Originally Posted By: argv0
This is the logic that justified your original ban. I suggest you stop digging your grave, it's deep enough.


"Any op can ban you for any reason."

This goes back to 1 of my original points.

This means anyone can be permanently banned for anything at any time. Meaning, there are no rational standards to justify whether a ban is set or not. Therefore, there is no action that an op can argue is justified because he or she believes that it is right. If the ops believe that what they do is an acceptable means to decide what to do, they will ultimately have no choice but to accept that whatever they do can be whatever they want, as all they need is to say that they think it is the right thing to do.

Sounds a lot like faith?

That is certainly something that I would be against when justifying such decisions. And since this is serendipity logic we're talking about - there are no rational replies.

2 particular rules I dislike. I've collected them from real experiences. The "any op can ban you for any reason" falls under 1 of them.

They are:

1.Do not argue with the ops.
2.Do not piss the ops off.

My whole philosophy on rules includes rules that can be verified to be broken.

Idea: when enforcing a rule, there has to be evidence (proof) that a rule is broken.

An example of this is a caps rule. Suppose a random arbitrary number like 80% is the limit.

Then, a script can be written to calculate the percentage of caps.

But a rule that fails the accuracy of this, is the do not piss the ops off.

"Oh, he said 83.33% caps." "Clearly he broke a rule."

The above proof can be shown, calculated, etc.

"Oh? He pissed an op off?"
"Hey, I'm an op, I'm pissed off."

A rule such as the above would need rational standards. And quite contrarily, how do you prove that you were pissed off? Why, relying on others that have faith that you are right when you say you are pissed off (as you can easily lie about it). This goes back to my horrible 'f' word: faith.

This is why the "do not piss ops off" rule fails my book - it needs to be specific. We like specific examples and specific situations.

Now for the previous: no arguing with the ops.

The problem with this rule is that it fails under some non-ending loop.

*Ban*
*Kick*
(Later)
*Join*
"Hey, why did you ban kick me? What did I do?"
"No reason."
"But I didn't break any rules!"
"I'm going to ban you now though."
"Why?"
"Arguing with ops."

If you think I'm making this up, the 2nd channel I've been to on IRC has that rule in 2001, and still does today. The "no arguing with ops" rule means you can argue about an unfair channel ban, but make it eligible for a channel ban by thus breaking that rule. Clearly I find that example rule also a bad 1.

And I think it is a good thing that police officers do not go around arresting people just because they feel like it, or have faith that you committed a crime without proof or evidence. Just as much as I think it's a good thing judges don't go around approving you're guilty of a crime just because they feel like it. Which is why I like to live in a world with rational standards, regardless of how all the sexual and economic favors you can do to gain up.