Unless I hear otherwise from Tarn, or this thread has inappropriate content, I will not be locking this thread or otherwise taking brutish censorship actions against it just for being MLP related. This shouldn't be taken as a blanket license to spam off-topic MLP content in other threads; that is generally rude forum behavior and is what usually gets MLP banned or kept to one thread in other forums.
The "pony ban" is a sentence Toady One posted after he was forced to repeatedly respond to My Little Pony threads in General Discussion veering into inappropriate content. After the second time he locked a major thread, he invited the community to recreate the thread if they could follow the rules, but warned that he would take harsher measures if the problems continued to occur. After the third time, he said that was it for My Little Pony threads in this forum. As far as I know and can tell, it's nothing resembling a personal hatred or ideological crusade -- he's never rigorously enforced it, and probably just wants to avoid the unweildy responsibility of trying to police the discussions. He's not a tyrant in his moderation style, and I don't intend to act like one for him.
While I do find this thread itself to be acceptable, there is something in this thread that is not acceptable, and that's the flagrant factionalism. I don't mind civil discussion of whether MLP content is allowed or not, but the "GTFO" and "damn bronies" replies, plus to a lesser extent commentary on the ban being "awesome", are not only unconstructive, they are flamebait, they serve to promote meaningless hostility toward other posters, and they make you look childish. Unlike pony mods, picking fights and insulting other posters is explicitly prohibited by the posted Bay12Games forum guidelines.