What?? Arcan was banned?

[Apollyon]

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So, SDN is well-known among members to be administratively opaque. However, fewer may know that due process does not ever apply - some anonymous mod will ban you, or give a lesser sanction, and you can't argue your case.

Well, just perusing another subforum, I see that our buddy Arcan57 was banned! Whenever I see that, I look at their last posts and see if there is anything out of line.

What follows is my opinion - no basis in fact, as I am not privy to any of the specifics. However, it looks like he disagreed with someone. Yes, that is it. However, it is possible that there was one or more PMs sent that were less savory, but, again, that is just conjecture.

So as to not get myself into dutch, I won't say anymore. We are quite fortunate in the EM forum to have a mod that isn't slap-happy, but I would NOT be surprised to see some other mod, possibly even one with whom none of you are acquainted, to swoop in here and say the requisite "but the mod staff is all volunteer!" (yes, and? The relevance is not clear.) and obligatory "we can't say anything" and "the TOS apply to everyone", etc. As I have said before, I wouldn't be surprised if I received another infraction, just for stating what I have.

My advice, though? Don't go elsewhere. SDN is a place where someone can BE a ****, but, if you say that that person is BEING a ****, you get censured, and the first person continues to pollute.

 

[deleted547339]

Wha.....?

 

[deleted109597]

It's not what you say. It might not even be who you say it to.
But it isn't even close in being even on how it's handed out.

 

[Kal EI]

SDN always does stuff like this. Mods are power mongers.

 

[Birdstrike]

It's always a mystery to me as to what gets people banned. You read through the most recent posts and a lot of times there's nothing remotely crazy posted.

I don't get it either.

Plus, what's the point in banning someone? Can't you just sign back up under a new pseudonym from another IP address or from your phone?

Is being provocative grounds for being banned, or controversial? If so, I'd have been banned since day 1. Apollyon, too.

I didn't even see Arcan as being a crazy poster, unless he sent someone a crazy threatening PM or something.

Whatever.

I'm sure he'll pop back under a new name. It's just a matter of time before all the good posters get banned anyways. Myself included. Watch, I'll probably get banned after this post.

If so, you know where to find me.

 

[EM2BE]

I noticed this yesterday and I was confused as well. Such a sad loss.

 

[med2UCC]

Wow. He will be missed.

 

[WilcoWorld]

That's too bad, Arcan often had insightful things to add.

 

[jdh71]

This is bull****.

He was a real contributor too, not some hack troll like so many of the idiots posting on here these days.

I am very familiar with the admins going around handing out three week vacations without outright bans, but the lack of appeal process or even having the chance to make your case is missing severely. Often what gets people into trouble are MISUNDERSTANDINGS, but they can't be explained because you are either outright banned or when they put you on vacation, they turn off your PMs. They don't really care, not that much. And I don't believe there is a lot of agonizing going on over in mod forum land about any of this either.

Though . . . unless something has changed. The flavor of moderation around these parts had been, in my experience, (and I've not been in any trouble for a long while now ) usually first comes a warning, and then lengthening post holds, and finally a ban (unless of course, I suppose, you said something just so shocking that they thought they had to outright ban you). So I suspect that things escalated about something behind the scenes that lead to a ban, because I can't remember Arcan ever being particularly unpleasant - I mean sure he had his opinions and he had them strongly, but I don't think he was ever a "jerk" about it any more than anyone else. I can't see his infraction history (I can see my own, but I'm not sure if you can see other people's if you're not a mod/admin to be honest).

Too bad. I thought he was a quality poster. I think they messed up on this one. To bad you'll never get them to explain themselves. They stopped doing that a long time ago.

inb4: it's a private forum and then can ban whoever they want and don't have to explain anything

 

[Anastomoses]

They ought to find a way to give 1 week suspensions rather than banning. It leaves a sour taste in ones mouth and SDN may lose interesting individuals. 🙁 which means we'd all lose them.

