Time to lighten up a little. I hope you read this in the spirit in which it was intended, both serious and amusing. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
Confession: I was once banned from susan-boyle.com for a week. It happened at my third Warning. In the interest of honesty and full disclosure I will confess my abysmal crimes.
The first Warning was for violating an unwritten forum policy. You might ask how I know about this policy, if it was unwritten. I know because Doc Robbie told me about it when he gave me the first Warning. He said it was against forum policy to “discuss banned members”.
This happened on Christmas Eve, right after DJG-Scotland was permanently banned. He was a friend of mine and I was sorry it happened. So I put a yellow ribbon in my signature and the words “A yellow ribbon to DJG-Scotland”. I had no idea it was such a heinous offense. Maybe it would have been okay if I used a red ribbon.
I wondered where that policy was posted and asked Doc Robbie to point it out for me. Turns out it wasn’t posted anywhere. I do not know under which section of unwritten policies this particular one belongs. It is hard to tell when they are unwritten.
It could be under the group of policies which are unwritten because they are only enforced when convenient to the mods. But I suspect it was one of the policies which are unwritten because they are only enforced against some members, because I have seen other occasions when banned members were discussed. But it didn’t matter that the admin could not show me where the “policy” was posted. The Warning stood.
Well, now I was feeling really down. DJG, who often cheered me up with his humor, was gone and I had gotten an Official Warning. Bummer. The reason Doc Robbie gave me for the unwritten policy prohibiting discussion of banned members was that it would lead to ”a protest of that action by staff”. Hmmm….. what if I put something in my signature that only I would see. I could type it in white text and then no one but me would know it was there. That way, there wouldn’t be any protesters storming the staff room, demanding the return of DJG.
So I wrote “Miss ya, DJG” in white text in my signature. The only way to see it was to select it, as if you were going to copy it. And who would do that in someone’s blank signature?
I had not told a single person what I had put in my signature. But the subject had come up at the humor forum when someone mentioned invisible ink. I joked that typing in white did the same thing. There have always been members at DJG’s that go there, not to participate, but to lurk. Kalua was one such member and must have seen the bit about white-on-white text. I wonder who had the job of checking my posts and signature every day for secret messages.
Someone selected the blank space in my signature and saw my “private” message. I got another PM from Doc Robbie saying I was trying to “circumvent the rule” I had violated earlier. I don’t know when it happened, but the unwritten “policy” had become an unwritten “rule”. I didn’t understand what the big deal was, because I thought no one would see it. If no one sees it, it can hardly lead to protests of any kind, can it? I was obeying the spirit of the law, rather than the letter of the law. I removed the non-visible writing, but I now had two Warnings, both for violating that same unwritten rule. After I got the warning, they wrote a rule about white-on-white text.
My third Warning came for doing something that has been done by others both before and after I did it. I linked to a spoof. It was one that the staff found unacceptable and I was banned. After I was banned, they wrote a rule about linking to spoofs. At least that rule was posted, I thought, so others will know that they could get a Warning for linking to a spoof. But, like the unposted rules, that was not always enforced either.
So now you know. I was given Warnings for things which were not officially prohibited at the time I did them. As a result of those three Warnings, I was banned for a week. I apologize for not anticipating what the unposted rules would be. It is especially hard to figure them out when other members do the same things, without any consequences.
Sometimes the staff at the fansite complain that they are disrespected. I cannot imagine why that might happen. Wouldn’t this sort of off-the-cuff, make up rules as we go along and enforce them retroactively style of moderation greatly increased anyone’s respect for staff?
Postscipt: If anyone believes those warnings were absurd and couldn’t have happened that way, I will be glad to send you copies of the messages.
