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Subject: Re: Do moderators have the power to ban you

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 15:02:35 01/24/00

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On January 24, 2000 at 16:37:41, Dave Gomboc wrote:

>On January 24, 2000 at 14:07:34, hgkjhg wrote:
>
>>if they do, then i'm not voting for anybody who doesn't like my name
>
>I believe it is possible for the moderators to ban a person, but that's an
>extreme action.  They wouldn't do such a thing to somebody just because that
>somebody picked a name that probably doesn't mean anything in any language by
>hitting a few keys that are roughly side-by-side on the keyboard.  If that were
>to happen, people would probably call for their replacement.

There is nothing in the charter about the powers of moderators.

Moderators have access to a URL that allows them to delete posts.  This feature
was added sometime in the early part of last year, prior to that all post
deletions had to be done by request to Steve and/or Tim, which turned out to be
too slow and too painful.

The convention regarding banning is that the moderators can ban people.  Since
there is nothing in the charter regarding the powers of moderators, or anything
regarding the process they must go through in order to carry out their jobs, it
is up to the moderators to decide what process they want to use to ban someone.

They could decide to operate in shifts, with one person in absolute control, or
they could allow a 2-1 vote to determine that someone is banned, or they could
require that 3-0 is necessary.

The times that I have been a moderator we have sometimes come to decisions by a
vote of 2-1, but in cases of banning, we have tried much harder to reach a vote
of 3-0.  I think this is the best choice.

The process of banning involves the moderators asking Steve to ban someone, and
then Steve or Tim actually doing it, I'm not sure who actually does it.  How it
works is that the password of the banned account is changed, so the person can't
log on via that account.  It is the member that is banned though, not just the
account.  So signing up with a hotmail account is not enough to get around the
ban, although someone could get away with it potentially forever.

Since Steve has to execute the ban, and since he owns this board, it would make
sense that Steve has some say in whether or not he'll do what the moderators
want him to do.  It has been my experience that he's gone along, but sometimes
he gets involved in the discussion, and has been known to express himself quite
strongly.

So if the moderators decide to do something that is obviously insane, I think
there is a good chance that Steve will overrule it, although I have never seen
this happen.  Since there is nothing in the charter about the powers of
moderators, or about the powers of Steve, I think this isn't "against the
rules", in fact I think this is a pretty reasonable tradition.

Since there is nothing in the charter about the powers of moderators, it would
make sense that moderators can undo what previous moderators have done, no
matter what the previous moderators feel about this.  That seems quite
reasonable as well.  I don't think that three people who are elected for six
months should have the power to prevent subsequent moderators from doing their
jobs as they see fit.

Thanks,

bruce



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