Banned from DP - for reporting my OWN misplaced thread!

Posted by admin

I’m generally not one to complain when I get told off, after all, if someone has call to tell you off its generally because you did something wrong.  Mind you, since I was in my early twenties I guess other people have been hard pressed to find much wrong, such being the life I lead.

Im an active member on about a dozen webmaster forums, but the one that I enjoy the most is digital point. To me its mixture of heavy traffic, great discussions and active marketplace are just the right mixture of components necessary  to make a great forum.

That is why I have been dismayed to find out this evening that I have been banned from digital point, for reporting mis-placed threads that I have created!

If you get banned for reporting your own mistakes, then surely people are less likely to do so…..

Anyway, firstly I must give you a history of my infractions that I have received.  Firstly, I was infracted and you can argue rightly so, for bumping a thread in the general promotion category.  That accounted for 5 points, as I got fined one point for “creating the thread in an inappropriate section” and 4 more for “bumping” said thread.   oooooops.

Secondly, I placed a thread where I was selling a facebook app in the BST -> SITES section, now I would have thought that this would be the best place to put a facebook app, and I did give it some consideration before I posted it, but came to the conclusion that this would be the right place.  I must have come to the wrong conclusion as I was again infracted for  “creating the thread in an inappropriate section”.  This time, I tried unsuccessfully to argue my case, as I justifiably I still feel, did no wrong.  Guess what, I got infracted twice more for arguing about it!

This brought my total infractions level up to a whopping 9 without really having done too much wrong.  To be fair, Im not contesting the first “block” of infractions I got, frankly I cant complain and I learnt my lesson.  The second lot I still wholeheartedly disagree with, but hey, I was willing to overlook them as well and get on with my life.

So today, with two browser windows open, one pointing at BST->freebies and the other pointing at BST->Content, I started two threads.  BOTH threads were for content related sales, BUT the sales value for both amounts were under $5 and at digital point they operate a policy that all transactions advertised at $5 or less should go into the freebies section.

I mistakenly posted BOTH threads into the wrong area.  Ooooops again.  BUT I naively perhaps thought that it wouldnt be a big deal, after all I had noticed that they were in the wrong place so I myself reported both threads, left a nice little message saying along the lines of “sorry mods I posted this in the wrong section, my bad for causing bother, please move”, AND THEN even took the step of warning a new MOD aaron_nimocks (I think thats his username, he is the first of the MODs alphabetically) by PM to let him know what I had done.

To Aarons credit, within minutes I got a response back saying that he was on a super slow connection so he couldnt do it then and there, but if I had indeed posted a warning on the threads report function (which I had) then it would be sorted out.

Case closed, problem solved, or at least so I thought.  About 5 minutes later while answering a PM I pressed “send” and got redirected to a big “Your Banned!!” screen.  I appear to be banned until March the 11th at 13.05 server time, as this is 90 days after my first “block” of infractions disappears.

I guess everyone that ever gets banned feels hard done by, but after reviewing the reasons for my infractions, and especially in the light of the fact that I myself reported my misplaced threads AND pro-actively contacted a MOD to help me sort it out, well, lets just say I am dismayed at the behavior of the DP MOD crew, I feel a little bit of common sense should have been used in this case, as I vehemently feel that tonights infractions were unwarranted.

To cap it all off, yesterday I posted a new sale thread in the BST->content section for a facebook app, and a senior member commented that I had posted in the wrong place, and that site sales would have been a better candidate to post in!  Looks like Im not the only one who thinks that way.

So, the question is what to do now?  “take it like a man” and wait two weeks to serve my unjust sentance? Well, unless any of the MODs are big enough to step up and recognise that a mistake has been made, then I guess thats all I can do……