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[ggamer]

True, most of the people who get banned sass the fuck out of Toady and tend to ignore any warnings thrown their way. Sometimes they're popular in the community, like with the bear dude who made really good suggestion games that we all got real tore up about.

I think the bans peaked about a year or two years ago, where you could see a couple well known bay-watchers in the list. Now, however, it's a once in a while type thing. The only two in recent memory being punished were GWG and LSP, and LSP only got muted.

Bans and locked threads seem to happen as soon as anybody says anything even remotely controversial.

Eh, that's a higher than average number in the past month, and it was only really two topics (religion and rage), one of which took a sabbatical and came back.

The thing is that Bay12 tends to have a self-policing culture because of the lack of moderators, with each OP acting like a pseudo-mod in each topic. If things get too hot, the OP will lock it, and this system has pretty much worked ever since Finally got founded, bar a couple outliers.

[Flying Dice]

Some day long in the future you, too, will be banned.

You phrased that badly. Go read the first page of some ancient topic from the dawn of time, like Draw Your Adventures or the Happy Thread. Just look at all those people who don't post at all and haven't been banned.

[Eh. It's better to burn out than to fade away.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cawk2cMTnGo)

Not when you consider what you have to do to get banned. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Osh-KYy4Cw)

I've gotten the impression that people tend to be banned for very little; effectively nothing in fact.

What we need is for everyone to switch over en masse to a different forum where the mods don't care. Start a rage thread and a religion thread there that cannot and will not be closed under any circumstances. etc etc etc. I'm not even being sarcastic right now; I'm dead serious.

It seems like very little because Toady tends to do a lot of his moderation behind the scenes. Incidents get deleted, and people get warnings via PM. If you're not just here to troll or spam, it tends to take a lot, typically several warnings and a mute or two, before a ban comes into consideration. Basically the three ways to get reliably banned are to be a massive dick and continually bait people with provocative language and statements (trolling), or to be out-and-out offensive (repeated overt bigotry), or to not take a hint (be repeatedly warned and muted over some sort of misbehavior and never change -- this is what got GWG).

You're pretty heavily overstating the ban rate; check the moderation log. That's everyone who isn't a spambot and didn't get banned for offensive content or whatever immediately after joining. That's 35 bans in roughly 3 years, or a little over 10 people per year, out of an active userbase of hundreds of people per day. Most of those were relatively short-lived members, as well, many of whom were fairly predictable bans due to simple lack of self-control.

Hell, I'm a bit of an ass and I tend to have a hard time keeping myself out of arguments, and I've only been warned once in four years. This is super chill compared to most of the places I've been, particularly in terms of how people aren't banned for arbitrary bullshit (like disagreeing with a mod's friend).

[WillowLuman]

It actually takes a lot to be banned here, if you're not spamming right off the bat.

Bans and locked threads seem to happen as soon as anybody says anything even remotely controversial.

Locked threads maybe (though not from the mention of controversy, when people get heated over it) but there's only been one ban from the series of locks lately. IDK what the most recent one did, but I did see what several of the others did. There were some fairly shocking things, in addition to picking fights. Plus, look at the time between bans.

[ShadowHammer]

It actually takes a lot to be banned here, if you're not spamming right off the bat.

Bans and locked threads seem to happen as soon as anybody says anything even remotely controversial.

I think the reason for that is because when someone gets banned, whatever they posted to get banned is removed, so unless you were there and read the post sometime between when they posted it and when it got removed (usually a pretty short time interval, as Toady is pretty on-top of things), it seems like they just got banned out of the blue.

Double-ninja'd. Oh well.

[Tawa]

Yeah, Toady's a really chill moderator. I've said some things I'm not all that proud of around here, and I've never been PMed by Toady.

On the flip side, I once got banned from a Minecraft server for calling out a terrible mod who constantly blew up everything when the decent guys weren't around.

[Zangi]

Extremely flammable material are carted out by Toady once found to be dangerous, on a regular basis.  Those who feed the flames and/or revel in them are first warned... a few times, before finally getting the banhammer.
You'll always see that he has been there with a post asking for chill. 
Some flammable substances have an unspoken ban on them, in the way that forum members who knows of the incident will go out of the way to stamp out the campfire before it can take life of its own.

[Frumple]

... I'll admit, I've been (very) mildly concerned about the chillness for a while. I mean, I've said some pretty vitriolic and/or salacious things over the years, and definitely participated in or contributed to a handful of locked threads, but... no warnings. Not a peep. I do try to keep myself in check, especially in the last year or three, but still. There's long been this half thought in the back of the head that I'm somehow doing something wrong. That saying that you haven't done anything with your life until someone has deigned to attempt to kill you over it, resonates.

