I understand it's not out of the blue that shadow is being banned. I also understand that it is well within the right of admins to ban people.
What I don't understand is what he did to warrant being banned.
the avatar thing makes sense, though.
Read some old posts and tell me what you honestly think. This is a public forum, so it's all public business. Also, Shadow is only the eighth individual to be banned since the forums were created in 2003, and only the fourth to ever experience being placed into a restrictive user group.
Everyone can live with ugly arguments, terrible insults, a little bit of trolling, and some outright rule-breaking posts. There's nothing here short of hacking the forums that will get you banned as an immediate reaction, and that's the way it should be.
However, if you think there's nothing wrong with consistently posting, over a five month period, dozens of meaningless one-line posts a day, creating lots of empty, self-centered discussion that causes arguments revolving around yourself, scaring off completely new members via tactless responses where you selfishly claim what they've posted is old news and insult them with an abuse of giant fonts and the facepalm smiley, and showing up in every other post of every other thread of the forums you have access to when there's at least a dozen or so other active members with completely different schedules trying to have some real discussion, then of course you won't understand why he's being banned.
Even if he's gotten slightly better in the last few weeks, he's not on his way to becoming a regular member again anytime soon, and that isn't acceptable. FAIL wasn't supposed to become a permanent user group. It was supposed to be the warning that makes you clean up your act, but what's the point if you don't?
I've consistently argued against bans of any sort for so long that it since became instilled within the community ethos. Now the admins are very shy when it comes to banning people, so I think it's probably my fault that Shadow wasn't banned when he should have been.
As a result, I'm setting an example, or else actions stop carrying consequences. After all, I don't mind being the bad guy.
Also, I don't want to wait for some specific infraction to come up that then gets used by another admin or mod as an excuse for banning him, because that establishes "bannable offenses" that then set awful precedents on which future bans will be based. I definitely don't want it to end up being because of an argument or dispute, since that also sets the worst possible precedent -- one that penalizes free speech and every member's right to disagree. Nor should it be because he upset anyone, since that implies only those with personalities we can all get along with should belong here.
Instead, this ban is based on a consistent, long-term pattern of semi-abusive posting that's continued for months even after an increasingly severe series of punishments and warnings imposed by the admins, and avoids setting any precedents on which more arbitrary bans may be based on in the future.
That's also why it seems out of the blue if you're a newer member. To older members, it seems somewhat overdue, and that's probably part of why Shadow is being so gracious in accepting his ban.
Maybe after we add a chat room, a twitter-like micro-blogging extension, and a group-based daily post-count limit, we'll invite him back.
Also, changing someone's avatar is very much an abuse of administrative power. Of course, I also just gave him the ability to change his own avatar again after two months of not being able to edit his personal settings, so I was expecting him to change it back.
EDIT: As a side note, I shouldn't even be the one banning people to begin with, and I hope after this I won't ever have to overstep my authority and ban someone again.
