Bakunin wrote:That's why I would like to see a change in the protocol regarding banning of senior members (to the extent we'll have such a status in the future). While moderators need to retain to right to ban members, I would like to see mandatory filing of a 'report' visible to all senior members, in a dedicated senior member forum, so that the community can review the decision and potentially make changes to the policies regarding banning of senior members. Specifically I would like to see who got banned when and why. Failure to produce such a report in a timely fashion (a week at most) needs to be sanctioned.
Since I've been a moderator, I'm only aware of a couple of senior members getting banned. In all but one case (that I know of):
- The member was warned publicly about which behaviors needed to stop, with reference to specific forum rules, and told that if they broke those rules again, that their account would be locked.
- The member broke those rules again.
The remaining case was more irregular, and the banned user contacted the moderators directly asking for reinstatement. We granted it. And as for several cases before my time, warnings were given, but more typicaly privately.
Unfortunately, it's not always possible to follow a public process like the one above. If somebody were to complain about receiving abusive and repeated PMs, for example, our general policy would be to accept that report in confidence, collect as much evidence as we could, and make a decision. This preserves the privacy of
both parties as much as possible. As I understand it, this is standard policy for handling similar issues at many professional conferences.
Φιλόσοφος wrote:We had members like that, who were not only active but insightful and stimulating, however we banned many of them because we did not all share the same opinions and it being a forum, disagreement and polemic arose, which we would not withstand nor allow.
Heated debate is allowed (and even encouraged). Personal remarks are not. Here are the official HTLAL rules on the subject. These were originally written by Patuco, who joined HTLAL in 2005 and who acted as the senior moderator back when the administrator was much more active:
FLAMES, PERSONAL ATTACKS & DISRUPTIVE POSTING
Do not post deliberately inflammatory, argumentative or aggressive messages. If you disagree with a person, you can argue with his ideas in a respectful manner. Don't attack the person, his personality or what he is, even in an indirect way.
I know that some people find this rule too restrictive. For example, many people
enjoy personal attacks and flaming. Once upon a time Polydog (a very interesting language forum) provided much greater leeway in this regard. But as I understand it, the administrator later clamped down considerably, and the forum is now locked to the public and invitation-only.
In general, if you want a forum with extremely loose rules about civility and appropriate behavior, you might have more luck with either Reddit (if they ever figure out what their policies are) or one of the chans. (Or on the sad remnants of Usenet. I miss the good old days before the Eternal September) But at least in the case of "classic" web forums, sooner or later, most of them seem to institute basic ground rules, or choose to become closed private communities, or choose to close the forum. For whatever reason, it's hard to find interesting "classic" web forums with extremely loose codes of conduct.
Personally, I know that we have a number of very interesting polyglots—people who speak lots of languages, who organize challenges, who always have really interesting things to say—who have a very low tolerance for incivility. If we relax the forum rules in this regard, we'll lose some of these people quickly. So allowing people to personally attack other people comes at a real price. It's simpler to have one set of rules for everyone.