| ItsaMii said: My respect for the mods went several levels down. It is some kind of unwritten rule that all the users with +1000 posts have a higher tolerance for bans. We all know that veterans can do minor name calling (idiot, dumb, stupid), newbies on the other hand taste the ban hammer for using the word "lame" alongside with the mod favorite console. We have veterans creating threads for trollish purposes left and right, users that post quasi-erotic pictures and spammers creating 30 threads/day. So, I have to ask myself why the fuck ban a user with one of the highest post counts on the site? Even worse, why ban one that do not even resort to name calling? There is so much ban material on the site. There should be some code or strict rules. I am not swallowing this "mods ban at they own discretion" crap. There is no consistency. Creating 20 threads and posting 300 times in 2 hours - 3 hours ban Posting porn - warning Racist comments - 1 day ban (several times for some users) Xenophobic comments - nothing Name calling - warnig for veterans, lifetime ban for everyone under 200 posts Posting links for roms and isos - nothing so far Console criticism to the mod favorite console while he is online - at least 1 day ban Being reported on a out of context 1 month old post - 1 day ban |
While I agree that the ban system is inconsistent, a lot of it is up to the individual moderator. As an example, I use short bans in an attempt to get the user to "clean up his/her behavior". If I'm forced to ban the person again (it has yet to happen to me personally), then the ban will be lengthened. Repeat ad nauseum, though I doubt it will ever come to that.
As for older users getting more leeway; of course they do. Part of moderating is trying to decipher intent, which is quite difficult at times given the nature of the internet and a person's ability/inability to type the Queen's English. So what do we have left to fall back on? The poster's history and that's about it. If a person has 4,000 posts and has yet to be banned, there's a good chance that the poster was being a little snotty, had a bad day, is being misunderstood, or any other myriad of things that might be going on in the post.
In my opinion, it's always better to err on the side of caution when it comes to bans and long-time users deserve a little benefit of the doubt. After all, they're the ones who have been here the longest and built up VGC to what it is today. It doesn't mean that they should be untouchable, but they deserve to be cut some slack for one bad post.
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