An important public note for returned banned members

[ckn]

We are aware that a number of people have returned to the forum under new user names despite having been banned at some point in the past.  Now, our typical moderating policy has been to turn a bit of a blind eye to the least bad of these people ON THE SINGLE CONDITION THAT THEY BEHAVE TO A HIGHER STANDARD THAN THE GENERAL FORUM MEMBER.

 

I'm starting to get complaints about three in particular.  You know who you are, as does the rest of the forum, as you've not been subtle in the slightest about who you are.

Now, normally I'd be happy to just send private warnings but for returned banned people we're not giving the sort of formal warnings that other people get.  Either return to the posting style you started with when you came back that generated no complaints or warning OR you get banned and we institute our troll management tools to ensure you're not coming back easily.

 

In particular, we're getting a bit fed up of two of the three starting to give snide comments on posts or trying to be subtle in their trolling.

 

As a further note, my typical way of dealing with returned people who get banned again is to hit a forum option that deletes all member posts.  It might take a while for the software to delete over 1000 posts...

 

Finally, there are at least another another four members we know who have come back and have not returned to the behaviour that saw them banned.  That's a win for us as we get a good forum member while eliminating disruptive behaviour.

[ckn]

Sometimes there are banned people we don't really mind coming back once they've calmed down a bit.  Even those who were banned for a very good reason often come back as reformed characters.  Other times, we get people back who we really just don't want on the site and get me itching to pull the perma-ban trigger.  In fact, I'll have a chat with John about whether we should pre-emptively do it anyway to save us the inevitable hassle of doing it soon enough for good cause.

 

(and, no, those of you who I've talked with by PM in the last month or two aren't on that list!)