I guess framing is important. That and not sharing the doggerel that includes the words "feline herpes".

[Bohandas]

It actually takes a lot to be banned here, if you're not spamming right off the bat.

Bans and locked threads seem to happen as soon as anybody says anything even remotely controversial.

I think the reason for that is because when someone gets banned, whatever they posted to get banned is removed, so unless you were there and read the post sometime between when they posted it and when it got removed (usually a pretty short time interval, as Toady is pretty on-top of things), it seems like they just got banned out of the blue.

Double-ninja'd. Oh well.

I've seen conversations that I've been compulsively refreshing get locked over very little.

And while there often is some sort of conflict going on in the thread it's almost always a minor one of little consequence.

[Tawa]

And while there often is some sort of conflict going on in the thread it's almost always a minor one of little consequence.

^{[citation needed]}

[Baffler]

Eh, he's not really wrong, but I things like that happening every now and again are an acceptable cost for effective self-policing IMO.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

It actually takes a lot to be banned here, if you're not spamming right off the bat.

Bans and locked threads seem to happen as soon as anybody says anything even remotely controversial.

That is objectively incorrect. It's topics about things which attract flamewars consistently that are aggressively culled, for good reason.

Also;

What we need is for everyone to switch over en masse to a different forum where the mods don't care. Start a rage thread and a religion thread there that cannot and will not be closed under any circumstances. etc etc etc. I'm not even being sarcastic right now; I'm dead serious.

If you actually feel this way, then go for it. But remember; this isn't your forum. You aren't this community. I'd say the vast majority of us are very satisfied with how Toady runs things, and enjoy participating in this community as a whole. The above attitude is a pretty crummy thing to bring to Toady's Bay12Games public forum, who happens to moderate it by himself and does a great job of being lenient to the point of fault.

[IronyOwl]

I've seen conversations that I've been compulsively refreshing get locked over very little.

And while there often is some sort of conflict going on in the thread it's almost always a minor one of little consequence.

Well come on man, give us the details or don't. You can't just hide behind your cloak, pointing a shriveled finger at us claiming you've seeen things, seeeeeeeeeen thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiings eeeehehehehehehehe!

What we need is for everyone to switch over en masse to a different forum where the mods don't care. Start a rage thread and a religion thread there that cannot and will not be closed under any circumstances. etc etc etc. I'm not even being sarcastic right now; I'm dead serious.

If you actually feel this way, then go for it. But remember; this isn't your forum. You aren't this community. I'd say the vast majority of us are very satisfied with how Toady runs things, and enjoy participating in this community as a whole. The above attitude is a pretty crummy thing to bring to Toady's Bay12Games public forum, who happens to moderate it by himself and does a great job of being lenient to the point of fault.

If it's a good way to do things, it should be able to stand on its own, not just by nationalist pride and ultimatums.

That said, it's worth noting that the grass indeed tends to look greener in this sort of thing. Things being locked and people being banned looks terrible on here, because it's usually such a nice place otherwise. But in places without much moderation, things tend to degenerate to the point where it's hard to care because there's nothing left to ruin. If every thread looked like the worst parts of religion and rage threads, you probably wouldn't be sighing with relief that it was never going to get locked and nobody was ever going to get banned, because there'd be nothing apparent worth salvaging in either. It'd just be a giant pot of screaming.

[hops]

Yeah, Toady's a really chill moderator. I've said some things I'm not all that proud of around here, and I've never been PMed by Toady.

On the flip side, I once got banned from a Minecraft server for calling out a terrible mod who constantly blew up everything when the decent guys weren't around.

Toady does like destroying pyramids

[Cheeetar]

I've gotten the impression that people tend to be banned for very little; effectively nothing in fact.

What we need is for everyone to switch over en masse to a different forum where the mods don't care. Start a rage thread and a religion thread there that cannot and will not be closed under any circumstances. etc etc etc. I'm not even being sarcastic right now; I'm dead serious.

I think something similar happened when VN got closed, and it was as silly an idea then as it is now. If you think it's a good idea, go ahead and do it though. There are plenty of services that provide free forum hosting.

[Flying Dice]

That's a good point to raise: We've already had a shot at largely unmoderated whatever. It, predictably, crashed and burned.

Notably, thread locks and topic bans are similar to user bans: there are occasional surprising ones, but by and large they're exactly what you'd expect them to be, repeat offenders that are at the center of a substantial number of discussions which devolve into fights and reporting.