Banned from the forums?

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Have you ever been banned from a website forum? If so, why?

I used to get banned or ganged up on till I discovered the few nonverbal rules you must observe in order to get by. Boy was I naive when I first started using the internet! I didn't know the first thing about malicious provocations, hints, flames, ganging up, trolls, etc. I remember I was so naive that when I was ganged up on once, I thought everyone just happened to agree against me instead of realizing it was a concerted effort led by the alphas of the forum! I've now been on a couple forums for years, without any problem, even though one of them is for gays only and I shouldn't be there as I'm straight, but they like me and my contributions, so they've never gotten around to banning me. I love the people there, and I guess it's hard to ban someone who loves you so much... I feel at home there because gays are similar to Autistics in the fact that they're a minority group that doesn't get born in the same geographical area, a very rare trait for a minority group.

Edited to add the following:
Actually, I'm hoping for a bit of a deeper discussion on how not getting the nonverbal rules can make participation in forums very hard for Aspies... Forums are also a good example of how you can have nonverbal messages without body language to help you decipher them. I was never in trouble with T&C, but always because I didn't get the nonverbal no-nos. Once I was banned for saying that not all parents did the best they knew how to - in a forum for childhood abuse survivors. How on earth are you supposed to know what the website owner is into and what he doesn't want to hear??????

No I've never been banned from anywhere, and I've been on gazilions of forums. I've been told off a couple of times but never banned.

I think I might have been banned from the Neopets forums once.

Other than that, not that I recall.

I've not been banned from anywhere, but I've certainly had many problems elsewhere. I've always been facile and flippant, but these days I find myself writing a lot of replies, and then not posting them, so I guess I'm getting better.

No, I've never been banned from anywhere or anything. Never had anything deleted or even been spoken to, except once, here. I like to establish exactly what the rules are, so that leads to butting heads I guess. But I've never been in danger of getting thrown off anything at all.
(Open sesame, Greentea rocks)

Although I am real bad at social stuff, I've never been banned or warned before.

i have been banned from 2 forums. one was a gaming forum for empire earth 2, and the other banning was from an "oppositional defiant disorder" forum.

i have been "frozen out" of 1 AS forum that i was a member of for 2 years. i was never much liked there. i did make a good friend on that forum (the only forum friend i ever had) and she told me via email that the other members were all pm'ing each other (and new members) advising to never respond or refer to my posts.
i did nothing to get officially banned for in the rules, but they disliked me and wanted me to go away, so they froze me out. i was "xb-70" on that forum. i made about 600 posts there.

another AS forum i was on (that i joined after i left the first one) where i made about 450 posts was modified by it's owners. all the members had to rejoin after the new site was opened and i was not able to join again.
i was not liked there much either, and i suspect that my attempt to rejoin was blocked because the person who wrote the new code became a moderator and we always did not like each other when he was just a member.

i read on that new forum (as a non member) "hey guys! you're all going to have to re register sorry. just use the same name and upload your avatars the way you did when you registered on the old forum"

then, one by one, people started coming back and talking about the new look and feel of the forum.
i tried to re-register, but my attempts were futile.
i stopped checking there.

I grew up on dial up Bulletin Board Systems. Oh the glory days of 1200 baud rate modems giving you access to the majestic landscapes of MajorMUD. That is right my friends, one thousand and two hundred characters per second rendering in text a Lord of the Rings style fantasy where you could be the dedicated martial artist who fights his way through the hordes to rescue the kingdom and be given artifacts of great worth in reward. Eventually BBSs all started getting FIDOnet or ARPAnet so that we could all participate in one large forum without having to pay long distance charges.

