Yeah I'm gonna lay it out straight here.
When he first copped the really long ban, before anyone had even complained about it, my instinct was to revist it after the length of the initial ban (three months) and have a chat to him then, thinking we'd probably agree to cut it short. Based on the massive public backlash asking us to deal with it sooner I floated the idea of talking to Shri at the time to formalise the idea that we'd let him back after roughly three months, but the combination of his email and his CricSim post made me think that actually trying to talk to him at that time wouldn't have actually got us that result. It was too hot - he was angry, the mods were stubborn at least about the initial ban, and I reckon talking to him then to negotiate a shorter ban would've just resulted in some abuse and no reduction. We decided to put it off until after three months after all, mainly because we thought we had a better shot at getting a result most people didn't hate if we let things simmer down more. Plus, after three months out we'd miss him more and he'd miss the forum more.
The date we're working on in May 27, which I think Dan worked out as three months (the initial ban) and an extra week (for the multi), excluding the time he used the multi. We might have formalised this earlier if I thought discussions were going to go well, but we didn't think that. I think putting them off for a bit has probably increased the chances of it going well.
It's not just a matter of us saying "okay we're gonna reduce your ban" and him saying "ok cool". If we're going to reduce his ban on account on it being harsh for a productive member of the forum and well-liked member of the community -- which we're on board with -- we need him to actually be a productive member of the forum and accept that he needs to change his behaviour slightly in terms of how he deals with unpopular members. If we wants to play the "did my time, it was worth it, not gonna change" game, he can do the actual time. If he wants us to reduce it he needs to accept that we don't think being a forum clique attack dog is a public service and that he needs to can it. He also needs to accept that he's gonna be on a lot of infraction points when he comes back, so if he so much as gets a five pointer he'll trigger another really long ban.
We're working on an email to send out to him today with some terms that we think are reasonable (he basically needs to accept that he'll be on a lot of points, agree to to stop baiting ****s he doesn't like, and try not to start a revolution in this thread when he gets back). We'll let him back in on May 27 if he agrees to them, but if he tells us to **** off he'll be back in six months. I don't think that's a hard thing to agree to, but maybe it is for him.
