You can post complaints or questions, and I’ll try to respond to everyone.

Iopq’s ban was addition by subtraction for FTR. Over the past so many years, the topic of iopq’s quality has been breached privately between the moderators several times. He’s been given warnings, complaints and the like through several channels, but never a classic strike.

Recently, the commune enjoyed iopq’s destruction in the God thread. At that point I sent Xianti a pm saying something like “Any timetable on the ignore user function (we wont be seeing it for some time, I found out.) and I’m gonna ban iopq soon. I wanted to give you the heads up.”

Xianti agreed. It was just a straw that broke the camels back scenario.

The real mistakes were how I handled it publicly. I wanted to give him a 24 hour warning before I banned him and decided the most entertaining route was Round 11. At the time, I thought it would be highly amusing way of showing him the door. But of course, in execution, it looks like a hasty grudge banning.

The delay for this announcement revolved around the fact that the initial decision was between just Xianti and I. Xman assumed I would simply go the route of making an announcement saying “iopq was banned for a career of bringing down the quality of the forums.” Once xman saw how poorly the banning appeared, which is that I didn’t agree with iopq’s political views and banned him for it, we had to open up a mod’s discussion on the possibility of reversing the ban.

The final decision is that iopq was bad for the forums and his removal will stand.

I do need to apologize for the disrespect I showed the forums. In my mind, I didn’t think you all needed a clear and concise reason for his banning. Once I got an ok from Xman, I wanted that to be all anyone needed. I would generally much prefer having a little fun with it than running out an (edit) long announcement. I apologize for making it seem as if it was a snap decision. It’s been a banning that the admins have seen coming for quite some time. The timing of the ban is largely arbitrary. With iopq, unless he stopped posting, his eventual banning was a fore-gone conclusion.

I am sorry for making it seem like a new totalitarian regime of renegade admins was cracking down on allowing you to say and do whatever you want on these forums. I also apologize for making it appear that the admins do not respect the rules and traditions of the forums.

Any questions, concerns, opinions, whatever, please post here.