Posted by Fred23 on September 1, 2004, at 18:12:14
In an online community such as this, where there are conversations taking place between participants who at least know each other by handle, the sudden disappearance of a participant without others being aware is not a good thing.
E.g., suppose I was engaged in a thread with "chemist" where he was behaving himself, then he suddenly stops participating. My first thought was that he is being rude, or lost interest in the discussion.
There ought to be some other mechanism to alert me that he is not able to participate due to something out if his control than my having to scour the Administration board.
E.g., having a list of blocked posters and their periods would let me know if anybody I'm expecting to hear from is blocked.
That way I won't waste an hour composing a reply for the blocked party, that he'll never see.
I've been through this type of thing 10 years ago, which usually got *me* in trouble with the administrators, for questioning how they ran their operation.
Also, it seems that the blocking itself tends to generate a lot of traffic, which then makes the admin(s) even busier.
poster:Fred23
thread:385371
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20040717/msgs/385371.html