People, you need to understand that what Rafael is talking about doesn’t include everyone. Actually, it is aimed at any individual(s) that come into any community with the intent of causing disruption. Understand from our part, as moderators, that we don’t ban anyone for coming into the community to complain about issues they are having with their products. As a matter of fact, we try to help them. And that includes everyone. However, there are certain parts of the community guidelines we enforce diligently.
- We do not allow spamming. That includes posts saying the same thing over and over again. Even if it is innocuos it’s still spamming, especially when it’s not relevant to the topic of the thread. As many of you know, we don’t allow cross-posting for that reason.
- We do not allow users to harrass other users, whether it’s flaming them, calling them names, or even the more subtle type of contradicting or challenging them whenever they post.
- We do not allow users to say things about the products or the company that are plainly not true. That is being misleading. It is entirely understandable when users are frustrated, but all you have to do is read to see that we are obviously not just pulling posts with complaints.
- We do not allow users to bypass our profanity filters. It should be obvious when the obligatory **bleep** comes up that you are not allowed to cuss on the community. To try to cuss even after that, by bypassing the filters creatively, may get your post pulled.
Now, just doing some of these won’t qualify anyone for being banned. However, once a user refuses help and refuses to modify his/her behavior to comply with the guidelines, especially in the above cases and after several warnings, then yes they can get banned. However, that is much more infrequent than some people may lead you to think. We want people here. We want the community thriving. We want to see people get all the help they can get with our products, especially when they are frustrated. However, having said that, this is a user to user community. So, being nice to the other community members will get you much further along than not being nice.
