The question is not whether to have a moderator or not, nor is it a question of whether or not to keep the discussions free of “rude and insulting behavior”.
Have a moderator; keep discussions free of “rude and insulting behavior”.
The point is to have clear rules, transparent administration of those rules and confidence in the exercise of fair judgment when imposing measured consequences to those violating the rules.
The rules, so far as the written word in the Discussion Series, have not changed. The interpretation of those rules may have shifted or not (my years on the Forum leave me with impression of a pendulum swinging).
The announcement of “New rules” was a change in the administrative actions to be applied to those deemed to have violated the rules with a zero-tolerance approach.
As described, the change was to shift from “moderated” status to three levels of “banning” from posting. It appears this action would occur without notice before the first “ban” appears. That seems to be rather harsh and, for openness of discussion, rather an unhealthy constriction.
Am very much against the trend in the world of “zero tolerance” (would even call it a movement). Low tolerance is another matter and is fine for it allows for measured judgment; zero tolerance is an excuse to avoid explaining judgments (or even using any judgment) or punishment imposed. Have already said this is an earlier post.
Then there are the “rules” (or, rather, which rules?).
When “rules” are referred to, it struck me these were the Discussion Forum rules (there are five listed). As mentioned in my other post, “rude and insulting behavior” is not a specific rule.
To move forward in considering delete-equals-ban, let‘s consider another rule: the copyright rule.
Someone, like yourself (to only bring you in as an example), links an interesting chapter from a book or article from a magazine, where the copyright “rule” is breeched – in a delete-equals-ban world, that person would find themselves banned as the post (rightfully so) should be deleted. To not delete the post with the link to the offending site (perhaps to a site in some country where copyright rules are less strict) could put the Napoleon Series at risk.
It raises the question whether “deletion equals ban” makes sense.
Perhaps the linking was made in good faith. If so, an automatic ban would appear to be unreasonable.
On the other hand, if the poster was doing unattributed linking or other such things (ŕ la Tango – though TangoO1 appears to be linking sources of late), a ban might be in order. Still - even if this was the case - an immediate, straight-away ban might not be fair (say, for some youngster just getting started). This is not jury-of-one’s-peers territory, yet some other step or steps would seem useful before imposing a ban.
These things should be done in moderation and with the exercise of judgment (even a light touch and some humor – tried to leave out any humor so as not to be misunderstood). - R
PS – Isn’t 3 over 103 (or is it 4 over 102 – depends on whether Rainer1 should be counted in the denominator or moved to the numerator) something more like 3% (or 4%) than 5% ? Humor there; yet believes your point on how to behave is a good one. – R