 

[jdh71]

They ought to find a way to give 1 week suspensions rather than banning. It leaves a sour taste in ones mouth and SDN may lose interesting individuals. 🙁 which means we'd all lose them.

They do this all the time. Or at least the used to. Hell, they usually hand out escalating suspensions 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, then ban, so either they've changed their style or someone got either got really butthurt behind the scenes when Arcan read them the riot act, or, probably less likely, Arcan said something really over the top behind the scenes.

 

[Birdstrike]

Can't he just re-register under a new name? I already have my post-ban SDN name picked out.

Pretty soon a "pre-med" with surprisingly mature insight will pop up with no previous posts under the name of "75nacrA", "Arcan75", or maybe, "Aarrccaann5577" and
we'll just never know who this mystery poster is...🙂wink: :wink: )

 

[Apollyon]

They stopped doing that a long time ago.

I got over 10 years in this *****, and I don't recall that EVER happening - EVAR. It has ALWAYS been "privacy" this and that, or outright stonewalling.

I mean, when I was in military school, when people got drummed out by the honor court (to which most of the moderator gutless pukes couldn't even hold a candle), the president of the HC would state, generally, why (making a false official statement, lying, cheating, stealing, etc.). Then again, when guys went in front of the honor court, they got a chance to present their side, and, if it went to trial, they just had to have 3 of 11 voting members vote for "not guilty" to be acquitted. (I do NOT know this from personal experience - I never went in front of the honor court as an offender - this was published information.) Here, it's "guilty with no presumption of innocence, full stop, game over".

 

[jdh71]

I got over 10 years in this *****, and I don't recall that EVER happening - EVAR. It has ALWAYS been "privacy" this and that, or outright stonewalling.

I mean, when I was in military school, when people got drummed out by the honor court (to which most of the moderator gutless pukes couldn't even hold a candle), the president of the HC would state, generally, why (making a false official statement, lying, cheating, stealing, etc.). Then again, when guys went in front of the honor court, they got a chance to present their side, and, if it went to trial, they just had to have 3 of 11 voting members vote for "not guilty" to be acquitted. (I do NOT know this from personal experience - I never went in front of the honor court as an offender - this was published information.) Here, it's "guilty with no presumption of innocence, full stop, game over".

I'm with you. I guess I think I remember a few instances of Admins giving us their broadly general reasons for a ban over in the SPF in the past.

And we all agree that while they are within their rights to behave this way, we just think it's boorish behavior not to tell us why someone who was by all appearances a quality poster in good standing, in very general terms, got the boot.

 

[Foster23]

That's too bad, Arcan often had insightful things to add.

Yea, his posts has been helpful to me in the past. His last few posts in the EM forum hasn't been remotely inflammatory. I wonder if it's a mistake.

 

[Cerberus]

Seriously, wtf? I don't recall Arcan ever being an inflammatory poster. The admins need to at least give us a general reason for his banning or we will be justified in thinking it was because of some admin on a power trip.

 

[Groove]

I can't even find the post where he did anything even remotely deserving of a ban. Hadn't he donated $$$ for lifetime donor? To think that I was considering doing the same...

He was a valued contributor and I think this is complete BS. Some forum nazi must have gotten their panties in a twist. We need a better process for banning people, even if it's an ad hoc moderator committee, etc.. Give me a break.

 

[TooMuchResearch]

Gross. I doubt a reason will be given. A great contributor to the forums lost.

 

[Birdstrike]

I can't even find the post where he did anything even remotely deserving of a ban. Hadn't he donated $$$ for lifetime donor? To think that I was considering doing the same...

I agree. It's good reason not to donate. Make a lifetime donation, then get banned for no reason, with no explanation? I don't think so.

Lee- If you want our donations, tell us why Arcan was banned.

"No reason, no donations."

 

[VA Hopeful Dr]

I agree. It's good reason not to donate. Make a lifetime donation, then get banned for no reason, with no explanation? I don't think so.

