A certain level of politeness and decorum is never wrong.
The last president called a bunch of African countries ****holes. He wasn't entirely wrong in that assessment, but rightness or wrongness didn't matter as much as how unhelpfully dickish it was to say it.
If a fat ugly woman is crossing the street, you don't run up and shout "YOU'RE FAT AND UGLY" at her. It doesn't matter that it's true. It might even be funny to bystanders. They might post a clip of it on Facebook and garner a lot of likes. But it's still unhelpful in any way and marks you as a dick.
It's bad enough to act that way on the street or if you're a sociopath who conned his way into public office. But it really doesn't have a place on a forum that exists to help aspiring doctors. The mod who banned Consigliere wasn't wrong to do so.
I'm sorry. I do like you, and you know it, but here you're thinking like a bureaucrat, by taking the side of the lazy genius who permanently banned a senior member. Nobody denies that Consigliere needed a cool-down period, but there is a HUGE difference between a temporary and a permanent ban. Because the latter will just alienate the user, and make him never return. While it would have been so EASY to just suspend the user temporarily and then confine him to Anesthesiology only.
Bureaucracy is fine in a professional (especially corporate) environment, but not on a forum that's non-profit and that's actually built on the work of frequent posters. If a forum owner or administrator can't treat those people with respect, and a degree of gratefulness for past contributions, then there is little difference between that person and a capitalistic lowlife like Zuckerberg. One doesn't just throw friends away when one doesn't need them anymore, or when they stop performing, or become a "liability".
Because, in that concept, there is almost ZERO difference between somebody who posts here and somebody who has a professional interaction in the real world. In which case, why the **** (that's the F word in all caps) would anybody waste time here? If one wants professional interactions, one should go where they actually pay one for it. If one wants to be policed for one's speech, one should just go on Twitter or Facebook etc. and not waste time here. By giving advice on medtwitter or a blog, professionally, one can actually build up a CV, and consequently a bank account.
If one cannot just have fun and vent here, and even occasionally make a faux-pas, among FRIENDS, then this is an absolute waste of time that only benefits the takers, the people who have nothing valuable to say (or don't want to), and the owners of the BUSINESS. Because let's call the spade a spade.
And while I understand that one needs rules on a forum with many thousands of members, one should not apply them equally to everybody, because everybody's contribution is much different, and there is a minority of people who actually contribute and GIVE here, versus the many TAKERS.
And while Consigliere's contributions may be debatable, especially to the "anesthesia is the greatest specialty on Earth" crowd, to losers like me he was a breath of fresh and REAL air, confirming that I was not hallucinating, and that my reality was not unique, back when only few of us dissented from the majority opinion, and complained about the CRNAs and corporate medicine.
And if it were a rare exception, maybe I would care less. But the forum is going down on a very slippery slope here. There is a reason some sections (like Anesthesiology or EM) are worth something professionally, while many others are just full of blind leading the blind, and little useful information. Good luck with the Cultural Revolution, but I won't be surprised if a good number of the oldies (and goldies) won't want to be part of it.
P.S. I am not some old baby boomer who just can't understand the younger generations. I just remember how a normal friendly place is supposed to be.
