Re: Re:
red_flanders said:
King Boonen said:
The vast majority of members on this site get along just fine and never get suspended. I struggle to get my head around the concept that someone could get banned and not have any idea why.
Because they don't accept the explanation offered.
No one gets banned for behavioral infractions without multiple warnings. Don't think it's any more complicated than that, but I think your comment was rhetorical and understood this. Just agreeing.
Logged back in to see whether I had received replies to my PMs concerning my bans, none, and saw this so wanted to answer it.
The two most recent bans came without any warning at all. The first was from BigMac, I was logged into the board at the time, I went to another page and boom I was banned. I sent two emails asking for an explanation, both which were ignored. When the ban was lifted I PMed BigMac seeking an explanation, never got one until I PMed Afrank who must have messaged BigMac because eventually he replied and gave a very weak explanation. I went back to the thread concerned and nothing I posted there I consider trolling, just debate. I replied saying that, but that was ignored.
The most recent one again I was logged in at the time of the ban. For some reason Hog was posting about David Walsh on this thread, and so I can't remember exactly what I said but it would have queried my he was posting about Walsh here, but neither of us was trolling but we both were banned and the posts were deleted so I can only assume that was what triggered the ban. At worst the pair of us was talking off topic, so yes I'm siding with Hog, both of us were arbitrarily banned with zero warning by MrHender. I have PMed him and Afrank to see if I can get some clarification as to why we were.
Now while I hold different opinions to many of you, and can be robust in defending those opinions I'm not here to simply cause trouble, derail threads and be pointlessly argumentative. I do actually want to debate and exchange opinions, not to troll, so when I receive knee-jerk, ill-considered bans with zero communication and no explanation I find it incredibly frustrating. I mainly post here in spare moments at work so I am sure I'll easily find something else to fill those moments. However I have been on the board for several years, have enjoyed 'lively' debate with many of you over that time but it is only recently that the mods seem to be increasingly trigger happy with suspensions and worse dismissive of the member they ban if they can not be bothered to communicate to those members why they are receiving those bans. And I'm not saying that just for myself, I don't know if Hog knows why he was banned but if it was for the conversation in this thread that was off-topic then neither of us deserved it in the slightest.
And lastly to the term troll. It seems to be getting bandied about with increasing frequency on the forum. For me a troll is like the people during gamergate that issuing threats of rape and death against female game designers, or the twitterati that are calling for a boycott of the new Star Wars film because they cast a black actor as a Stormtropper, or Katie Hopkins calling refugees 'cockroaches'. It's not two people on a cycling forum having a disagreement over David Walsh.
And I'll step away from this post not knowing whether it is acceptable to say all of that, whether it will get deleted and whether I will be banned for it. As I said I'm waiting to hear back from the mods but wanted to express why I am frustrated here, whether you like me or you don't, but I can't continue contributing to the forum since for me there is no clarity on what triggers bans.