No, you can’t ban people for any reason. As we’ve said like 10+ times in this discussion and previous discussions of this, if someone was going completely wild with their banning we would likely step in and tell them to knock it off.
The second sentence doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with the first. What does “going completely wild with their banning” mean? The straightforward reading seems to be that it refers to quantity of bans, but of course that’s not at all what I was asking about.
Let me put it another way: I just went to my account settings page and banned, from my posts, a random user that I’ve never interacted with and about whom I know nothing. (Judging by this person’s total karma, they seem to be very new.) The UI didn’t prompt me to enter a reason for the ban. So what happens now? Will I be contacted by a moderator and interviewed about my reason for the ban? Is that what happened in the case of each of the currently active bans listed on the moderation log? Or does nothing at all happen, and the ban just stand unchallenged and unremarked-on?
For example, here is a comment where one user says:
FYI, I had accidentally banned you and two other users in my personal posts only some time ago, but realized when you commented that I hadn’t banned you in all my posts as I’d intended.
Presumably, nobody had asked him anything about the bans, or else the mistake would have been uncovered then. This would seem to be at odds with the claim that you are “monitoring what people get banned for”.
The second sentence doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with the first. What does “going completely wild with their banning” mean? The straightforward reading seems to be that it refers to quantity of bans, but of course that’s not at all what I was asking about.
I am confident you can figure out how the second sentence relates to the first.
Let me put it another way: I just went to my account settings page and banned, from my posts, a random user that I’ve never interacted with and about whom I know nothing. (Judging by this person’s total karma, they seem to be very new.) The UI didn’t prompt me to enter a reason for the ban. So what happens now? Will I be contacted by a moderator and interviewed about my reason for the ban? Is that what happened in the case of each of the currently active bans listed on the moderation log? Or does nothing at all happen, and the ban just stand unchallenged and unremarked-on?
I look over the user bans every week or so. I wouldn’t pay attention to a random ban like this, as indeed I see no previous discussions between the two of you, and would just ignore it. Maybe you have some good reason, maybe you don’t.
However, if you had banned a particularly active commenter who is providing pushback on exactly the kind of post you tend to write, or feels like the kind of voice I think is missing in posts of yours or discussion with you on the site, I would take notice. I probably wouldn’t do anything for an isolated ban, but if you made multiple bans, and tended to attract active discussion, I would probably reach out and ask for the reasons. I would probably first reach out to the person banned and ask them whether they know they are banned, just because that feels easier for some reason.
Centrally, the thing we would be doing is seeing how overall things develop in terms of site culture and banning decisions. I would not end up focused or demanding justification for each ban, which indeed would almost certainly guarantee the feature goes unused, but if as I said, if we see things going off the rails, either site wide, or in the relationship between some specific commenters or clusters of commenters, I would step in. What we would do would depend on what thing is going wrong, but I listed some of the tools that seem obvious to use.
The second sentence doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with the first. What does “going completely wild with their banning” mean? The straightforward reading seems to be that it refers to quantity of bans, but of course that’s not at all what I was asking about.
Let me put it another way: I just went to my account settings page and banned, from my posts, a random user that I’ve never interacted with and about whom I know nothing. (Judging by this person’s total karma, they seem to be very new.) The UI didn’t prompt me to enter a reason for the ban. So what happens now? Will I be contacted by a moderator and interviewed about my reason for the ban? Is that what happened in the case of each of the currently active bans listed on the moderation log? Or does nothing at all happen, and the ban just stand unchallenged and unremarked-on?
For example, here is a comment where one user says:
Presumably, nobody had asked him anything about the bans, or else the mistake would have been uncovered then. This would seem to be at odds with the claim that you are “monitoring what people get banned for”.
I am confident you can figure out how the second sentence relates to the first.
I look over the user bans every week or so. I wouldn’t pay attention to a random ban like this, as indeed I see no previous discussions between the two of you, and would just ignore it. Maybe you have some good reason, maybe you don’t.
However, if you had banned a particularly active commenter who is providing pushback on exactly the kind of post you tend to write, or feels like the kind of voice I think is missing in posts of yours or discussion with you on the site, I would take notice. I probably wouldn’t do anything for an isolated ban, but if you made multiple bans, and tended to attract active discussion, I would probably reach out and ask for the reasons. I would probably first reach out to the person banned and ask them whether they know they are banned, just because that feels easier for some reason.
Centrally, the thing we would be doing is seeing how overall things develop in terms of site culture and banning decisions. I would not end up focused or demanding justification for each ban, which indeed would almost certainly guarantee the feature goes unused, but if as I said, if we see things going off the rails, either site wide, or in the relationship between some specific commenters or clusters of commenters, I would step in. What we would do would depend on what thing is going wrong, but I listed some of the tools that seem obvious to use.