Some of you have e-mailed me regarding this issue and decision, and I'm not looking to be the authoritarian mod here. I would appreciate knowing from more of you, right here on this thread, if you feel this is a good way to deal with these kinds of problems when they come up, if you think something else should be done, etc.
I was having a good conversation in PM with David R; which led me to conclude that one of the things that wasn't dealt with well in this situation is that there was not enough community policing, as it were. Jrients started this thread, which is good, but basically I think that before that James had the idea in his head that it was only me who was pissed off about the way he was doing things, or me and my "allies" (whatever the fuck that means).
That tells me that not enough of you guys were writing to say that this was stupid behaviour. As in, I know now from PMs and from my blog entry and from here, that a lot of you found this whole situation very annoying, and yet there wasn't any commentary. Had there been, not to slag James but to let him know that it was disrupting the chat, I'd like to think that he might have realized it was bothering other people than just his "intended target", and he might have changed things for real before sanctions had to take place.
Then again, maybe he wouldn't have. In the end, I'm not very upset about the decision I took in and of itself; I am bothered that I had to get to the point where I had to do so; and I'd love it if everyone saw it as "their business", not to report on people or slam people, but to express to people when they feel that something is being intentionally off-topic or disruptive or harmful to the forum.
I know this might be difficult for some, having come from boards where the official policy is "leave it to the mods, don't try to act like you're a mod because you're not, the mods are special snowflakes who's beauty you could never even dare to lay eyes on"; but around here, my goal is to NOT have to show anyone my "special beauty" (none of you are my type) and I'd rather see rational people communicating with other rational people, or verbally chastising and expressing collective annoyance with irrational people; instead of waiting for an Admin to do something about it.
I figure the other Admin guys here feel the same way.
Don't make us whip out our "special beauties", guys...
RPGPundit