I'm sure I've been banned from a few of those BBSs back in the day, I was maybe nine when we got our first desktop with a modem in it and I started finding online forums to be a nine year old on. Online, people don't think little professor types are nine years old, they think they are more like sixteen and should know better with regards to certain things and get punished without warnings explaining why that is not okay. Once the internet age hit us, I tended more to lurk the early web based bulletin boards and express myself in IRC channels. I've also always been a heavy player of multiplayer computer game, dating back to those same BBSs that allowed you to set up 8-man death matches in doom hosted by the BBS. The first time I won a round without a single death, I knew I would never stop "shooting mans" online. I have been banned from easily hundreds of gaming servers whether it be for "being too good" or my penchant for trash talk.

No, thankfully.

I've had the occasional post deleted, but I've never been kicked off a forum. Yet!

Have never been banned from a forum before,though have been close to it on one forum by mods for accidentally making a signature image too large by their rules [due to not understanding numbers and guessing size visually] and was instantly hounded by the whole mod team as if was a trouble maker,they edited the signature with an image that said something like 'this user has broken the rules'...wasn't there for long.

I was banned from the whole Myst community over the course of 2004 and the beginning of 2005. Ever since I was banned, one of the prominent members in the community has died each year. But that's just a coincidence.


I wonder how close I am to being banned from here.

I have been banned from forums before. People took what I said as a personal attack, or the language I was using was to "harsh". I got into the habit of not posting on forums until I realized what was going on. I have a horrible habit of offending people without realizing what I do wrong.

I have never been banned before. But I have seen and heard stories, just like yours about the banning. I think they should reconsider their banning policies about what and what should not be banned. I am saying this because we do have Asperger's/Autism and a lot of us might have problems being able to communicate and/or write things in the wrong way. Part of our differences is that, not just with talking either, we may say something that we think is okay, but there are other people who may take it the wrong way. Even though we did not say and/or do anything inappropriate on the forum, but we still get banned anyway.
For instance: we are on a support forum, and a person is talking about a problem they have in their lives. Part of Asperger's Autism we want to respond and help, but may not be able to respond in a way that may be suitable. Like if the person has issues with another person, someone else may talk about how they get angry at another person and end up being aggressive. Sometimes what happens is(and I make this mistake, as well), instead of saying"I usually hit someone" they might say "I am going to hit someone". Then they get banned.What happened there is that the person probably has a problem being able to type in a where they may not be able to write a sentence and/or feedback using the correct words and/or ways that would make the feedback more "understanding" to other people. That is why I would never get someone banned and try not to take those things seriously because they probably made a mistake and because of learning problems, they could not help it.
Now if someone actually "threatened" another person and/or was actually harrassing someone, then they would get banned.

I was banned from a couple. One went out of business about a year and a half later, the other was only in December but not doing so good - of the 3 who were in charge 1 left in disgust and the female one is now a hooker in Nevada (legal - not making this up.)

Whether you are Aspie or NT, you find in life that people will punish you because they decide that you need to be punished. Not because you need to be punished. I try and account for it myself by not dropping the hammer because I think I should drop the hammer, but only in instances where more than one other individual whose judgment I trust expresses a feeling that somebody should be dropping the hammer and I have been explicitly sanctioned with hammer dropping powers for such circumstances.

I've moderated BBS's, web BBs and forums, IRC channels, game servers, web hosting servers and probably some other things I'm not thinking of(officiating live events is probably relevant..). I don't trust unilateral moderation and prefer ticket voting systems, and then I would usually be the one to present the verdict to the party in a one on one environment because I'm usually the one best able to be unemotional and just present the logic of the decision. If they want to appeal I wouldn't argue with them but ask them to submit a written response to us after taking the time to think over what we said and I would make sure the council took it into account.

A thirty day suspension of an account is the harshest punishment I have ever put forward for anything on the internet that was not criminal. I'll suggest we ban somebody who is trying to hack the rcon(remote admin access on a game server) but if somebody keeps using ad hominem arguments, I'm more likely to probate them from posting, but leave access to read the forums and PM people. If somebody is harassing you in PM, I'll ask you why you don't have them on ignore.