Banned members

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I need to get a little bit of understanding about banned members. So, when a member is banned they will not be able to view any of the posts they made or posts in general?


I wondered how many members have gotten banned. Hope that never happens to me because I have learned so much since I've been a member. So I will try to behave myself.

I don't know the answer to that but can relate. Sometimes I get paranoid about me getting banned all of a sudden, because I kind of rely on this site to pass the time and it always helps when I'm feeling anxious or whatever. I'm one of those people who gets attached to certain things what I have been using for a long time then can't seem to get used to anything new.

getting banned isn't usually a sudden thing. in general, a person gets *about* 3 warnings, more or less, depending on the severity and frequency of their rule-breaking. the only members that are banned without warning at all are spammers and scammers and sockpuppets of rulebreakers and such. generally, a member sees it coming (though usually they and their friends do not think it is fair).

sometimes, members will get suspensions first before a full ban to see if a break might help. some members have difficulty seeing how their posts might be in violation of the rules, so a bit of time away from the site can occasionally help to reset their thinking or calm them down.

the moderators are often willing to try to help members who have communication issues as opposed to engaging in deliberate flagrancy of the rules. these members may get a detailed analysis of why their posts are not acceptable. the member's willingness to work on changing will be a big factor in that situation.

quite often, rule breaking posts/threads are removed from public sight and the rulebreaker is quietly warned, so other members don't really have a sense of what led to the eventual banning. we don't discuss it publicly, but if you send a PM with questions we can try to explain so that you know what happened in general. you can also send a PM and ask if you have any worries about your own posts.

hope this helps.

p.s. thank you for not discussing any specific warnings or bannings in this thread!

Thank you for your answer. You told me what I really needed to know.

I would love to have this explained a bit more. I understand that it should protect members against calumny and moderators against loosing their face/respect?
But in general, why is there so much "keep it behind the scene/unpublic" topics? What is so dangerous about discussing WP technical/community issues here?

You wouldn't want the world to know that you have recieved a warning, Now would you... Netiquite.

You are looking at this way too simplistically / naively.

Site rules specifically say:


Occasionally moderators may mention in a thread that a member has been banned. This is generally done for one of two reasons:
1. People are quoting posts made by the banned member and trying to engage him/her in dialogue - an occurrence of this happened the other day with someone bumping an old thread and several members trying to engage a banned member in debate. I locked the thread and informed them of the reason why, which in the circumstances was the best thing to do.

2. Sometimes forums / threads can turn into war zones with excessive and/or offensive rule breaking taking place. If moderators need to ban one of the posters a mention of this is sometimes made in the relevant thread so the other members know the behaviour of that member was not acceptable. It also serves to cool down the aggression between members if they know the mods are watching and there will be consequences if they go too far. This sort of naming and shaming is a moderators judgement call and is done (or not done) based on our knowledge and experience of the people / forums concerned.

However, discussions with members about their inappropriate behaviour are not generally made public. There are also often things going on behind the scenes such as moderators discovering a member is actually a sock-puppet of another active member or of a previously banned member or is stalking another member etc. A few people are serial trolls and create one account after the other, sometimes creating a false persona intended solely to stir up controversy and/or hatred from other members and they thrive on the attention. When we find trolls we ban them quietly and don't give them the public attention they crave. DON'T FEED THE TROLLS.

Time to lock this thread now.