1. It's nor a matter of not being able to see other people's perspectives. It's a matter of whether people's perspectives are realistic. I can understand the perspective of a fanatical white supremacist, but understanding them doesn't make them any less deranged.
I've given you my own data points on Bronto. I'm also aware of his drama with Sinny, although I didn't follow it closely. Furthermore the moderators claim he mouthed off to them, and from my perspective the claim is credible. I see nothing unreasonable about him being banned at all. I usually inhabit forums where people are moderated or banned for far less than what I see happening on INTPforum. Those are forums run by adults, not script kiddies on power trips. For instance what you think of as "acceptable" behavior would last about 5 seconds on WetCanvas.com.
I really think the disconnect here, is you don't seem to appreciate that some websites more closely emulate "real world" standards of civil behavior. Consider also
legal behavior. If you say certain harassing things to people in a grocery store, then store security and then the police are going to make you leave. In handcuffs if necessary. The virtual "can't reach out and punch you" creates a broader spectrum of opinions of what people find acceptable. It doesn't much happen that way in real life. (420munkey would chime in differently at this point if he could, but he's an outlier.)
Common sense says that "clueless fool" isn't and never has been so heinously insulting that it warrants a permanent ban.
That's a strawman, and at this long point in the debate you know it.
2. Bronto hasn't done it "over and over again" to a degree that multiple other's haven't.
Maybe the moderator system is complaint driven. That could account for what you perceive as variable enforcement. If not that many people complain about someone, they may get more rope.
For instance, I didn't complain about 420munkey a month ago when I jolly well could have. At the time, I was more interested in trying to persuade him to desist, or to understand why he posts the way he does. Now that I understand it, and know that he's intractable, there's no reason to avoid getting the mods involved. So I did. It seems to have triggered a ban that he had coming for other reasons.
3. I'm not wedded to any idea. That's a red herring. It's a fact that the moderator-given reasons for bans, of "discouraging X, encouraging Y" are demonstrably false.
You haven't demonstrated any such thing.
Moderator actions and ban choice is entirely inconsistent and doesn't align with stated intentions and reasons.
How "P" are you?
The only difference between others and Bronto is that when Bronto is told not to do something, he says no and continues to do it. Others say OK, but still continue to do it.
Clearly if you "spit in a moderator's face," you are likely to get banned faster than if you don't. Is this rocket science to you? Do you have issues with authority in real life, that make you not understand that this is the way it is? And I do think the others that "continue to do it,"
eventually get to the end of the rope they've been given.
Anyways, I'm not a moderator, and I want people like that gone. How do you explain
my view on it? You'll have trouble inventing an explanation in terms of moderators. I'll give you my explanation: I want undesirable behavior curbed, especially when such behavior is at my expense. Someone has to have the power to get rid of people. So I agree to have them do it on our behalf, so long as they're not abusing their power.
If I thought the mods were acting like creeps, I would say so. For the record I didn't care for one of the mod's attitudes towards me once upon a time in a forum debate, as I thought he was "putting on his moderator hat" to mess with the debate. But it wasn't that big a rip in the scheme of things, didn't result in anything happening to me, and it ended up being a "no hard feelings" thing in the mid term. I will give that mod some credit that he was somewhat self-aware of his behavior when I called him on it.
Mods let themselves be manipulated because they don't actually care about behaviour.
This sort of claim could be used to explain just about anything. Someone doesn't agree with you? Oh they must be manipulated.
If someone complains, they have to deal with it. It's tiresome.
That's what "complaint driven system" means. It happens in real life too. I live out of my car in Asheville. The cops aren't generally interested in bothering with homeless people living out of their cars. But if someone complains, they act. The art of parking, is picking places where people aren't going to complain.
To return to the forum analogy, running one's fool mouth any way one likes, is
not the way to avoid moderator attention.
Would it satisfy you to realize that "pissing off posters" and "pissing off mods" is some kind of fuzzy probabilistic decaying function where
eventually, you can be
certain it will reach a resolution? i.e. permaban.
Anyways I've laid out the model. You have your own model. If you can't incorporate it, I won't flog a dead horse about it. Bronto's gone for good, 420munkey's gone at least for now, and none of this is a big mystery or grievance. Yeah, I'm unsubscribing, I couldn't possibly lay things out any more clearly than I already have. Some people are compulsively stubborn about their model and can't accept that any other model exists. If their model is harmless, no big deal, just don't waste your breath anymore trying to persuade them. If it's harmful, report their posts until they get banned.