How to make rules do what you want

I found out why I was banned from Total War forum........

here's the message I received:

From: daelin4
To:the last name left
Sent:June 28, 2009, 2:13 am

Since you can't find out by looking at your own posts, rules 3, 4, and 11.

As for "condoning crinminal behaviour", when were you entitled to know how and when we deal with other posters? If you see other members breaching forum rules, tell them so and report it to a staff member. You did neither.

Now back to you, on what grounds and evidence do you accuse me of "protecting" those who endorse criminal behaviour? Not being able to see what we do to other offenders?

So what are rules 3, 4 and 11?

3. You will not use this forum to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, is material of a sexual matter, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise unlawful. You will not use this board to express your religious or political views.

4. You must not provoke, or engage, in personal attacks of any nature. You agree not to post any kind of spam or advertising. Trolling (behaviour with the deliberate goal of being controversial or offensive) is not acceptable and is likely to result in a ban.

11. Although feedback negative or positive concerning our products is welcome, unconstructive, inflammatory or deliberately provocative posts are not. If you want your post to be taken seriously then a polite, well-argued post will be well received and passed on to the developers. A post along the lines of "your games are rubbish and you are nothing but a bunch of money-grabbing corporate swine, let's all not buy any of your products and we'll try to damage your reputation" will be deleted and the poster will be banned (obviously).
( LINK )

Well, that pretty much covers everything. They can ban anyone they want on those grounds - they're so open to abuse and arbitrariness.

Rule 3 is about "abusive", "threatening" and "otherwise unlawful behaviour". I was protesting about exactly those things, not engaging in them. The other posters whom did break this rule did not receive any public admonition, nor did they suffer any posts being deleted, whereas I did.

As for Rule 4, somehow condoning violent vigilantism as some posters did, fails to contravene rule 4's prohibition on "controversial or offensive" material (aka trolling according to TWF)? But my protesting violent crime does?

Rule 11? The thread was off topic - it had absolutely nothing to do with the game Empire: the thread makes no references whatsoever to the developers or their game.

Somehow I transgressed those three rules, but posters advocating criminal violence didn't transgress any?

I replied to Daelin:

Sorry, but the facts are that you banned me, deleted a post of mine, and publically announced punishing me - for the most tenuous and spurious reasons, whilst at the same time there's no similar action taken whatsoever against people clearly condoning and advocating violent crime.

That's disgusting.

I don't have to do anything other than point to the thread concerned to prove that you, and the forum, did nothing about people advocating violent crime.

The same thread shows you have banned someone whom did protest it - myself. Even though I did so politely, calmly, and without abuse.

And you deleted my post which was protesting *against* violent crime - and you took the trouble to post a note saying I was immediately banned.

You raised not a word about the other posters' advocation of violent crime - there were no deletions of the posts advocating and condoning violent crime and vigilantism - there were no messages of account suspension over it. It's there in the thread! Those penalties were reserved for myself alone ie you took action against the only person who was (calmly) protesting violent crime and vigilantism.

Now you're trotting out the most arbitrary of rules to justify banning me. Hilarious.

Clearly, whatever you deem to be trolling is considered a matter of far greater offence than the advocation of violent crime.

And here's more proof of your arbitrariness: you refuse to recognise other posters' complaints about "the police doing nothing" as being "political". Whereas my protests about violent crime somehow *are* political? What a joke. I think that exposes *your* politics interfering with the board, not mine.

Maybe you don't understand? Try reading the following, and note vigilantism is illegal, OK? ( LINK )