Hahaha. Well he didn't get banned before he criticized Theymos on the forums, did he?
And yet a very strong majority of the people who have ever been banned on BitcoinTalk.org have not once criticized a staff member. If I'm understanding you right, that means that we should never ban someone once they criticize one of the staff? Because statistically, only a handful of people have been banned after criticising a staff member out of hundreds of people who have been banned, so you can't say that it's a problem in that sense. Nor are we banning an overly high number of people from the pool of people that criticise us, so that's not an issue, either. So again, you're saying that we just can't ban people period after they criticise the staff because it might be a conflict of interest. So then who does ban them if they do something bad? It can't be another staff member, because you still claim that is a conflict: in both of the recent ban cases (Rarity and Goat), another mod has approved of the ban. So, I guess we give the decision to the people? Well, damn, that doesn't work either, since they both had orange ignore buttons.So please, tell me, what the hell are we supposed to do in such a situation?
Well, first off I should say that think the moderation policy is pretty good on the forums, generally, and I appreciate the fact that you are listening to me and engaging with me publicly.
I don't think that if someone criticizes a moderator they should be immune from banning.
I think, simply, that if you are going to ban someone you should do it for an objective reason and do it promptly. If Rarity was banned for trolling, then he should have been banned months before he had a chance to criticize Theymos. If Goat was banned for being a general fool, then he should probably have been banned even longer ago.
Their behavior was tolerated for a very long time. It was only punished after they criticized Theymos and his personal business activities. If this is a total coincidence then it is a very strange one. I think most people would agree that this looks suspiciously like corrupt censorship, even if some of them think that Theymos has the right to corruptly censor anyone he chooses.
I would suggest that if you are going to ban someone for trolling or idiocy, don't do it after they have been allowed to get away with it for months. Otherwise you might coincidentally end up banning them for long standing behavior immediately after they have criticized the chief administrator of this forum. And that looks bad.
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