I don't know how to feel about this. Outside of an increasingly necessary test, why was Kero banned?

Not arguing it. I just feel that without objective reason, it's abuse of power. So I'm curious what the objective reason is.

The ban note is quite specific.

It's an objective reaction to an objective problem. That problem being Kerotan and the reaction being his removal. What's not objective here?

If you'd like you could call it a correction of a previous too soft approach.

Its rule two on the internet dont take the bait and he took it

Rule 2 is we do not talk about ___.

I guess I just don't consider banning someone for being involved in past transgressions to be in line with objective reasoning. Punishing people for things they've already been punished for strikes a nerve with me, and it feels more like abuse of power without a specific, unpunished offense. It's especially shitty in this case, because it'd probably be real easy to find something he did or, you know, wait a couple of days.

That's the thing though. He most likely hasn't been punished properly in the past, which would explain why he continues to be a problem. I don't think there are statutes of limitations.

They found sperm stains all over the forum and new DNA tests found it was him all along.

Fair question. I can understand why people may be confused with the reasoning as he's not actually been banned for "breaking a rule". That said, the forum rules aren't actually a list of all the things which may get you moderated. They're a guideline of what we expect from the community, and we may take action on a users toxic behavior whether or not they actually break one of those named rules.

I wouldn't say it's abuse of power, I'd mark it down more as a necessary use of the power I've been given. Kerotan has been a problem on this forum now for the better part of two years. He can't stay out of trouble, he can't listen to reason when he's confronted (particularly in this thread) and he's consistently getting others into trouble due to his own actions. He refuses to take responsibility for those actions and tries his best to get under people's skin (Behavior we've noted with his confrontations with the likes of Chazore, tbone51 and Miyamotoo).

Now this ban? This has been coming for a while, honestly. I'm not the only moderator on the team who's had enough of his actions. To highlight how tired we are as a team, I brought up the suggestion in mod chat and only one out of the other six was originally against the decision.

To get to the business of why I suggested it to the other moderators last night -

1. For the discussion I held with him regarding his moderation for reporting OTBWY. I felt the moderation was fair and I thoroughly explained why in our discussion. He repeatedly dismissed it, giving poor excuses for his behavior while digging himself a deeper hole. It's a classic Kerotan argument; Come with a controversial statement > Get confronted with hard facts > Dismiss it, don't take responsiblity and disappear for a few days.

One of the rules of this thread is that your argument must have a solid foundation - Once again, Kerotan's argument didn't have a solid foundation. This didn't sit well with me, but I thought I'd let it go and warn him in-thread rather than just moderate him for being obtuse. Couple days later he returns to the thread and once again starts out by dismissing what I'd earlier explained to him... This leads us to point 2.

2. He asked for it. He asked us to run the place smoothly and keep conflict as low as possible between users. Looking at the conflict we've seen over the last 18 months, one name is consistently in the middle of that conflict. Kerotan. Considering I just let him off without a moderation and he jumps right back in, I thought I'd simply propose a test, that test being we see how the site runs without his influence on the forums. I could have just scalded him for bringing it up again and dismissing my explanation, but I felt a more appropriate action was to take his advice and actually enforce our original guideline.

When we first join the mod team we're shown our own set of moderator guidelines, something separate from the actual forum rules. The first, and in my opinion the most important thing we're told is that the mod team's main role is to promote a healthy community. This much should be obvious for anyone who applies for the job, but never-the-less it's the first thing we're told we should be doing when we take up the role. It hasn't been used nearly enough over the last couple years.

This moderation may seem unfair and out of the blue sure. I accept that. The fact is though that this has been a long time coming. Kerotan has been teetering on the edge of a long ban for quite some time now, and he doesn't seem to be taking notice of the fact that both the mod team and the community in general is starting to grow very, very weary of his shtick and it's not going to be accepted for much longer.

In short, for Kerotan - It's time to change or it's time to find a new forum.

Then I don't fully agree with the timing of the ban. That said, thank you for the explanation.

I for one thought the ban was glorious and well deserved.

My opinion is well known on this issue, and am glad that the team is discussing the issue and dealing with the issue in number of cases such as this.