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This is a well-crafted piece, let's break it down:
I'll leave it to the gallery to decide if OP simply has natural talent at this, or is a trained and well-polished master baiter, but, from me, kudos.
I want to sincerely thank you for taking the time to do this.
As I noted in my last ban for Count (and elaborated upon in subsequent discussion), he's very good at what he does (trolling). In a forum where people are largely acting in good faith, and where assumptions of good faith are both recommended (it's in the rules) and generally believed, he's the best at mimicking the surface traits of fact-based discussion.
Now, we could just warn and ban him with the bare minimum of effort, but that's generally a last resort. So any formal action usually requires a lot of explanation. That can get very tiresome, even burdensome.
And note that this effort isn't for the sake of Count. We know he's a troll, and the only reason he's around is because he contributes just enough to not be clearly net negative. We don't bother with the lengthy explainers for his sake, but we consider them necessary for everyone else, particularly newcomers to our forums, or those who aren't quite as jaded and get confused as to why seemingly innocuous or borderline posts get hit so hard. In a way, Count benefits from the existence of the people he seeks to rile up.
I'll bookmark this, just in case I need a proper analysis of his nonsense that isn't written solely by myself. Thanks again.
Oh come on, I can't believe this, every time I make a top level post we get people going "5 secret and esoteric knowledge reasons why BC is actually trolling even when he says he's sincere" that there's no good response to other than going "no" because with text anyone can make up anything to support their viewpoint and make it sound plausible (see your average literary analysis magazine or Scott's Recent Anti-Christ lecture).
I think it only takes a very quick glance at this forum and past moderation activities to realize that us mods have very little in common with the good Cardinal. We warn sparingly, and hand out bans even more so.
As is regrettably necessary, mod decisions usually revolve around matters of opinion, not the kind of objective fact that can be analyzed under a microscope. Yet, the average Mottizen attracts little such censure.
The last time I had to ban you, I even went to the trouble of rewriting your post to demonstrate a version that used inflammatory language to only the minimum extent necessary:
https://www.themotte.org/post/2269/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/348561?context=8#context
So I am confident that it isn't the content, but the user presenting it and the way it's presented that's an issue.
At this point, you have the following options:
Keep doing whatever it is you are doing, till someone less amused by your antics permabans you.
Write something of actual quality to counterbalance things (you are in fact capable of doing this, look at your Alawite writeup, it won an AAQC). Or, if you're going to keep actual intellectual effort at what it is, phrase things in a more neutral manner.
As it is, my stance is that your current post isn't quite bad enough to warrant another ban, but has supersensitized my receptors such that a second offense will definitely result in a ban.
Honestly, I'm not sure any expression of sincerity will make up for past actions. Finding Christ or Allah right at the noose might do good things for your immortal soul, but it'll take a great deal more to make us not consider you a bad actor.
I'm not interested in debating your character with you, though I might with other people who genuinely don't understand our stance. What is within your control is your behavior, such that you may delay or deny the looming banhammer.
If you can't? Well, you'll certainly break out of the loop of samsara, for better or worse.
In fairness, people have been saying “the forum will die because you’re banning all the interesting people” for at least 5 years now.
On the other hand, we actually have banned some interesting people, and the forum is worse for their absence.
Okay buddy - you and @ABigGuy4U - I am calling your bluff. Who are the people we have permabanned who actually made the forum worse for their absence?
The only one I can think of is @HlynkaCG and he is extremely debatable - for every Hlynka-stan who misses him, there is someone who was screaming at us to ban him for years. And I've already written several times about how we did everything we could, short of just literally saying "The rules don't apply to Hlynka," to avoid having to permaban him.
Every other permaban I can think of might have been in some cases an "interesting" person, but they were interesting in the sense that they wrote high-effort screeds spitting high-effort venom, and the people upset that we banned them approved of the direction they were spitting.
Go on, tell me who on this list was a valuable contributor who you think should be granted amnesty?
We do not casually permaban people, and we let even the most belligerent and obnoxious people, if there is even a shred of redeeming quality in their posts, have multiple chances before we pull the trigger.
I personally don't find @BurdensomeCount's contributions very interesting, though I will say his trolling has gotten less blatant. I just skimmed the OP because it was the usual uninteresting BC sneering. He mostly gets away with it because he's toned down the celebratory triumphalism about enjoying the fruits of immigrating to the UK which he looks forward to being conquered by his people who will punish the white supremacist natives in good time. It was those kinds of posts that got him banned before.
"50% of the forum loves them and 50% hates their guts" is practically the definition of an interesting poster. If there's unanimous agreement that someone is a good contributor, then they may indeed be a "good" poster, but there's a cap on how interesting they can be.
My suggestion has always been that bans are capped at a length of one year, except in incredibly egregious cases (e.g. spam bots, or the person launched cyberattacks on the forum or something). I don't expect that this suggestion will ever actually be implemented, but it is a possibility nonetheless.
Hlynka is the primary example of course, also fuckduck9000, AhhhTheFrench, AlexanderTurok.
It's easy to be "interesting" (for some value of "interesting"). That's not the only criterion. The goal is not to be polarizing for its own sake. The guy going on about how having sex with your own prepubescent daughter should be legal was certainly interesting - and he wasn't even banned for expressing that opinion! He was banned for belligerently sneering at everyone who disagreed with him.
I wouldn't be against it, per se, I just predict with high confidence that those who take advantage of the opportunity to return after a one-year ban will get banned again in short order.
As I told @The_Nybbler, fuckduck wasn't that interesting. AhhhTheFrench was a one-trick pony ("Hurr hurr religious people are so dumb!"). Hlynka and Turok I'll grant were interesting. However, see above. If you can convince Zorba to grant them an amnesty, I wouldn't oppose it, but I am also fairly certain they will not change their posting styles, which means in short order we'd be back to "Okay, are they so interesting that we let them keep just ignoring the rules?"
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