Wow. This will be short and sweet cuz man - I'm still in disbelief that long time user webranding was banned for what is pretty glaringly a typo if a little critical thinking and a very small benefit of the doubt is given to the long time user who is in what I am pretty sure is good standing given a cursory look at his history.
While I won't repost the comment because it was a bad enough typo (he typed Obama instead of Osama) that it should have been hidden from visitors lest they jump to the same conclusions that many of you did, I will link you to it so you can see what I am talking about.
But the user is banned? For a friggin' pretty obvious typo?
Keep in mind, this is not gonna be an algorithm autoban - look at the user's history. He doesn't have a big history of being Troll Rated. Matter of fact, he seems to be well liked and well recd. He has no HRd comments in recent history. Just the one. So like I said - this isn't a case of autoban - this is a manual banning for a TYPO.
Banning a well known long time user because either Daily Kos is either too authoritarian a place that even long time users cannot make simple typos and be allowed to exist, or having too many people who are so knee-jerk in their reactions they cannot tell the difference between a simple typo and an offensive comment by someone they all know well before they HR something to death and manually ban the long time well known user - wow. Just wow.
This is a huge FAIL. I don't even know webranding very well, but I think he needs to be reinstated, and if anyone's around here on the blog talking shit about him, I think those users owe him an apology. Especially considering that he may have been banned before he could even reply that it was a typo. But there are a whole host of folks methinks that can see that this was a typo, and unfortunately apparently a lot of people who take off their critical thinking caps when they come to the blog. Sigh...
What should have happened is it should have been hidden - only takes 2 to hide - not 40 - and maybe someone could have sent him a kosmail to let him know so that the next time he checks in he knows he made a huge typo. But the pile on like happened is meant to be punitive. And that's just users being mean and striking back at something they didn't think hard enough about to realize was a FRIGGIN' typo.
This is not a good example of community; this is a black mark against it and needs to be rectified asap. Being too authoritarian or too knee jerk in our condemnation are not liberal ideals - they are more reminiscent of wingers, not liberals.
/rant
3:26 PM PT: for those of you who HRd the comment and can now see the typo - there's no shame in removing your HRs in the hopes that if webranding is reinstated he won't have a mojo penalty for it.
3:39 PM PT: it's possible that webranding may have been in his own diary and not noticed that he made the typo until he was bojoed and couldn't comment anymore, and that's why he didn't respond to the HRs immediately.
5:13 PM PT: a kossack has noted that even though third party requests are not considered valid for reinstatement, that it could not hurt to make them given that the banning was erroneous in the first place. Here's the community link:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
also, for those who may wish to send webranding a supportive email, it appears his email addy is available at the web page posted in his Dkos profile.
6:35 PM PT: PLEASE DO NOT UPRATE THE COMMENT. Even though it was a typo, it still should be hidden from the public due to the fact that it could be used as an example by an ever industrious winger of what can be found here.
8:08 PM PT: one thing that's kind of amusing is just how frequent typos are - including just reading the comments here... I think there's more than enough evidence for giving regular users the benefit of the doubt...
9:06 PM PT: and finally, webranding has been reinstated. I have no idea if he knows this yet so if anyone knows him well, please let him know... :D