general level. When someone reports a post or a PM, or when one of the admins sees a post that might be against the forum policy, we let the others know about it. We then discuss it together to see if the policy has been broken, and if yes, how we should react. We check the policy for what should be done and go through the pros and cons of letting it be, reminding, warning, or banning a member. For example, if the forum policy states that breaking the rule X may result in an immediate ban, we then discuss what kind of arguments there are for warning a member instead of a ban, and what kind of arguments there are for banning the member. After this, we vote, and only if a majority is in favour of the decision, it will be implemented. We may also lock or hide posts or threads from view for the duration of our discussion if needed, and if the posts or thread are found to be breaking the forum rules, they will stay locked or hidden.
I want to emphasise that
no one is allowed to ban a member on their own. You must always consult others first, and no matter how much you would want to ban someone, if a majority of the other admins do not agree with you, the member won't be banned. The only exception to this is spammers, who would fill up the forum with hundreds of spam links if they were not banned as soon as they were caught.
Lastly,
if you - or anyone else - would want to start a discussion on forum policy or ban policy in order to update it, we are always ready to welcome and encourage it. The times change and the forum changes, so it is only natural that the rules would also be changed eventually. We can arrange, for example, polls to see what the members think similar to what was done with the previous TAC forum. However, I hope we can keep the focus on the future of the forum when discussing the policy instead of talking about individuals and the reminders, warnings, or bans that they've received. I understand that sometimes the wish to change things stems from what has happened in the past to you or someone else, but this could easily derail the discussion and scare off people who were not involved in particular cases but might also want to say something about potential changes to the forum policy.
Hope this helps, and if you feel I missed something you wanted to get an answer to, please let me know!