Hey everyone, I want to be transparent about this so it doesn't come as a surprise: I have given mods the ability to ban users on a per-thread basis. The idea behind allowing this comes from a few places. Mainly, with the removal of the debate forum comes the need for a way to have serious discussions somewhere on the forum. One idea we are developing and preparing to test is having a thread prefix in the general section that indicates a thread should have stricter reply guidelines in order to sustain a meaningful conversation without having it derailed by shitposters. The problem is we don't want to have to hand out a ton of infractions for it. In fact, in general when someone who is an otherwise great member cannot help but post things they shouldn't, it never feels right to infract them. We still need to get a message across though, so this is a much lower impact method for handling that kind of behavior. Instead of issuing countless infractions and potentially banning someone from the whole site for what is otherwise a bunch of minor issues, we can simply prevent them from posting in a problem thread. They cannot handle themselves, so the mods have to do it for them. No one gets hurt long term in this case.
Now, with this there are obviously a lot of concerns. We have not developed strict oversight for this feature as it is very new, and there will undoubtedly be situations that come up where use of this tool may not have been the best choice. Like with many things we try, we intend to develop guidelines for this feature over time as is necessary. We're obviously not trying to be corrupt or install censorship tools, so if you feel that use of this tool has reasonably impacted your rights then please do not hesitate to complain here or send me a PM if you're afraid of retaliation. I take this kind of stuff very seriously, and the last thing I want is to accidentally install some kind of Orwellian dictatorship. This is only meant for reasonable situations where there is no other choice. You should not just be banned from a thread for no reason, you will receive plenty of warning first.
Let me know if you have any questions or concerns and we can discuss them here.
