>I had wondered about the length of the fun as it clearly was against the "rules" but understandable when it came up...
Yes, it is against the rule. But, as you may have read by now, each situation is unique. For some of them, we are in the position to exchange with the members. In some other situations, based on the severity of the situation, we will just not. I have seen all the situations so far since I am in this business. I have seen people hammering the site, people who used 5 accounts at the same time, people who came at the site with the sole intention to search & destroy, people who used more than one account and fight with themselves just so to let people know that this site is not a good place (talk about that one, the same individual using two accounts for that purpose), I have seen people sharing their account (some with ban members), I have seen people coming at the site with the intention of simply trolling the site in order to make it look bad, I have seen people trying to hack into someone else account, I have seen people using false identities and so on. Some of them, as you may, could have disastrous effects on the site. And, when I wake up in the morning and I see one which is ranked among the most dangerous ones, you can be sure there will not be any notice. For some which are ranked low levels, yes, we send notices.
>For us "bystanders" it seems like "happening just like that". Not wanting to start an arguement, but especially in light of others having received personal communications stating the offender has no clue about the reasons (Trying to formulate that as objective and to the fact as possible<g>) and/or others having not seen a clear reason for the ban in the threads, you might check the assumption that your current handling of the ban process is the best course of action.
I believe the above paragraph is probably the best summary on the course of actions in such situations.
>Personally I think a clear post stating the decision and the grounds (even perhaps with a marker that you won't post on the topic again) similar to the decision on JVP's reinstatement would be better. People wanting to read the other side as well can easily do if the other decides to put something on his blog or elsewhere - no need to worry about "equal screen time". To be honest, I guess even a reason like "I had enough of him" would be better compared to the tendency of others trying to second guess on no data at all: if too many of "whim-decisions" occurred your business would probably suffer.
Well, I am sure you understand that on this side, it would be difficult to come up online with things like that. There are serious issues here. For most of them, even if we would want to, there are a lot of things we cannot write online. People should also realize that reinstanting someone which has been baned twice, would have meant to bring back the others which have been baned once. The situation is also more severe in such a case so I really do not see why someone in such position could benefit of that while others wouldn't be able to. But, again, as I mentioned at several occasions, there are also a lot of things not discussed online for each situations like these.
