denverpilot
Tied Down
Like I said, we decided at the other forums that catering to people who couldn't discern chaff from wheat on their own, wasn't a job any of us signed up for.
We did have bans, but the software made them significantly different. We'd remove the posters posting privs (which could be temporary or permanent) and edit their last post that caused the revocation with a moderators note... "[This is against the rules and the poster has been banned from posting for now.]" which left no doubt in anyone's mind as to why we made that call.
They could read it right there on their own screen and see what a dumbass looked like for themselves. No questions needed as to why.
Plus it used peer pressure to our advantage. If someone was allowed to post again and started off into the weeds again, someone besides a mod would usually remind them they'd already been banned for that behavior before.
Unless it was so awful nobody reasonable could stomach it, we'd leave it with the note as a warning to others. If we had to delete something out of the post we'd replace it with a civilized description of what was removed. "[300 word cussing rant, removed.]"
It had more to do with the limitations of the software than anything, but it served well. Nothing we did was "behind the curtain". Sometimes we'd get notes of thanks, once in a while the community would disagree with us, and we would reinstate. That was rare.
We also could not easily delete entire threads on that software so we'd just edit the Subject line and add a marker that a thread was closed if we really had to resort to that. They weren't really closed.
Anyone who didn't pay attention to the Subject change and posted purposefully got a warning or a no-post ban and a note on THEIR post, depending on how blatant it was. It took some effort to freeze a post itself from all posting.
We never deleted those threads. Just marked them closed and left them. If we absolutely had to we'd freeze them.
People generally didn't mess with the mods there and had plenty of examples of what not to do, all they had to do was look for the marker on the Subject line of the post or they'd see the ban go by at the individual post level.
Every once in a while we'd get a dolt who would read a closed thread and then post that they were offended by it. We'd warn them with, "[Thats why the thread is labeled CLOSED. Please do not continue to post in it. - Mods]"
I don't think I'd ever volunteer to be a mod somewhere where what the bad guy did was hidden or deleted. Way too easy for the bad guy to scream that they were badly treated or whatever.
I wouldn't even entertain private discussion with a posting-banned member. We had a mod inbox and we used that and every mod saw any correspondence. We reserved the right to post anything anyone brought up with us back out into their ban thread at any time for the really psycho ones who would never be coming back...
"[Mods received the message below on xx/xx/xxxx - this member's ban will be extended indefinitely.]". I think that one was used twice in about ten years. We let everyone see it, or a summarized version if it was foul.
Nobody EVER had to wonder what we were up to there. It was all done directly in the forum.
Different software, different tactics.
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