Everybody Who's Been Banned On Sf, The Ban Has Been Lifted

I can't speak for the administrators of SF because I have only looked at it once, but usually when a forum administrator bans someone it is an attempt to keep their forum from falling apart. Forum members like to think that forum administrators or staff are public servants, to be held to total objectivity, willing to do the right thing even if it results in their forum coming apart.

Of course, we're just human beings trying to run a discussion forum. Some people start forums in order to earn a profit from them, and I guess that can be done, but the profit is generally not from advertising but from building it up to a point where it can be sold at a profit. I have handed a couple of forums off after I lost interest in them, one of which has gotten bigger since I was involved. I think I'm still an administrator there, but I haven't looked lately. Anyhow, I have never sold a forum.

Most forum administrators who may have hopes of making a profit end up failing in that, if they were to consider the amount of time they put into it and looked at in view of how much an hour they actually earned from it.

A lot of us simply saw a need, thought we could fill it, and knew that we'd have fun trying. As far as how we treat other forum members, objectivity can go a long way toward growing and maintaining a healthy forum, so I think we do try to be objective. Of course, we're human beings. Rarely can a forum administrator earn a living solely from income derived from a discussion forum, so it's unrealistic to expect that an administrator will always be available, or that he will be able to put in a great deal of time getting to the bottom of a problem.

So we're wrong sometimes. We develop relationships, so far as they go, with some of our more prolific forum members. We come to depend on them to keep discussions going, and we might come to trust what they say. When these people get involved in a fight with another forum member, we're not always in the best position to know who's telling us the truth. While I wouldn't stick with a veteran member of my forum if I knew that he was wrong, I might be more willing to believe him than someone who I don't have any kind of a relationship with. When there are a group of such people, they can back one another up, and that's where it might seem that the administrator is siding with a clique.

The administrator might well be in the wrong, but he doesn't necessarily intend to be.

There are also times when a forum administrator might just want a problem to go away. So if someone new joins the forum and quickly becomes embroiled in a fight with other forum members, that person not only seems to be the problem but the administrator doesn't have much invested in him. The newcomer might be in the right, but the administrator isn't necessarily in a position to know that - he is simply trying to make a problem go away.

Of course, some administrators are more or less sensitive than others, and sometimes that has to do with the nature of the forum. Someone trying to run a political forum is probably going to be less sensitive to disagreements than someone running a forum about farming. Although there are a lot of political forums that allow only one side to be represented, I've never understood why anyone would be interested in participating in what is basically talking to themselves.

In summary, I think most of us try to do the right thing, not necessarily because it's in our nature, but because doing the right thing for a forum member is usually the right thing for a forum. But we sometimes believe people who are lying to us, and we don't always have all of the facts.

 

Thank you, @Chrissy Cross. Yes, I remember Seniors Playground. I started this forum after it closed, or when it became obvious that it was going to.