Not an easy question to answer as much of Moderating is a judegment call. Almost all of the offenses for which we employ disciplinary action have a range of options available to Staff.
This could be a PM to ask for the behavior to cease, a post in a thread encouraging the behavior to change, a formal warning, points, and as a last resort a loss of posting priveleges (ban) that could be from 3 days to permanent.
While I know that it is hard for some to comprehend, our community exists because we have participating members and Staff takes no joy or pleasure in removing members from the community unless absolutely necessary. If we enforced every guideline to the letter of the intent of the guideline and we used the highest form of disciplinary action available for every infraction, we would have no members. As Staff members we know that without members, there is nothing to Moderate so most Staff members use progressive forms of disciplinary measures to try to curb behavior that is in conflict with our posting guidelines. By the same token, if a member is a continual PITA and is a constant offender, then the escalation is usually much quicker. As Mods and Staff we try to use good judgement when applying discipline to members and I have even seen Mods ask other Mods for input or even hand off a situation to another Staff member if it becomes too personal.
Spacemtn
AustinModStaff
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