[superpunk]

I know this is probably gonna fall on deaf ears like it has every time I've brought it up to any member of the staff but here goes.

If you are permanently banned from CowboysZone, it means you have committed repeated violations of the Forum Rules or you did something so severe that it warranted an immediate ban. Once an account has been banned, it will be hard for you to return to this site. That said, we have created a reinstatement process for banned accounts.

The severity and repetition of your infractions that led to your account being banned as well as your actions and comments after your account was banned will play a key role in whether or not your account ban is considered for reinstatement.

If your account has been banned, you should not attempt to create a new account. We aggressively monitor all new accounts to prevent banned users from returning using other accounts. If we find that a banned user has created a new account, we immediately ban the account and make a note that will make it even harder for that user to return to the site in the future.

[View Full Quote]You must wait a minimum of ninety (90) days before you can ask for your account to be reinstated. Depending on your actions that led to the ban and your actions and comments after your account was banned, we may not consider your reinstatement request at all or we may require a lot more time to pass before it will be considered.

If your account has been banned and it has been over 90 days since that occurred and you have not attempted to create any new accounts, you can begin the reinstatement process by sending an email to reinstatement@cowboyszone.com along with your request and the reason you feel you should be allowed back on this site. Once we receive your request, we will consider it for review and contact you if and when the staff makes a decision. This process could take days, weeks or months, so you will have to be patient. During this process, you should keep in mind that any additional negative actions or comments may lead to your reinstatement request being removed from consideration or delayed indefinitely.

-The Staff

I believe you are completely missing the forest for the trees.

Bannings should be used sparingly if at all. To get rid of spammers and people who post goat porn, etc. Unfortunately, what we see instead is interesting posters/personalities being lost from a site because they have accumulated too many "infractions". This could be for something as minor as putting asterisks in a word to self-censor. Or it could not. Who knows? Every member of the staff addresses these nonsensical yellow cards differently - and this is likely not their fault, it's because the whole system is too ridiculous to be implemented fairly. It's also being implemented by human beings, who cannot resist letting their personal feelings and prior interactions with posters on the forum cloud their judgement, which leads to uneven enforcement, which leads to frustrated users, which leads to frustrated users getting banned.

Another thing these users get frustrated with is preferential treatment, particularly to posters who claim special insight or knowledge. In this site's attempt to curry favor with these posters, who generally have nothing to say that couldn't be found on twitter or any number of sites, they are protected as sacred cows - any criticism or attempt to hold them accountable for the things they've said (and been wrong about) is viewed as "running off good posters" - and in turn ACTUAL good posters who may never have claimed special insight, knowledge or sources are run off or banned. If someone wants to claim special knowledge, and bathe in the internet adoration that results, they need to be ready to be held accountable when members of the ACTUAL good user-base realize that they are full of it.

So what happens when many of the long time interesting posters and personalities are gone? Myopia. There is a *right* way to think and the few dissenters are shouted down as trolls and worse.

It's a discussion board. You should be encouraging "discussion", not discouraging it by policies and enforcement that slants toward a particular viewpoint. Disagreement promotes discussion, but that's not what is promoted by this site's policies and methods. You may think that these policies and methods are necessary to ensure this is a nice cozy place for certain people who hate having their views and statements challenged, or hate seeing anything contrary to their previously held opinion. My question would be why those people are on a discussion board in the first place? They should just buy a mirror and talk to that.