[iron81]

Ryan for some sort of super admin. Perhaps Mason's dad?

Bans are a bad thing because they irritate readers. I held off reading 2+2 for a year because in the other poker forum I read at the time, 2+2 mods were regarded as nitty and power tripping. I don't want to think about how many people we've irritated either directly or through rumor. Few businesses are so eager to "discipline" their customers as 2+2 and it irritates people. Whether justified or not, getting banned irritates people.

Escalation backed by temp bans is fine, but I think we are often skipping the first step: warnings. This is particularly true because often times, users aren't familiar with rules like torrents and profanity filter. Even if the rules were clearly spelled out, I don't think its reasonable to expect users to be familiar with all of them because it would be a long read. We of the 5 figure post counts lose track of what the experience is like for new users, which partially explains my recent crusade against large avatars.

I disagree that warnings stop people. I would guess that less than 20% of the warnings I issue are followed by temp bans. Also, with the trend of not posting when we are issuing a ban, we lose most of the deterrent effect.