Suppose that I am a moderator. I want to ban someone (never mind why I want this). I also want to seem to be fair. So I simply claim that this person requires me to spend a great deal of effort on them. The rest of the members will mostly take this at face value, and will be sympathetic to my decision to ban this tiresome person. This obviously creates an incentive for me to claim, of anyone whom I wish to ban, that they require me to spend much effort on them.
Yep, I agree with this as a common and IMO very perverse dynamic. I don’t think someone being “difficult to moderate” is almost ever an appropriate justification for banning someone. At the very least they must also have some property that requires interfacing with them as a subject of moderation that isn’t located solely in the choice of the moderators. Otherwise this becomes a catch-22 with no grounding in reality.
Yep, I agree with this as a common and IMO very perverse dynamic. I don’t think someone being “difficult to moderate” is almost ever an appropriate justification for banning someone. At the very least they must also have some property that requires interfacing with them as a subject of moderation that isn’t located solely in the choice of the moderators. Otherwise this becomes a catch-22 with no grounding in reality.