A long time ago, back when I actually used my LiveJournal account, I created a community that became relatively popular. which was originally intended as a space to directly post things for sale so that you could avoid the costs and pains involved in eBay and its ilk.

Well, I had to establish some pretty strict community rules in order to deal with posting abuses; basically a limit on the number of images, the size of the images, and the frequency of posting. Due to the rather limited admin methods that are made available to community moderators, I’ve had to resort to full-out banning of people who violate the rules; it’s what has worked.

I’ll let anyone in that requests they be put back onto the community lists, but some people decide that they’d rather send me an email telling me I was rude, or demanding to know what gave me the right to restrict them from their god-given rights to post some shit to a LiveJournal community…

Today’s choice email;

From: x. <00000000000@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Reply to your post…

you know, you could have asked me to please
remove one of the photos or remided me that i
need to cut it, instead of being extremely rude
about it. that was totally uncalled for and
poorly handled.

See, I reply to the offending post in the community, basically saying “read the rules, you’re banned” and then I delete the post. There’s nothing in this person’s email to tell me which of the numerous offenders they are; I killed off six people today for spam and other issues, so I’m at a bit of a loss. I have issues with regard to suffering fools, but somehow my response was crafted without the phrase “Jam it sideways, asshole.”

From: me
Subject: Re: Reply to your post…

Read the rules. I don’t have the time to ask everyone to edit their
posts, only to be ignored. I’ve been doing this for a while, and the
rules and the penalties are WELL LAID OUT in the community info.

The community has nearly 2000 members last I looked, and until the
one-strike-and-you’re-out policy, it was a nightmare.

If you’d have just told me your LJ name, I’d re-enable your account,
but since I had 6 spammers and a couple multiple image posters today
alone, I have no idea who you are.

If you want back, fine – I will gladly unban you, but if all you
wanted to do was whine about me being a mean person, maybe you just
post it to your livejournal instead.

I REALLY wanted to add “, you whiney little bitch.” at the bottom, and I did remove a couple instances of the words “fuck”, “you”, and “princess” before I hit send.