Thorn posted...
I'm not taking his side. I'm just hypothesizing about the ToS here.
FWIW, it definitely feels like selective enforcement even if we assume the whole "call out someone to say they're ignored" is still moddable under the current "relaxed" rules because it is absolutely not enforced with anything approaching consistency and it's been mentioned by multiple people here (correctly) that we've had plenty of topics from people just casually revealing their ignore/block lists with no hint of mod attention. Just, if I'm putting on a mod hat here, you can "dismiss" that by pointing out that "well maybe those instances weren't marked" etc. I'm not saying it's a satisfying answer but it's consistent under the rules of the site because if that's not still explicitly something mentioned in the ToS it certainly used to be.
I'm basically just putting on my "mod lawyering" glasses here and trying to determine where the letter of the law is these days. I feel like we lost a lot of clarity when SBAllen stated the rules were going to be relaxed.
My position has been: "That would definitely have been a moddable post 'back in the day' but I genuinely would have thought it probably passes by in the 'relaxed rules' era of the past... seven(?) years." The whole "Emerald is probably fine without mentioning Ulti directly" is more just stating how I think you could avoid the moderation entirely regardless of how I feel about it - rules lawyering, basically - and to point out how crazy I think the mod justification for the moderation actually was. It's not actually a reflection of my opinion, I think it's a weak moderation! Just, as someone who actually strongly considered applying as a mod like eighteen years ago I used to try to keep tabs on the rules of the road. Then, like I said, I tried to make a case to SBAllen that he was making a mistake in relaxing the rules (specifically, I argued the problem with moderation he was claiming was not that we were too harsh but that we were too lenient, particularly in the case of repeat offenders) but again, my side did not prevail in that matter and honestly I feel like things have become less clear ever since then.
The actual answer is the moderation was a mistake. It is allowed for a project runner to block other users from participating in the project they are running.