Creating alts is against the rules, and your ban was extended for doing so.
We all know this is your reasoning. I mentioned it in my original post:
the current Q and A in the rules clearly states that the proper response to a ban perceived as unjust is to A) post in S&C, or B) send a PM, neither of which is possible during a ban. Thus the sensible solution is a temporary account for just that purpose -- and as you can see, I honored my promise to not use the account outside of that purpose.
Your ban was blatantly an active obstruction of the rules you purport to uphold. It was completely without reasonable cause, utterly rash and indiscriminate. You selectively chose which rules to enforce, opting to follow the "ban alts" rule with no regard to the circumstances, ignoring the other rules. The reason moderation is a role of particular users, rather than an automated computer script, is because it's your job to weigh the proper response to individual instances. In this case, there is no defense for your actions other than blind legalism, which is unacceptable behavior for any decision-maker.
Uh, no. Creating alts to dispute bans is not acceptable, even if there is no other facility in place. Sorry.
It's not blind legalism, because if we let everyone we ban create an alt to dispute it, they would still be posting here, arguing with mods (which is what they really enjoy doing), and would not be banned at all. By the time that thread died, a week would have past and you'd be unbanned.
Stop avoiding responsibility. You should have heeded my warnings and disputed them in S&C. Having been banned, you should have waited a week and done the time (for an offence you clearly committed).
First of all, as noted earlier in this thread, you were setting the example -- are you exempt from your own rules? If you did not wish to discuss moderation in that thread, why did you continue to do so? Why were your "warnings" (only one of them was explicitly a warning, please don't embellish) not sent to me through PM? Why did you not move the posts here? Posting something in the wrong section is no excuse to ban someone from the entire site for a week. That's ludicrous. Remember that you as a moderator have other tools available to you other than wholesale banning and locking. You easily could have split the thread at the point where you thought I was disputing and moved it to S&C as a new thread, I would have automatically posted my clarification there, you wouldn't need to moan about illicit disputing, and the affair would have passed amicably and without note. Instead you decided to flaunt your moderatorship and unnecessarily damage your reputation before me and multiple witnesses. You caused a scene over a simple misunderstanding. My only dispute with you prior to the ban was the fact that you misinterpreted my original post as a dispute when it was not.
And you could have heeded either warning in accordance with the rules. You broke the rules, not me. I warned you twice (more times than I have to), and I gave you a shorter ban than I could have. It is up to you to obey the rules, not me to avoid banning you if at all possible.
Obviously, not always. Unless you consider a snide remark, immediate lock, and outrageous overreaction of a ban extension to qualify as "review". Or do you mean that you're prepared to review only after bans have already passed? Does a court meet after a sentence is served, or before?
This forum is not a democracy, and this board is not a court of law. We don't owe you an audience, or permission to post here, or permission to dispute bans whilst banned. It's something I'd like to see put in place, but alts are not the way to do it, and in any case whilst you are here it's your responsibility to obey our rules. If you don't like them, leave.
Are you doing so?
I do not believe that I am.
I did no such thing. You did, with your knee-jerk reaction to an on-topic post, and your continued stubborn refusal to amend said initial reaction after your error was pointed out.
What did not removing Tom Bishop's post have to do with the George Scott Fallacy? What did Roundy moving your topic have to do with it? I maintain it was clearly a criticism regarding inconsistent moderation which you alleged had something to do with belief. Either that, or you totally misunderstood what I was saying. I was not talking about where or why topics are moved to different boards, but when arguments regarding belief are appropriate. Your example had nothing to do with that.
Yes, it was relevant to what we were discussing, and no, it was not a complaint about moderation. You and Tausami are the only people who still seem to be having trouble comprehending what my point was. It's really not that complicated:
- I disagree with the assertion that "The topic under discussion is always the topic under discussion, not whether we believe in what we say about the topic under discussion."
- I agree with the moderation decision of categorizing threads based on the sincerity of their authors. The first link was a joke, so it fits in a joke forum. The second was intended for actual debate, so it fits in a debate forum.
- I was pointing out the fact that moderators here do follow this convention, as support for my disagreement with the assertion in the first point.
- This was posted as a direct reply to the relevant quote containing the assertion I disagreed with.
It was not a complaint, and the I felt the "inconsistency" in moderation was appropriate, not an issue. My comment was on-topic.
All I can say is that I honestly think you shifted position after my warning. I've seen you do it on many occasions, so I have faith in my own judgement on this occasion. That being said, if the above is genuinely the case, then I apologise.
However, disputing moderation is still against the rules, so even if your first post was not disputing moderation, the subsequent two posts (in which you disputed my warning) certainly were. If you felt I warned you unfairly, you should have created a topic here and we could have discussed it.
This is something you just don't seem to get, and something I pointed out in the thread at the time. Even if you didn't agree with my original warning, that was not the place to discuss it. Plenty of members come up here to discuss unfair warnings in here, and they are given a hearing. They don't derail the thread by arguing about it.
If you're going to insist that you are justified because I was still "discussing moderation", regardless of the fact that it wasn't a negative point of contention nor an attempt to influence it, I refer you to the first point in my original post of this thread:
Do not attempt to dispute (or interfere with, discuss, or allude to in any way, positively or otherwise) moderation anywhere other than Suggestions & Concerns.
The real rules say nothing of the sort. I was not disputing, nor was I interfering. I was merely using moderation as an example to support my point which was relevant to the discussion at hand. This unfortunately led to a miscommunication, and so I immediately clarified my meaning when I realized you had misunderstood. But once you had made up your mind, the facts no longer mattered to you.
Once again, you were not banned for the original post. A warning was issued, and that was the end of it as far as I was concerned. You then argued about that warning, at which point I warned you again. Then, once more, you disputed my warning you. At that point you were banned.
You disputed moderation
twice after the first warning. Whether or not you were disputing moderation in the original post, you certainly were in the subsequent two.
You still don't get it? Zarg wasn't complaining about those threads being moved, he was using them as examples of when the sincerity of posters does matter. I'm amazed that someone who busts out rif.org links all the time hasn't picked up on this yet.
But we weren't talking about when the sincerity of posters matters in terms of moving threads etc. We were talking about when it's an appropriate subject for discussion in a thread that is clearly not about their sincerity. If he wasn't disputing moderation, then he was making a totally irrelevant point (in which case it's perhaps understandable that I didn't understand the point he was making).
And I still think he was disputing moderation, and simply shifted positions mid argument so that he could have a nice long dispute about my warning. Either way, it was something he should have done in here, and not in the thread in question.