The Chairman
Chairman of the Board
For them, yes. However, we try to keep interactions between us and them private so we don't embarrass them in public. Some people will still advertise they've been moderated and while we won't publicly defend our actions, you can be assured that there are two sides to every complaint.
Your privileges can be suspended from the whole forum, a sub-forum or a single thread. It depends on how egregious or focused the offenses are. There are a few things that will get your privileges pulled in a hurry: bigotry, threats and/or glorification of violence are high on the list.
Some can't admit they've crossed a line. It's hard for them to see fault in themselves, so they shift the blame to the 'system', moderators or even me rather than accepting any personal responsibility. We call them POV warriors or cyber-stalkers, and they often hijack threads to tell us how horrible this dive op or that manufacturer is to the point of even driving them away. It's not fair to their victim or the rest of us. Sometimes they just can't help but tell us how bad ScubaBoard is, yet here they are! It almost always takes multiple occurrences and warnings for us to remove privileges, so you can be sure it's not capricious. We hardly ever vet for facts but rather try to keep this a friendly place where interaction is based on mutual respect. While we really appreciate and encourage spirited debates or discussions, this is certainly not the place to pursue vendettas ad nausea in order to hurt someone's business. There's rec.scuba for that.