Lee- If you want our donations, tell us why Arcan was banned.

"No reason, no donations."

And, to my mind more importantly, it would let everyone know what kind of behavior wasn't acceptable. Since in this case it isn't obvious to anyone, I think its worth knowing what he did so we don't run the risk of doing it either.

 

[Cerberus]

I agree. It's good reason not to donate. Make a lifetime donation, then get banned for no reason, with no explanation? I don't think so.

Lee- If you want our donations, tell us why Arcan was banned.

"No reason, no donations."

There is a reason that after >10years on sdn I haven't donated for lifetime membership. Shortly after the last time I donated I was post-held for some nonesense reason without solid reasoning or explanation.

 

[RustedFox]

Funny. I've never donated to SDN, but was just thinking to myself last week "Y'know, I wanna give back and now I'm an attending, and I'm making real moey and....and oueihoquhlafn.,cn;aiserads'fj....."

Not happening now. I'm all for first-amendment rights in all media, and the only situation in which I can see being 'banned' from SDN is if there's a BODY of evidence out there that you're just a troll... or a spambot, or making money off of some scheme.

He used to sharpen his theism-blade off of me (and my athiesm blade from him... or is that Apollyon.... both "A"-names, could be wrong), but the sparring matches made for lively reading and generated discussion.

Not long ago, Birdstrike had a thread on here entitled "This Forum Has Become...."

Hmm.

 

[e30ftw]

He was a knowledgeable and valuable poster who helped make it worthwhile to visit these forums.

it's a shame.

 

[Kal EI]

You know the SDN banning has gone too far when they act like the NSA.

Why was he banned? We can't tell you. Trust that authority always makes the right choice.

Can we ask him? No, he's banned and can't talk to anyone.

Can he communicate in any way? PM, new account? No.

Can we see any reasoning or know that the decisions that were made are just? No. Trust us.

 

[Rendar5]

You know the SDN banning has gone too far when they act like the NSA.

Why was he banned? We can't tell you. Trust that authority always makes the right choice.

Can we ask him? No, he's banned and can't talk to anyone.

Can he communicate in any way? PM, new account? No.

Can we see any reasoning or know that the decisions that were made are just? No. Trust us.

He refused to kneel before General Zod...

 

[la gringa]

i was banned from a patient forum when i was having back problems... was contemplating giving the guy who ran it a nice donation to his nonprofit. he couldn't stand any opinions not in line with his own and banned me without even an email. i owe several people on that board my career for helping me find my surgeon, and have helped others in kind. the guy running it has some power trip, as i suspect is going on here? no idea, but they won't see any donation from me either!

 

[deleted128562]

The refusals to donate $$$ are what could finally break the camel's back. No one is going to care about another thread complaining about yet another user being banned..... but money talks, and if the donations start drying up things will change real fast.

Was planning to donate when I hit attending status, SDN has been a great community and resource for me, but count me in with the "I won't give a penny" crowd until some serious changes are made.

 

[Apollyon]

He used to sharpen his theism-blade off of me (and my athiesm blade from him... or is that Apollyon.... both "A"-names, could be wrong), but the sparring matches made for lively reading and generated discussion.

I don't know if he did, but I certainly did - but I didn't give you anything from my camp - I got on your anti-religion, but didn't tell you anything about what I believed.

I donated back in 2006 or 2007, when I became an attending. I used the donation for a tax deduction - although I did subtract $1 for the pin that came with it.

You want irony? So, I see the ad line at top for the "SDN Shop", and $5 off this weekend. I went to the link, thinking it was the Amazon store. It ain't. Lo and behold, though - looky what is for sale (and that you can get, functionally, for free, with the discount!):

When I saw that, I wondered if there was some mass hysteria, cult-like "We're it, and you're not" sort of thing. The weird thing is that Lee seems to be a pretty normal guy. However, I wonder if these mods actually "drink the Kool Aid" (and, as a point of fact, in Guyana, in 1978, with the Rev. Jim Jones, it wasn't "Kool-Aid", but, in fact, "Flavor Aid") - that they think they are something special.

