I guess there's something I'm missing, because I still believe that permabanning someone directly for a racist/homophobic post is simply silly...

Naturally it wouldnt be decided by one mod, right on the spot. It would be discussed and we would have to come to an agreement regarding the entire situation.

If it were to happen (Which it wont, as I seem to be the only one with the stance), then it wouldnt be the decision of one person.

Context is key with every moderation.

To be honest, on a case-by-case basis I'd be willing to vote in favour of removing people who simply take leave of their senses and post horrendous shit!

I just think automatic permas is something we need to be careful with. A month or so back with the sexism thing, I thought it was completely obvious some people deserved lengthy bans (circa 10 days) and handed them out. Other mods disagreed. Learning from that, the nature of opinions is that they'll differ.

I agree. A 2 month ban is fair for someone who says something like that but definitely not a permaban. 

The counterargument is that sometimes folks just have a bad day and let their badness out for others to see. Remember the famous Christian Bale rant? That was apparently a very isolated incident and, supposedly, he's usually a great guy to work with. We have to balance a line between the absolutely unacceptable nature of such comments against the fact that we shouldn't turn members of the community away just for having one (one!) bad incident.

History plays a part in this, of course. If Megadrive08 hadn't been such a longtime user, of course he would have been out on his ass for a comment like that. As it is, his neck's on the chopping block.

Then would you consider "off the books" stricter mod moderating?

I mean you have your chat to discuss if a post should be moderated or not, but do you ever talk about your guys' own posts? IE "hey randoMod, this post of yours was in the grey area"

We talk about eachothers posts and behaviour, yeah.

If any user has a problem with how a mod is behaving in a thread, on a wall or wherever then you should ALWAYS let the team know through either a report, or a message to Kantor or Smeags.

Mods arent invulnerable.

Yes, several times. Obviously it doesn't happen particularly often, but it does happen rest assured.

Hmm. Good to know.


In the weekly sales thread Starcraft invited a user to talk here, and now that makes more sense.