[Annette]

Maer,

I greatly appreciate your productive post. You are correct - while these forums are not a profit center for Shrapnel Games, they do exist as a sales tool. Two very important components of the tool are our customers who contribute valuable content and our moderators who volunteer their time to help us maintain a peaceful, productive environment. Without their unpaid help, Shrapnel Games would have a difficult time keeping these forums open for our customers' use.

We all understand that tempers will flare and posts will be made that violate the rules we've put in place. And we appreciate cooperation when a moderator must step in to calm things down. The problem in this situation, and the reason I exercised our right to escalate beyond our infraction system, is that Sombre indicated to us that he did not intend to honor our requests to follow the standards we expect of all our users and that he would ignore future private messages asking him to refrain from using personal attacks. Would a temporary ban change his mind? So we're faced with the question, do we allow one user to post in a manner that we would not tolerate from anyone else?