Regarding Naraht

[Nightflower]

Recently, Naraht made a post at this board, saying that he was leaving because the moderators think he has a bad attitude.

thread deleted

I would like to clarify, on behalf of the moderators, that, in fact, no one has asked him to leave. One of the mods may have sent him a warning for inappropriate behavior, but if a user is completely out of the line, he will be banned, without a polite "request" to leave. His post was a terrible attempt at making the moderators of this board look like villains and undermine their authority.

If Naraht wishes to leave, he is free to do so. But after this stunt, in no way will I "beg him to come back", and I don't think any of the mods will either.

[Gyro]

Thanks for clearing that up Nightflower, because I was very confused. I wonder what would make him do something like that......

[Trent Lane]

Well, you live by the rules and keep the members and mods happy, everything's cool. I don't see why we have to keep doing this- if you wanna go, go- no one's forcing you to stay. If not, hang around and keep an open mind about things- and don't piss everybody off...

[ccffan01]

Well I'm still preety confused but, thanks for making that clear.

[Dark Spider]

I can't go to the link Nightflower posted so I can't check out Naraht's post. Naraht seemed like a nice guy, I wonder why he would go and say someting bad about a mod. If he had a problem, he should just pm the mod in question and discuss some things. I did once, and it was beneficial.

I'd hate to see someone like naraht leave.

[Failure]

To clear up any confusion, what naraht initially did was verbally attack another poster. That's like the cardinal sin, you just don't do that.

[Calhoun07]

And that's the juxt of it. Don't attack others. Considering that this thread will go no where constructive from this point forward, I am closing it.

[Maxie Zeus]

Sigh.

This is what happens when one hand doesn't know what the other one is doing.

I am deeply mortified and embarrassed to have to contradict Nightflower, who made this post before all the relevant facts were in. Namely, before I could disclose certain pertinent facts. So it is not her fault, but mine, and I take full responsibility and publicly apologize to her.

Naraht was asked to leave, and by me. I made the request as part of a warning/lecture.

Normally we don't ask people to take unofficial "vacations." It is a highly unorthodox request to make, and is -- or was -- reserved only for exceptional cases. And when we make such requests, it is done in private, so as to spare the poster embarrassment and public humiliation. Mods may be strict, but we try to have some feeling for people.

By throwing a massive public fit about it, however, naraht forfeited the right to be treated with that kind of respect, and he has been banned.

But elementary justice and fairness to him must be done. He was neither fantasizing nor fabricating the request, and he must not be regarded as a liar. A fool, maybe, but not a liar.

Well. Now we stand exposed of extending a certain amount of grace and charity to people. We don't wink at transgressors, but sometimes we try to tailor the "punishment" to fit the crime.

But naraht's done a pretty thorough job of ruining that system. Now, if we feel the need to discipline people, they will be tempted to beg or plead or cajole or bully us into being lenient -- like we tried to be with naraht. Well, we won't.

The "unofficial" rules are out. No one gets special consideration for special circumstances. All warnings, requests and bannings will have official force, according to the guidelines laid out in the Rules. People will still get have multiple chances to redeem themselves -- to screw up without serious penalty -- but serious offenses will not get any leeway.

This is not a "crackdown" or anything like that. We are not becoming more strict in what we enforce. We're just going to be less flexible in the way we handle people.