@Onimusha12:

I guess now that this thread has been successful, you have reached the opportune moment to reveal your true identity as Gballzack, and to subvert the thread to your own nefarious purposes. I see through your trickery! You shall not prevail against the good and the righteous! Renounce your wicked ways lest you be brutally punished!

 You still didn't told me what I did wrong :(.

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.

Hush underling puppet, our time will come. *Hisses*

Sorry, must have been thinking of Gran Turismo when I slapped down your name, its hard to keep alot of the members here strait, no offense. I'm not here that often anymore so identities and names get blurry for me.

@ Entroper

I agree whole heartedly. Most people who are banned it seems have no clue why because it seems the behavior they were banned for is behavior they've been allowed to get away with either hundreds of times before or see other members get away with even more outrageous offenses on an equally frequent basis. I recieved a warning once, and it said to just simply "stop trolling", that's not very specific, nor does it help me distinguish the fine line between tolerance and punishment that only stof himself seems to have any understanding of here.

The real problem here may not even be necessaraly knowing so much what warrants a ban, but rather the lack of a percievable consistancy in who gets banned and who doesn't. It seems mods give a greater benefit of the doubt to regulars which then paints an misguiding image of what it allowed to more inexperienced members whom the mods won't tollerate that same behavior from. Even then we see a great deal of inconsistancy in what behavior is repremanded here. Let me ask you this mods, how can you let 100 members get away with something then out of the blue just ban one member for that same behavior and then expect people not to be confused. Don't give me that lame ass excuse you can't be everywhere at the same time, if you're not going to give us a realistic and consistant definition of what "trolling" is or what behavior you expect then all your rules mean nothing.

I also wonder if it isn't a matter of how many members complain in response to a post by reporting it. Example:

Member A says "Nintendo fanboys are pussies who can't handle real games. All the mods on this board are Wii faggots!", but if only one person reports him, no one bans him.

Member B says "Sony is suffering through the PS3's failure and needs to re-evaluate their marketing strategy", but if twenty people report him... he does get banned.

Talon, it certainly does seem like a job for ioi. ;) Something like a script that could generate a email to whatever their account email is (without having to go and be able to see what their email address is) and have it state the reason for the ban, length of the ban, etc.

Public announcements, meh. That's a bad thing to get into in all honesty. It should only be communicated to the person being banned and the moderators on why they were banned. If the banned person wishes to share it after the fact, that is their choice.

A very very good idea in my opinion would be a moderator only area in which all moderating decisions are posted.
We have it on the site I used to moderate on and it worked quite well, it means that all the mods know why a certain decision was made and if your having trouble making a decision you can post it there to discuss with the other moderators.

On a completely different topic, we should get a VGchartz IRC channel.

Actually, I moderate a public forum with a seven-year history and half a million posts.  The community is very involved, and the moderators always give public warnings and usually a closing remark when any moderating act is taken.  It's not for humiliation, and it's not putting people in the stocks.  There's a reason the court system is public, you know.  I'm not saying we need to put people on trial here and have a "jury" decide their fate, that would be huge overkill and unnecessary.

It's not about me, Talon.  I agree with you that people should not believe that there is an abuse of power, but look around!  We constantly have people whining that the mods are biased towards the Wii, that if you say anything against it you will be banned.  I don't believe this is true, but the whole point of my last post which you seem to have missed is it's not about me.  Keep on dismissing this with your "Pfft" attitude, you're just giving those people more ammo for their arguments which I'm sick of.

Like I said in my last post, I think the mods here do a fine job, so I'm not angry with you guys.  I'm much more fed up with the accusations flying around, and I'm suggesting something that I think will help.  Disagree with me if you want, but please don't miss the point.

You should ALL get banished for being gballzack... ALL of you.
I reported every single post for being gballzack.

(Please note the use of the term banished instead of banned. So much cooler, you're right Wolfenstein!)

What about you? Aren't you Gballzack?

You see, gballzack, from a lot of the comments put forth in this thread it is clear that many of the forum users are getting tired of the trolling.  This is getting to a point where you are just asking to get banned.  Why not cool it?