Then again, I KNOW that some of these badged people are reading this thread - this is evidenced by when, for example, someone says something like "if we are ER docs, surgeons are just OR docs, and monkeys" (which is said by example only - I do NOT believe this, if someone might be so dense as to think I am positing that) - then, badged mod surgeons will come out of the woodwork and (rightly) defend their trade. So, seeing the mod silence on this, and with nuanced discussion (without shrill shrieking) from our end, here in the hoi polloi, I find it quizzical.

 

[Perrotfish]

How does one even become a Mod? It seems like there's very little turnover: I've been reading SDN form about 7 years now and I feel like I see pretty much the same people running the forum.

 

[Lee]

Sporking is an automatic 7 day temporary ban. Incorrectly reporting email as spam negatively impacts email deliverability which then affects fellow members.

In this case, i've gone in and removed the auto-ban.

 

[Chip N Sawbones]

Exactly what is sporking? I'm guessing it's not improper use of a spoon/fork hybrid, and Urban Dictionary's definition probably wasn't what Arcan was doing either. It's hard keeping up with terminology these days.

 

[deuist]

According to Urban Dictionary, sporking is "The act of spooning with the addition of an erection." Just what did he do?

 

[Lee]

Sporking is reporting an email as spam rather than deleting it. It's part of the TOS.

 

[Arcan57]

It's not often you get a chance to hear your own eulogy, and I wanted to thank everyone (except for RustedFox who seems to have confused me with Apollyon) for their kind words. As with everything on this forum, this happened to be the result of one of Birdstrike's posts. I have a folder that all of the SDN forum notifications go into so that I'm not clogging up my main in-box (which gets 50ish non-spam related emssages a day). While that folder was open on my iPhone (probably while the phone was in my pocket), a message notifying me of Birdstrike's reply to the "$200/hr" thread got moved into the Junk folder. Of course, I didn't know anything about this until I tried to log on to SDN that night and found I had been banned for "sporking" which took two tersely worded replies from an SDN admin (not Lee, who by the way I went to med school with and will thank for finally unbanning me) for me to figure out that meant they were hacked off that Microsoft tallied a SDN email as spam. 10ish years of posting (while mostly being civil) and moving a message into the wrong folder gets me a week's ban without even a sensible explanation of what I was accused of. This makes me grumpy. Also, much like many of the senior members I was considering donating (the community when not over-run with "chances" threads is fantastic) but will have to think more carefully since I don't like the idea of having my access pulled over something so trivial and effectively having no way to get unbanned (the last communication from my originial SDN handler indicated that if I confirmed sdn was on my safe senders list I would be unblocked which I responded to last night and didn't hear anything back). Anyways, good to be back and it was really touching to know that people cared enough to notice I was gone.

This is bull****.

He was a real contributor too, not some hack troll like so many of the idiots posting on here these days.

I can't remember Arcan ever being particularly unpleasant - I mean sure he had his opinions and he had them strongly, but I don't think he was ever a "jerk" about it any more than anyone else.

I honestly can't decide which of these comments to make my new sig...

 

[Kal EI]

The prodigal son returns!

I find it incredibly funny that sdn banned one of Lee's classmates and a 10 year member with a clean record.

Strict obedience to the law can make people foolish. There needs to be a human element in decisions and a clean record should factor in.

 

[Lee]

I'll take the hit on this one. The ban is automatic because generally it is only catching newbies or trolls - this is the first instance (that I can recall) of it happening to someone that is an established member.

FWIW, I got the heads up last night and didn't get a chance to review until this afternoon. The helpdesk is staffed outside of the moderator chain to provide an independent channel for complaints. Because it's just a few individuals that manage SDN daily operations, it can take a while for action. We're moving to a new forum platform very soon which will hopefully decrease the helpdesk requirements and improve service to our members.

