I've noticed that some posters have been voicing concerns about being banned for posting this or that, given how we (the mods) have been going on lately about the length and girth of our huge, throbbing banhammers.

Some clarification is in order.

These modrants have been motivated by an influx of absolute shit. People with accounts two weeks old posting NAWALT. High schoolers asking misspelled questions about their personal SMV.

People who care enough to worry about being banned probably have little to worry about.

Here's the rubric I use.

  • If I see something that's good, but off-topic, I write a reply saying "repost to mensrights, asktrp, etc", and remove it.

  • If I see something whose value to the group is questionable, I remove it. But if I had any doubt as to whether I should remove it ("is this really low-value, or not?"), I do not ban the user.

  • If something is clearly well-intentioned, but inappropriate, I give the user a short timeout. Two weeks, maybe.

  • If I ask myself, "How could any sane person think this would be interesting to 80K people?", then the user gets a real ban.

Remember, the more the community polices itself, the less I have to. So you can help me by not only using the report button, but by being articulate and verbose when adding a reason. Don't just say "shitpost" if you can instead say "this is celebrity gossip, who cares about some actor's 40th birthday party?" (Yes, some jerkass actually posted something about Leonardo DiCaprio's 40th birthday party. The mind boggles. The stomach squirms.)

The more the report helps me make a quick decision about what to do, the less I have to read, dig through users' posting history and so on. This means I can keep our community cleaner, and issue less questionable bans.