yes

Of course. They are part of the twoplustwo infrastructure. A poster would have no way of personally contacting another poster without using the tpt provided system. So we do not allow users to insult, harass or threaten other users using our system.

Can regular line level mods read pms?

I'm guessing that someone brought a highly abusive PM to the attention of the mods and they took action, which seems perfectly appropriate to me.

You wouldn't want a forum where people could say whatever they wanted in a PM with no risk of consequences

I'd like to apologize to lozen for being peevish in the Trump thread

That orange disgrace of all human history irks me lol

No. It was a response to a report, that was very appropriate given the content. I verified with a screen shot before taking action.

I've never heard of people being banned for PMs. In fact, the general rule around here was that PMs shouldn't be made public (unless it is funny, like in the TBAB thread).

Victor is going to come in any minute now and discuss the PM he got from JMakin last year. That PM was way over the line, but there was no banning.

I did not make it public, I simply told the moderators about it.

Not sure what happened with the guy you mentioned, but this poster was very new here and his posts were very problematic as well.

No one here has made any PMs public.


And of course people can get banned for sending abusive PMs; it's remarkable anyone is surprised by this.

I also am a little confused by the confusion on this point. Were some people under the impression everything was allowed (death threats, threats of doxxing, racial abuse, etc.), so long as it was in a PM rather than a public post?

I am not saying that people should not be banned for PMs. There have certainly been people in these forums that have taken to PMs to threaten people, and people that do that should be perma'ed immediately, imo. If you have beef with somebody, beef openly!

I am only pointing out: (1) In almost 20 years, I have never heard of somebody being banned for PMs before today. Maybe it just was not advertised, as the posting of moderation actions is a more recent thing in these forums. (2) Out of line PMs have certainly been more tolerated in the past. It is not surprising that people are wondering about the banning over a PM, given the above two points.

I never asked for him to be banned. I only wanted his intentions public.

and ofc it should be acceptable that a recipient or sender makes a pm public at their discretion. now, making PMs public that someone is not involved in is gross.

No mods can read other people's PMs, nor can any admin that I know of. It's possible that Max and/or Andrew might be able to do so by combing through the backend database, but the regular Admin Control Panel in the forum software doesn't have that feature AFAIK.

Ding ding ding ding!

How on earth could you possibly judge this? I also have no idea if it's true or not, but I highly doubt it.

I suppose that anyone who believes those two points are accurate might be wondering, but I wouldn't think many people fit in that category.

Just a point of clarification. When a poster reports a violation of our guidelines through the report system, or by a pm to a mod, the reporting poster has no influence or say as to what the level of disciplinary action will be. So there is no need for a poster to say something like "you should ban this guy (or not ban) nor for a poster to feel the need to post that they didnt askfor someone to be banned. This is because the banning decision takes into account a posters total history of offenses as well as the severity of the action. We also look at issues in other forum and other mods disciplinary actions.

Obviously a user wont have visibility of all these factors thatgo into the banning decision. So please just report the violation without concern of the consequences to the poster. Thatwillbe determined by the totality of circumstances.

Thanks.

It's just that I can't imagine complaining about any PM sent to me, so having a ban as a result of a PM was kind of an alien situation.

Hopefully you can after reading Rococo's post, because those all seem like very good reasons to report a PM. Thankfully, most people are fortunate enough never to receive such a PM.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. I can certainly imagine receiving very nasty PMs. What I can't imagine is caring about it.

Seems like you have empathy issues.

Even if you don’t care, it makes sense to report it so they can be banned before harassing someone who doesn’t have skin as thick as yours.

Wow.

I've never reported anyone for anything, but I probably would be more inclined to report a highly abusive PM than a highly abusive public post, if only because the latter probably takes care of itself whether I report it or not.

Well, this is getting to be somewhat larger than I thought (imagined!) it would be.

Trolly, of course I can imagine others taking personal offense from a PM they received. But that's not what I said, is it?

Bubble, I'm not inclined to be a watchdog for what others might receive in the future that may be offensive to them. Maybe I'm the only one that is a target of a poster's internet ire. I'll let those others take care of themselves should they receive something that bothers them.

legit threats to your livelihood and health would not concern you or prompt you to act?

granted, I am with you that reporting it to the mods in hopes of a ban would not have a good outcome as far as protection. so I guess I agree.

Yes? More or less?

I told Russian poster shantidevi, a self proclaimed Buddhist to not call poster corpusville an inbred. I joked that he wasn't very Buddhist like.
then he ticked out and send me a bunch of pms telling me weird stuff and that he had sex with my mother last night which would have been impossible. i then reported him.

ignoring him would have been an option but he would have done it again to others. so the result woukd have been the same. wellnamed banned him after requesting seeing the pms. you have a report button on pms too and you can forward them to anyone with the click of a button imo.