Yeah, I know; you're all tired of this, but this has been running through my mind a lot the last day, and I thought I'd just make an essay of it and get it out of my system, for better or for worse.
I am one of the people here who has, in the past, posted a GBCW (Goodbye, Cruel World) essay in which I announced I was leaving this site and never coming back.
I meant every word of it at the time. I was talked out of it primarily by three people, one of whom is a user banned from this site, another of whom is a user who posted her own GBCW and came back, and another user who still posts here (do not ask me who these people are, and please don't drag them into this essay if you do know).
If I had to do it over again, I would not. It was silly, yes. It was a drama queen move, yes.
And if I'd had my account deactivated permanently in response for doing so, I don't think I'd have had a problem with that.
What I would have had a problem with was being banned from the site as a person, for doing so.
My GBCW was pretty much a response to considering the community overly censorial. I was especially concerned about ganging up on people and HR abuse.
I really do think things have improved since then, and not by themselves. It's been a group effort and Meteor Blades has worked hard on it. Good on him, and good on everyone else who has worked on this process.
Now, we have this new rule that people who post GBCW's are to be summarily banned, and can only be reinstated if they petition the admins for it. I am pretty sure that I would never have done that. It would have felt like begging, and I'm not interested in begging Meteor Blades for anything (though I have apologized for things at times). It changes your relationship with people when they have that kind of power over you. I would have preferred to split for good, and maybe catch up with him on the Internet elsewhere, if I was not allowed to start a new account either (and they would have known it was me; I don't think there are a lot of Kossacks in Carlsbad, NM, and besides they can see my IP#)
When I did start blogging here again, I still wasn't sure I wanted to. I started lurking around some, then I started tipping comments some, then posted a few comments, etc. Eventually I decided I wanted to stay part of this community, and then I actually did to myself what I'm recommending be done here with GBCW's - treat them as account abandonments, not bannings - and started up with a new name, and hopes of reinventing myself a bit, now that I'd gotten more perspective on this whole blogging thing.
This gets us to "what is banning?" What's the difference between having your user account deactivated, and being banned from using the site? I think most people consider these to be synonymous, but they don't have to be. It's not a given.
If you deactivate the account of someone who GBCW's, and let it stop there, then the situation is similar to when someone abandons an account and starts another one. You don't have TU anymore, you have a higher user ID, you have to re-establish contacts. To do this to someone as a penalty for GBCW, is not, to my eyes, a bad way to work things. It is a way of saying "We take your need to end this phase of your Internet existence seriously, and are not interested in allowing you to do so speciously - but that doesn't mean we never want to talk to you again."
As the rule stands; I'm sure some people will GBCW and then beg the admins to be reinstated. Great, something else to use up their time. Why not just make it both simpler and more flexible at the same time? You GBCW, that's it with that account. You don't get it back. Whether you can come back under another name depends on how behaved otherwise. But it's not a given that you can't come back under another name. It's not the default position. You're only really banned, if you do something that really rates it. And I don't think one GBCW by itself, does.
Of course, if there is content in the GBCW that otherwise breaks site rules that result in summary banishment, that's another story. But when someone posts an essay that says "I don't like the way this place rolls and I'm out of here for good," without hardcore trolling, do we really want our admins to devote energy to keeping that person behind that username out of this place for good? What kind of message does that send? And what does it say about us, as a community?