" Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. "
> Also, when we we ban an account, it's usually because of a repeated pattern of behavior, not just one comment. Had it just been one comment, I'd have warned rather than banned.
Exactly two of said user's posts were deleted (and they seemed quite mild), they did not get any warning. Also interesting how you did not reply to the user themselves.
Meanwhile you have actual toxic people like DanBC, tptacek, and a few others roaming around freely. Subjective and selective enforcement of rules is worse than no enforcement.
I got banned from a default sub in reddit for the reason "I didn't see that in the article". I replied to the mods with an explanation and a direct quote from teh article, and... nothing. They perma-banned me, and then blocked my account from messaging.
My comment was correct,
but even if it wasn't, it wasn't against the rules,
and even it if was against the rules, their own guidelines say you get a warning first,
and even then, the sitewide rules say that mods should hear appeals. But nah, forget all that. I'm just gone.
> The guidelines (as you probably already knew) also say that if you have a question about moderation, send us an email instead of posting about it on the site.
So it sounds like got banned for refusing to follow the guidelines?
> But it is one thing to say that those people you wrote about in your comment were banned for spamming and it is a totally different thing to say that they were banned for sockpuppetting (when they were not).
How can I be legitimately banned for spamming when I made zero comments or posts? I rarely post or comment, so did not get a chance, but I was glad to join the community.
Getting banned without warning is harsh. Mods here uses it as a last resort. I say this as someone who has formerly triggered warnings around here: appealing to rationality, shared goals, and positive intent can work wonders in some cases.
A warning of what? If a person on the street tells you to "stop", your first reaction would be to ask "stop what?", and the answer is "stop chewing gum", to which you reply "but there's nothing wrong with chewing gum", and then you are thrown to jail for all time.
You see what's wrong here, don't you? First of all a warning should convey the punishment; maybe a fine, maybe jail time, etc. Secondly, you can't assume that anybody that tells you to stop doing something is some kind of authority. In my case Olav never made it clear he had the power to ban me, nor that he was contemplating using it. Thirdly, saying "there's nothing wrong with chewing gum" is argumentation, it's not a second offence.
And yeah, surely Olav might have been annoyed by comments I made in other forums, but comments in other forums shouldn't be used as reasons for a ban bugzilla. I always provided value in bugzilla for years, and was banned for a couple of comments. Seems a bit unfair.
I know this is tedious, but these guys don't leave any alternative. I couldn't comment in bugzilla any more, I didn't receive an email notification, and nobody from bugmaster@gnome.org wanted to hear my case. What am I supposed to do?
If GNOME was handled properly, none of this would have happened.
I'm not sure why you think that account was banned for a single comment. When we ban accounts we almost always do so after repeated warnings, and then we post about why we've done it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12703655.
Also I don't think I've ever been warned before.
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