There's a reason that the slippery slope argument is often considered a fallacy during a debate. That's because "X happening means that Y will also inevitably happen" frequently involves large leaps of logic that don't necessarily match with reality. Saying stuff like "they may start with nazi talk, but where will it end" assumes two things:

- It assumes that forum moderators have "ban quota" they need to fill and while they start out with nazi's and bigots, they'll eventually move on to lesser evils in order to keep those quota filled once the greater evils are gone. I've never visited a forum where the administration staff operated in this manner, so I'm not sure why you feel this could be the case here. From my experience, admins don't think this way. Something either blatantly violates the rules, violates the rules but the poster isn't considered a lost cause yet or skirts the limits. In the first case, you use a perma-ban, in the second case you issue a temporary ban and in the third case you give a warning. There is no sliding scale and admins issue warnings or temporary bans for minor infractions at the same time while they're perma-banning irredeemable trolls.

- It also assumes that "nazi talk" and "minor cursing or criticism" are part of a spectrum rather than two completely separate things. This would naturally imply that nazi talk is simply a more extreme version of criticism of GOG and that minor cursing or complaining about something GOG does is simply a more subdued variation of hate speech. That's REALLY not the way things are in the real world.

If someone's feelings are hurt because you said their favorite game is crap, then that's a different thing than if someone's feelings are hurt because you launched an ad hominem attack at them or their ethnic/religious group. In both cases, feelings were hurt but you're not doing yourself any favors if you fail to distinguish those cases.

So apparantly TinyE got a temp-ban. But he's posting again and I'm not even seeing him going on about how unfairly he was treated, so maybe he just tested some boundary, crossed it by a few inches, GOG pushed back and now boundaries are set, he has a greater understanding of what he can and cannot get away with and we can all move on instead of making a big deal out of it.

So yeah...I think you're making this a bigger thing than it is, really.

That remains to be seen,unless you can see into the future.

I don't necessarily agree with the ban reason, and I sometimes even think that this was a ban that was just meant to demonstrate that there's no favoritism in moderator decisions going on, but I will still say that the 'bans' handed out at the time aren't just temp bans instead of permabans, they are also really really mild. 24 hour timeouts are really just the smallest possible slap on the finger. There is of course the stain of ostracism that comes with those bans regardless of individual length, but I hope and think Tiny will pull through that.

And, honestly, this kind of really lenient moderation is what we can expect in the future as well, at least if there's a lasting positive impact on discussion culture (and the downvotes are removed or the rep system is otherwise miraculously healed). From what I know, no pre-COC transgressions whatsoever were punished, two people with very icky ties to nazi ideology were only warned, some irreverent trolls have gotten one or two day bans, a person who only came to this forum to harass an individual member got a mere week, several members (including myself) have been asked to edit potentially offensive posts, and several members who clearly tried to get themselves banned on purpose out of protest against the new COC simply weren't.

This is not a crack down, not even if your tape measure has been screwed with. We're being eased into this code of conduct with the utmost degree of leniency.

No offense but,first thing we know you are a tinye fan.Second thing is,how is it you know who is/was banned and the time limit or are you just having a stab in the dark?

You were active in the same threads I was, so 75% of that information has been available to you (watch out for those "boo-hoo, I've been censored" posts). 5% is information received from the banned or otherwise punished persons via PM plus, of course, I know how a 'please edit' PM looks like because I received one. About 20% is conjecture, sorry. I e.g. know of four such PMs total, yet Fables has said she's writing three to five such PMs every day.

And, yes, I'm a TinyE fan. I like him, he's hilarious, he's got a good heart and besides, I can't just throw all that merchandise away.

Well, I certainly won't pretend to be clairvoyant, but I think I made my argument about why there is no slippery slope with professional moderation fairly clear. With a defined set of rules and a mod using those as a guideline, what's against the rules today should still be against the rules in a year and vice versa. That's the benefit of professional mods, they're a source of stability in a community.

Slippery slopes usually come into play when the community itself is expected to do the moderation since unlike the administration staff, the forum visitor base is in constant flux hence what's skirting the limits one day may be the norm 6 months later. We've seen THAT slippery slope in reality and we've seen where it went.

Exactly,what I thought (conjecture is 80%).
Nothing should slip from a professional but it does,happen.

There are drawbacks to this discretion. Firstly, it gives people the impression that "nothing happens", that no moderation is taking place. You see some abuse somewhere, you assume that it's deemed okay and that the author is simply taking a breathe before the next abuse. And so, you react to it as to an ungoing, unresolved matter (in a way, "waiting for the second shoe"). Secondly, there is no exemplarity. With general rules, boundaries are tested and defined by practice. And this invisibility means that the testing is being re-made individually every time : nobody knows where exactly are the walls they'd bump on.

This is why, on a different scale, legal judgements are public. They give closure, and they exemplify boundaries. And this is why on many forums, not only bans are explicit (preventing people to pointlessly address absentees) but are given a reason, be it technical ("user banned for post #3586", "user banned by rule C§41 ter") or more sarcastic (the personalized penny arcade notifications are hilarious, echoing the offense and/or the user signature, while still giving a precise idea of what is not acceptable).

It's a domain where transparency (clarification of what is going on where why how) can snowball for the better. Partly because the forum is bigger than the four or five users that can be "schooled" separately, and, thus, would benefit from indirect moderation of practical exemplarity.

You would avoid forumgoers (old and new) re-discovering one by one what these rules intend to mean, and you would prevent wrong assumptions on "what" is moderated or not, "who" is moderated or not, etc.

Could you link to those? I'd love to see how it works elsewhere. On the whole of course, I abhor the idea of public bans and the "banned" tag especially. :|

It's always a nice surreal read. Especially when unaware of (and not interested in) the context : http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/169688/se-bans-and-infractions#latest

I admit, it's hilarious despite being exactly the ostracism that I feared it would be. :)

Not sure whether it would work on this forum though: "BUT WAS IT HATE SPEECH??"

For saying "this should" or "this should not' be done in regards to bans... the top 10 or so links on https://www.google.ca/search?num=100&q=forum+banning+best+practices&oq=forum+banning+best+practices are probably good articles for both users & staff to read.

I knew the rule.
I was warned for breaking it.
I broke it again.
I got kicked.

It was neither biased or cruel.

I love using the F word but if I can't do it in here then I need to either change or find another place to hang out.

GOG did NOTHING wrong and is doing nothing wrong.

The new system is working because there is no longer open harassment, we don't have people interrupting threads to announce Hitler was right, we don't have noobs being told to jam it because of harmless questions, no one is being threatened (in here or PM), and best of all, you got to shut me up for 24 hours which I would imagine most of you feel is the greatest thing of all about this. :D