It was bound to happen. I have been banned from AC posting a few times before, but this is the first time I have been banned from logged in posting.

Now, I have only one question. How, exactly, is 'excessive bad posting' defined? In my case, for instance, I never post 'badly' while logged in. This leaves the AC posts. These have been, in my opinion, few. I admit that I have sometimes posted AC attempts at first posts ... I mean, who hasn't? Then there is the odd sarcastic, mocking reply to a stupid comment which I'm too ashamed to leave in my user record.

I haven't been keeping an exact record of the number of these posts, but they are certainly not 'excessive'. Not by a long shot. Anyway, it's not like every single one of them has been modded down . Some of them have actually been modded up (This being the latest example thereof).

In short, I'm dumbfounded. These banning tactics are annoying and weird. What am I supposed to do ... stop posting anything that has even the remotest chance of being modded down?

UPDATE: Now that I think about it, it occurs to me that this ban might well be the result of me posting many comments that are moderated as Funny. Since this gives no Karma, and these comments are often moderated up and down before settling on their final score, perhaps the 'net value' of my moderations is negative, and this somehow triggers a ban. If this is true, then this is yet another reason for the Slashcoders to seriously reconsider the policy of not giving Karma for Funny moderations, which is in my view quite a ridiculous policy anyway. I know for a fact that it has led to a single post ruining the Karma of more than one user here.

Anyway, I'm just rambling here. I wish they would just come out and say what exactly triggered the ban ... I have sent a mail requesting this information. I can only hope I get a reply.

Sheez, the AC 'Article Text' troll strikes yet again. And with good results (comment at +5, Informative at the moment). What is it with moderators? Why on Earth would anyone bother to mod something up that they haven't read?

I am still a newbie here on slashdot, so I don't have moderation rights (and getting a little tired of waiting for them :P). But if I did, I would certainly only mod up stuff that I have actually read. Especially AC stuff, which is quite often troll stuff like this.

Oh well, back to bashing my head against the wall then I suppose ...

Alright - I must be new here, but here goes:

The distinction between comments that get modded as Funny and those that get modded as Offtopic seems to be indistinct at times.

Given the fact that most, if not all comments that are meant to be funny are more or less not exactly on topic, this seems strange. Anyway, to me, a comment is only offtopic if it has nothing at all to do with the story. Humorous comments at least poke fun about something concerning the story. I have even seen successful 'funny' comments that simply choose to make fun of a previous comment while completely deviating from the topic of the story. I have also seen (and *ahem* posted) comments in this vein that have been modded down as Offtopic.

I am not quite why some of these comments go up while others go down. This is one of the great Slashdot mysteries. I think the most likely theory, however, is that people tend to Offopic-mod 'funny' comments that they don't think are that funny. If this is so, I find this inexplicable for a couple of reasons.

The first one is that this is a waste of mod points, in my view. If you don't think something is funny, you should leave it untouched, unless it is somehow offensive or definitely completely Offtopic. You shouldn't waste mod points going after these comments. Are they really that unfunny that they should be resigned to the bottom of the thread?

The second objection is that being modded Offtopic causes the author to lose Karma, which is obviously bad (duh). Couple this with the fact that being modded Funny does NOT give the author any Karma, this basically, well, sucks. This makes people less inclined to post humorous, wacky comments, and can even make people nervous about doing so. I think that something could and should be done about this.

Well, just my two cents worth of gripe ...