 

[Kal EI]

Understandable. Forgiveness seems appropriate. Auto *Anything* on computers is bound to fail.

 

[EM2BE]

Yay Arcan! I'm glad this was able to be cleared up.

 

[jdh71]

It's nice to see this was all a big misunderstanding.

Like I said many infractions around here are the result of misunderstandings.

Welcome back.

 

[jdh71]

It's not often you get a chance to hear your own eulogy, and I wanted to thank everyone (except for RustedFox who seems to have confused me with Apollyon) for their kind words. As with everything on this forum, this happened to be the result of one of Birdstrike's posts. I have a folder that all of the SDN forum notifications go into so that I'm not clogging up my main in-box (which gets 50ish non-spam related emssages a day). While that folder was open on my iPhone (probably while the phone was in my pocket), a message notifying me of Birdstrike's reply to the "$200/hr" thread got moved into the Junk folder. Of course, I didn't know anything about this until I tried to log on to SDN that night and found I had been banned for "sporking" which took two tersely worded replies from an SDN admin (not Lee, who by the way I went to med school with and will thank for finally unbanning me) for me to figure out that meant they were hacked off that Microsoft tallied a SDN email as spam. 10ish years of posting (while mostly being civil) and moving a message into the wrong folder gets me a week's ban without even a sensible explanation of what I was accused of. This makes me grumpy. Also, much like many of the senior members I was considering donating (the community when not over-run with "chances" threads is fantastic) but will have to think more carefully since I don't like the idea of having my access pulled over something so trivial and effectively having no way to get unbanned (the last communication from my originial SDN handler indicated that if I confirmed sdn was on my safe senders list I would be unblocked which I responded to last night and didn't hear anything back). Anyways, good to be back and it was really touching to know that people cared enough to notice I was gone.






I honestly can't decide which of these comments to make my new sig...

What?! You're not even going to give me credit for the quote?! 😀

 

[Doctor Bob]

(the community when not over-run with "chances" threads is fantastic)

Awww... these are my favorite threads, and the easiest to answer.
My answer is always 0%.

Welcome back.

 

[Arcan57]

What?! You're not even going to give me credit for the quote?! 😀

My apologies. Although not a hack troll came oh so close...

 

[Groove]

Booyaa! Welcome back, Arcan.

 

[deleted547339]

Count this as a win for the little guys, lol.

 

[deuist]

So whatever happened with the erection?

 

[Birdstrike]

As with everything on this forum, this happened to be the result of one of Birdstrike's posts.

Dude, what're you sayin', man?

 

[Birdstrike]

I'll take the hit on this one. The ban is automatic because generally it is only catching newbies or trolls - this is the first instance (that I can recall) of it happening to someone that is an established member.

FWIW, I got the heads up last night and didn't get a chance to review until this afternoon. The helpdesk is staffed outside of the moderator chain to provide an independent channel for complaints. Because it's just a few individuals that manage SDN daily operations, it can take a while for action. We're moving to a new forum platform very soon which will hopefully decrease the helpdesk requirements and improve service to our members.

Thanks for the explanation.

 

[Birdstrike]

According to Urban Dictionary, sporking is "The act of spooning with the addition of an erection." Just what did he do?

Thanks for this one. My wife and I had a good laugh with this one tonight.

Spork. LOL

 

[jdh71]

My apologies. Although not a hack troll came oh so close...

Nice. I'm always looking for as much selfish notoriety as I can find.

It's a personal problem.

I am working on it.

😀

 

[Arcan57]

Dude, what're you sayin', man?

What I'm not not saying is that you may have found a way to redact even the existence of your posts using a webcrawler to remove notifications from users' in-boxes. I'm definitely not not saying that. Or I may have been commenting on propulsive power of a Birdstrike post on a thread... yeah, it's definitely one of those.