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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28289 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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As of this time @HlynkaCG has been permabanned. I'm posting this message at the top of the thread, because its not really for Hlynka, its for the community to know. There were a few different posts I could have chosen in the modqueue, and many of them were too buried to be visible. The mod team has given him repeated warnings and bans. And I personally reached out to him last ban to warn him that a permaban was likely coming if this behavior continued.

I mostly do not feel this is a good thing, but it is a necessary thing. Hlynka had quite a few quality contributions, and I don't think I was alone in appreciating his often unique (for themotte) perspective. But he repeatedly did it in a way that just wasn't acceptable for the rules around here.

I would like people to have a few takeaways:

  1. No one on this forum is infinitely excused of bad behavior. Having quality contributions and providing a unique viewpoint might get you some additional leeway, but our patience isn't unlimited.
  2. The mods do read and participate here. We know when someone is starting to abuse that leeway. We know when there is frustration about it.
  3. We do try to be deliberate and slow about things. It can feel real shitty when a cabal of people meet in secret to discuss your punishment and they decide permanent banishment is the solution. For longtime users that have put in the time and effort to be a part of the community here we don't lightly jump to permanent bans as a solution.

Please keep any discussion civil.

no, this not a correctional facility and you are not correctional officers

we like hlynka and are looking forward to his contributions under his new name

  • -18

You're correct that this isn't a correctional facility, but you're mistaken if there isn't moderation involved in keeping our tiny enclave in the internet wastes that way.

Anyone who doesn't like it is welcome to leave. There plenty of other forums out there. The mods here still take pains to maintain the Mandate of Heaven approval of the supermajority of the users, since without them, we'd be a glorified day drinking club and Zorba's AWS bill would be significantly less justified, if a lot smaller.

But that's that for Hlynka. Making an alt after being permabanned doesn't work as well as you'd like, especially for such a colorful character as Hlynka. Anyone can tell it's him even behind seven layers of VPNs, and anyway, I think he has more of a martyr complex and feels vindicated rather than desiring to sneak in under a new alias.

Making an alt doesn't work well in the sense that it's liable to be detected, but it works fine in the sense that there is a venerable and proven record of it working for known / suspected / mods-openly-identify-person-as-alt-but-don't-take-action case. A reoccuring point from past mods when identified alts were raised in the past is that if someone Alts after being banned but isn't currently breaking the rules that got them banned, then their change in behavior is 'Mission Accomplished.'

Fair enough, but I doubt Hlynka will ever change his spots, so I strongly expect that if he was to return, he'd be back at it again, and his identity would be obvious.

There's a difference between having an alt, and having an alt after you were permabanned. Off memory, I can't recall an example of the latter that the mods knowingly condone, but it could well be true.

I agree that he wouldn't change his spots to passive-aggressive. He's too pugnacious to conform to the Motte's selection effect.

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