Thanks for A2A, Stephen McInerney.
I run Necrologue, and the stream of banned users I keep posting, including users I have come to consider friends, has made me numb and disillusioned. The reflexive defending of current moderation practices, by beneficiaries of The tribunal of the marshals, has made me break communion with some of them, and block them—including one respondent to this thread.
It is also the case that the bans that get attention are the ones that should be controversial. The no-account no-follower spammers? The overt trolls and death threats and illiterates? Noone notices their passing, noone questions their banning, and noone laments them. The ban needs to be an option to Moderation.
It also needs to be an option wielded with discretion and judgement. Informed and sensitive judgement. Human judgment. The judgment, in fact, already afforded to a subset of users by the Tribunal of the Marshals, at least if the user exceeds some objective notability threshold. (The Quill is not an objective notability threshold.) It was thus before the Great Insourcing of Moderation. I do not have confidence that it is the case now.
I agree with Peter Flom’s answer; but where he says “It just needs to be done a bit better”, I’d say “a hell of a lot better.”
Not that it will.