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I also wasn't going to give my opinion on this ban because I don't consider myself a high-quality contributor. But if no mod notes is indeed the bar, I'll chime in (I have 842 comments here and on the subreddit with no warnings/bans and, to my knowledge, no mod notes).
I'm in favor of the ban and think way more banning should be done in general. I think way too many people treat warnings and bans like it's a fee they get to pay in exchange for getting to be rude to someone they disagree with. They know exactly what they're doing - they know it's against the rules when they submit their comment. They just don't care. They think the other guy deserves it, so they'll pay the ban tax and take a day off.
I think most of these people would bite their tongue if there were real, significant consequences.
This is pretty close to my views on the subject. Out of all the active moderators I think I am usually the one that is most in favor of more bans, longer bans, and fewer warnings.
There are some people that try to follow the rules, if they get a warning they will correct and be more careful in the future. We have plenty of accounts with just one or two warnings, and then otherwise great behavior.
There are others that seem closer to what you describe, they will happily pay the ban tax (or evade it altogether through alts), and then come back and make trouble again. For all I know I might've been banning the same 5-10 people for my last decade of moderation.
When I see accounts with nine mod notes about bad behavior I feel like I know which category they fall into.
This part I disagree with, from experience what happens is those people become crusaders for "the mods are terrible/evil oppressors". They just turn most of their rudeness on us, and put us in the position of having to ban people for attacking the moderators. Making us look like petty dictators.
Speaking of consequences, I am curious if the people against a ban would be willing to suffer any consequences for the behavior of BurdensomeCount. @TheDag @some @bolido_sentimental
Treat this fully as a hypothetical, but what if the next time BurdensomeCount got banned, you also received a one day ban? Would it still be worth it to keep them around?
I ask, because for the moderators there are consequences to keeping around troublesome users. This interaction takes up my time and energy. And for every mod action on a user, there are usually about 5 posts from that same user that were on the edge and we let slide. When I go through the mod queue I usually try and carefully read posts and their context. This is all work I've volunteered for, but I also don't have unlimited time in my day.
What if the next time the police searched a home without a warrant, and caught a criminal who they sent to jail, you got sent to jail too? Would it still be worth it to insist that the police need warrants to do a search?
(I don't actually think a ban for BurdensomeCount is a bad idea. But I'm very leery of the general principle that you're expressing here.)
For them it would just be imagine that you paid their salary, and you already do. The cost of the police wasting time and money is partly accounted for. Also if you make a false police call they can fine you. There are lots of consequences for wasting police time. There are no consequences for wasting volunteer mod time.
The cost of not allowing warrantless searches is that sometimes you fail to catch a criminal that you might have caught with a warrantless search, not just that you might have to waste the police's time getting a warrant.
The police analogy doesn't fit very well. These "crimes" are committed in the open.
"fail to catch a criminal" = "fail to ban someone immediately".
Again, just a bad analogy. Unlike police I don't care if someone gets away with a "crime" here. We let people get away all the time. I'm not here to punish. I'm here to cleanup. If you make a small mess and clean it up I don't really care. If you constantly crap everywhere then you make my job harder and I want to get rid of you. People call us jannies, not some imitation of police.
The point of the analogy is that not banning people arbitrarily will of course make it harder to ban, but that doesn't mean that people should be banned arbitrarily, and it certainly doesn't mean that anyone who opposes arbitrary bans should be responsible for the fact that that makes it harder to ban people.
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