Maybe it's a part of reading comprehension that is related to a mental issue?

where's the rule against posting private messages? like i get that it's a questionable thing to do, but i don't see any rule in the guidelines post that says you will be banned permanently if you make private messages public, or anything about pms.

I've never understood why PMs were so sacred. I'd love for someone to explain it.

I feel the clue is in the word 'private'

Quite possibly King Spew was just looking for an excuse to ban him.

Could not be less surprised by who is questioning this rule.

sure seems that way (but tbf i think they admitted that the modding here is purely arbitrary). i mean sure he was weird and a bad poster, but that describes pretty much everyone on this forum, so idk


hey look mr ad hominem attack is big time back, with yet more ad hominems. pretty shocked over here

Vicious ad hom bro

This is not correct. I’m not going to discuss moderation team things in public, but this is provably untrue.

Man i did not know the word private was so hard to understand.

You're not gonna believe this, but the "P" stands for private.

I am shocked that you (might) participate in lashon hara.

That's probably why no one was banned permanently.

AFAIK, there's no rule specifically written about it, and differing opinions among moderators about it. The one rule that I would say covers this particular case is this one (from the 2+2 Rules, linked at the top of every page):

And I will note that "doxxing" is also something people would have varying opinions about the definition of. In this case I'm thinking of what's in the parentheses - "revealing private information about individuals". That's some pretty private **** that KS shared with jbouton.

If you mean why PMs should always be sacred under any circumstances, sure, I'd agree with that. Like, if someone is sent an abusive PM, I can see sharing it. Or maybe if it was something innocuous that you're confident the person would be OK with sharing, but even in that case if it were me I'd share only the general sentiment of the PM. But if you mean that they should never be sacred, that's a standpoint I really can't understand. If someone is told something that is clearly said in confidence, people shouldn't be sharing that **** publicly, and I think it's reasonable that there'd be consequences in some cases.

Oh, c'mon man. LOL at calling that out as an ad hominem when it's in response to this:

Like, what argument is Luckbox making here that is supposed to be argued against rather than "attacking" the poster (which is a stretch here). LB is basically saying that KS banned jbouton just because he felt like it, which if anything, is the only attack I see in this exchange. But of course it's not an attack because LB said "quite possibly". It's the same kind of thing LB constantly pulls in here, and it gets tiresome. Any "authority" is to be questioned, reflexively, because apparently that's just what LB does. And if it's not a direct "they did it", but just a "suggestion" that "they might have", then it's just, like, his opinion, man. Nothing wrong with that, amirite? (And yes, I know he doesn't do it with every mod action - I'm being hyperbolic.)

oh i thought he was because his undertitle says "banned" instead of "temp-banned", or whatever the regular one says


hey nice that's what i was looking for (i even went to atf to see if there were forum rules there, but didn't see anything), however there's nothing about pms in there


i assumed he was talking about me, because i feel like it's happened before. and he's definitely done it to others. it's supposed to be against the rules, but he can do it because ... idk why

Oh yeah, that's fair. Unfortunately the "temp-banned" undertitle isn't an automatic thing, it's something mods have to do manually and is often forgotten (or totally unnoticed).



I'm a bit confused by this part. If you mean you didn't find it or see the tie-in right away because it doesn't mention PMs, I get that. But if you mean it doesn't mention PMs so it doesn't apply, I'm not really following.

Rereading it, I can see that interpretation as well and you could be right; my apologies if that's the case.

It was meant for everyone questioning the rule. Usual suspects.

Still not an ad hominem.

yeah i just meant how there's nothing regarding pms. but the part about revealing personal information can be interpreted to fit here i guess


i was more responding to everyone acting as if it's obviously a perma to ever reveal anything in a pm, and i'm just wondering where they got that from, because i haven't seen that written anywhere on this site
(not saying it isn't, it might be ... somewhere)

King Spew has made all sorts of bad moderating decisions so we should be looking at his extra hard fwiw.

One (or both) of us is misinterpreting others' beliefs on this because that isn't quite the sentiment I've seen, but I'd agree that there shouldn't be an automatic ban (temp or perma) for ever revealing anything in a PM.

Oh, well, fair enough then. I've always found you to be a rational judge of authority.

Of course, there's a world of difference between "looking at his [decisions] extra hard" and immediately jumping to "Quite possibly King Spew was just looking for an excuse to ban him." But you already know that. I'm starting to like that "reindeer games" expression someone used earlier.

does this mean if i send out dickpics over pm then anyone who reports them will be banned?

I guess that depends on how impressive they are.