Re: Announcement, musical professor banned from the forum
While i do see Bookrage's point about privacy there are several reasons why we give warnings etc in public.
the most major one is that of accountability.
You only have to look at some of the really serious flame we've seen around here concerning online games and such, where people are posting random skype or chat conversation logs that may or may not have been altered, claiming they received a private message or email that said such and such but not having the actual text, forcing developers or admins to in game logs and then rampantly disagreeing etc.
if everything is on the forum post by post there is never any doubt about who said what and people can see all sides of the issue and decide for themselves.
To take this recent case Musical professor "claimed" he was joking and did not believe his remarks were offensive, and there could have been the potential for this situation to devolve into a "Oh yes they were", "Oh no they weren't" type of affair, that is one reason why I am glad Nightshade did not mind Nocturnus posting the contents of the offensive email, because even though the initial post was deleted in this case, there is enough of a record of Musical Professor's behaviour to hopefully justify why we went to such extreme lengths here.
Accountability is also a two edged sword, since as members can see the potential behaviour and why it got a warning when the warnings are public, also members can see the action moderators take and the reasons why they are taken, and heck question them if they wish (it's what we have a site and forum feedback area for), after all how often have we heard cases of "the moderator of so and so has banned me and I don't know why and nobody can contact them!"
Hopefully this makes us more trustworthy, since after all at the end of the day we are people just like anyone else on the forum who just happen to have taken on the job of trying to keep this the safe and welcoming place it is, not absolute monarchs passing down decrees to the stupid peasants from atop their castles; we have enough of those in the world already).
Indeed it is precisely for said reasons of accountability that I am writing explanation right now.
The second more practical reason is that by posting public warnings we can be absolutely %100 sure that the warnings have been seen and understood by the offender, which is not the case were we to use pms or even email.
Lastly, while I wouldn't say we try to "shame" people into behaving themselves, I have noticed, particularly in cases where a thread has gone a bit tonto, that official public warnings, or even just comments with the Moderation tag are helpful in putting on the breaks and getting people to stop and think about what they're doing, which often avoids more serious unpleasantness further down the line.
As Nocturnus said in post 3, usually in a situation like this one, most reasonable people would've just taken the initial warning, responded with a mild apology and then moved on.
Hope that all makes sense.
_______________________________________________ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
