| TalonMan said: The 'public announcement' stuff, on the other hand, is a bit ridiculous - it's none of anybody else's business 'why' any particular user is banned. I've heard reasonings of 'Well, it'll help us to know what to do and what not to do' - BS. If you get banned from this site, chances are you've received SEVERAL warnings to cut the crap and have blantantly ignored them... ...or, you've just done something so offensive that no warning was needed. Either way, there's no need to have 'examples' of other people for reference - we're all old enough to operate a computer, so we must have developed SOME semblance of 'conduct / consequence' reasoning ablilities, no? :P |
This is the Internet we're talking about here. The ability to operate a computer != the ability to understand critical thinking or the consequences of one's actions. I was operating computers when I was 6 years old, man. :P
And I'm sorry, but if you're going to call public announcements BS, then I call "it's nobody else's business" BS. If you don't think it's anyone's business how the site is run and the community is handled, then how do you think the community will ever respect the moderators? Don't get me wrong, I think most of the mods here do a great job, but don't give me this crap about bannings being nobody's business. That kind of attitude is just going to create more whiners about how the mods are biased (which I don't think they are) because they won't hold themselves accountable. How many hundreds of needless threads have we already had on that topic?
It's not about knowing how not to misbehave, it's about a higher level of respect for the moderators. It's disconcerting to suddenly see this big red banned under someone's name and not know why it happened. Not only that, but it also just lets everyone know that the mods are doing their job. People tend to misbehave less when they know the cops are watching. It's about creating a better atmosphere, that's all.
