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Notes -
For whatever its worth, my suggestion for Hlynka's ban was "a year and a day," which was what we temporarily replaced permabans with back on the subreddit.
But I didn't argue strongly for it, because after we'd been doing 366 day bans for a little over a year, people started coming back... and they weren't any better than they'd been before. One theory had been that sometimes people get too caught up in whatever the $CURRENT_THING is, and we want to allow people to grow, and... to the best of my recollection, it has not ever worked out that way in the history of this community. People who did things to earn 6 month or 1 year bans came back and... immediately did things to earn 6 month or 1 year bans.
Permabans are not great, especially when we're actively looking for ways to grow the community (productively) rather than shrink it. But allowing long-time community members to actively degrade the discourse is, unfortunately, worse.
I understand that Christian caritas is not a guiding principle here, but from a secular perspective, I still value allowing people the opportunity to grow and improve, even if people rarely take it. It feels like the right thing to do. Humane.
I'm not a mod, I don't want to be a mod, but I've been mod-like elsewhere at times. I don't know you, but in your shoes I've felt weary; worn down. And who knows, maybe this is one of those cases where enforcing the line with one person can help others veer back before crossing the line themselves. @HlynkaCG would probably appreciate how that works. But I'll go on hoping for the mods to collectively show mercy, or grace, or something like that.
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