Warning Level.

[Dave Hicks]

Wow. That certainly looks like a comprehensive set of questions around the subject of banning - probably more questions that I have thought of in all the years I've been using or running web forums. So I'll just hit a few that I feel qualified to answer. On vacation is just our phrase for "banned". There is only one phrase for everyone in this category. Bans can be temporary or permanent. (This one happens to be temporary though much longer than that poster's previous temp bans.) A lot of people have been asking for a break for some time so perhaps the vacation really is more for others, though it's just a phrase I copied from another forum I frequent. People on vacation can't PM. I know this person can email though. And people can forward his emails to me.

Some of your other questions are probably best answered by MYBB developers or docs and some might need a psychologist. Others might need a philosopher, or a bunch of them. I can only think of 4 people who have been banned in ~ 17 years of the forum, and only one of these is in effect currently, so I'm just not willing to devote that much time to these. A bunch of people seem to like it here and I'm more interested in them. Like the other mods, I work for free and sometimes you get what you pay for I guess.

On voting and calculating, we really use neither. If it had been purely calculating, his vacation would have been permanent based on the forum warning system. I've actually given him quite a few free passes in the past. Perhaps way too many. Admittedly much of this in years past has been due to not having enough time to follow up on complaints. Now we are better in that respect thanks to having 3 people. But all three of us have other things to do and so we all really prefer a peaceful forum over constantly having: Clean up on aisle 5!

If anyone feels a desire to take a break, by all means please do so. The fact that you don't need help to know when you could use a break from a forum is a good sign! On the other hand if you find yourself interested in talking about calculators, rather than forum drama, then by all means come back! Calculators - not drama - is the purpose of this forum.