You'd be quite suprized at the amount of thought that goes into a banning. Its not as easy as pressing the ban button and its over with, we discuss any sort of bannings very seriously before enacting them. In a way, the mod force is a jury already, and like I said, any major decisions are discussed to a very high level. And remember that the moderators are chosen for their position because of good behavior and dedication to the forum, which are things that your 'jury' would be chosen for anyways. We do NOT make decisions based on how we feal about something or whats easyest for us... we carefully review it and do exactly what the situation calls for, even if its hard for us. Trust me, there have been MANY times where we have taken the hard way around things or avoided banning someone even if we all hated them simply because we thought it was 'unjust'. Also, there are things which are not supposed to be releaced to non-staff members such as IP adresses and other things that are often used as evidence in a certain case. Going a bit sidetrack, let me bring up the pamma incident. Though his ban appeared to be perminant (almost no one remembers that the 'Banned by Moderators' was occasionally used as a temp-ban a long time ago...) it was infact only temporary. It was made to look like a full ban for the sake of expressing the seriousness of the matter, which we would not be able to do if all the details were public. I dont think you realize how much power the members have here. Though the mods have authority, if all of the members are in disagreement with them than many times it is changed against the mods request (Pamma's ban was originally for ALOT longer...). Also, doing that would require us to make the evidence locker public (since its used in practically every case that results in a temp ban or more), and theres a lot of stuff there that we can't make public simply because it is direclty against the forum rules. And lets say we do make it, it would be very hard to inform the entire 'jury' and get them to make a decision in a limited time frame. I really don't want to have to hold off banning a serious offender and let him do more because it wasn't 'cleared' with the jury. And also, you have to realize just how little people are perminantly banned. So far there has only been two people becides out-war spammers or the like... one was sexybnethaxor and the other was a mass spammer.
If you can figure out a way for something like this to work, I really wouldn't mind as long as the forum elected mature posters. Like always, if you seriously believe a mod was wrong, you can feal free to go to them or someone above them about the incident, we listen. I promise you that if you give me sufficiant evidence to show me that I or a mod below me was wrong, I won't hesitate to fix the issue. I often change my mind on issues once I am fully aware of the facts or have a better understanding of what im dealing with. Likewise, I try not to make decisions until I feal I have a very good understanding of the situation. I don't expect everyone to trust my judjement right now, but I hope that over time you will find that Crooked, Amantis, and I are capable of figuring out what is best for the forum and what is the right thing to so.
So if you can persuade me that we need a jury, I won't hold off for any stupid power reasons (im doing my job here for the sake of the forums, not myself). Until then, I trust the people who were chosen to become moderators because of their dedication to the forum to make the right decisions.
