How about the following ones:
- It would show that there is a real "trial" before a perma-ban
- It would let people get a glimpse at the work you actually do (I've been a mod too, and know this is a lot of work, but some people don't).
- It would help making the "mods are nazis" people shut up.
- It would help us understanding the reasons that led to that ban(*)
Of course, private complains appearing in the thread should be anonymized first.
(*)I, for one, really appreciated crumbs posts, but I mostly read them on the hashfast related threads. I beleive you when you say he was too disruptive on other threads, but I had to ask to understand, as I didn't really have time to parse his post history (and trolling ones would have been already deleted, as you pointed)
Anyway, cheers for you answers, I understand this is not going to happen and won't up this post anymore.
Well, quite honestly, the mods aren't trying to gain the approval of the users, I'd say the fact that out of 200,000 accounts, there are only a handful of, "OMG MY ACCOUNT WAS BANNED WRONGFULLY" threads is actually rather impressive. As far as reasons for bans, more often than not, a user knows what they are getting banned for. We might not take the time to explain it to a 8 hour old account that has spammed up 50 posts, or to someone who is posting malware, but besides that, there is very infrequently a case where people are just banned.
I say it whenever it comes up, getting banned here is actually quite an acomplishment. You can insult the forum owner and not get banned, you can use whatever language you want (within reason). How many other forums can say the same? Really, the only ways you can get banned are, 1) Malware, self explanatory. 2) Excessive spamming, if you are a new account that has done nothing but spammed, you are at higher risk, however if you have been around and you post off topic, or go on a bender, you will be warned, those posts removed, and you are free to go on your way. 3) "Trolling" again, thats another one with a really high threshold. Like crumbs for example, he was warned multiple times and given temporary bans, because he did have good information throughout his posts so he was cut some slack.
Besides very very serious behavior that is undeniably stupid, and if you don't understand why you are getting banned for it, you have no reason having access to plastic bags let alone the internet; the forums are pretty tolerant of reasonable behavior or mistakes that will eventually get your account banned if you ignore a handful of warnings.