Edit: Um...yeah...I was being all longwinded and people posted before me...I wrote this when there was one reply to the thread.
Ahem. Sorry. feel strongly about this.
Me too. What I want to say is also not meant to accuse anyone or anything like that, but I'm just trying to understand the situation....and explain why I'm against such requests being honoured.
I think about the reasons a person has for asking to be banned. It can be for their own convenience(let's not forget that Estel offered to ban people if they found they were neglecting their daily work and needed help, but that was her being nice). But more probably I think it is to make a statement- to make a statement louder than announcing that they are leaving. When someone says they will leave we all assume they still lurk around, but a ban is final. It is saying 'I don't want to have anything to do with this board (right now/ever)'
So it's a much stronger statement.
But.
To make this statement the poster needs help from the b77 admins. Obviously banning one person doesn't add too much to their workload, but you can see the principle.
Also, they are asking for help in speaking out against b77. Now we all know this board isn't afraid of criticism- but why should the admins and people who are working to make this board better help someone put weight to a criticism of b77 that is not constructive, but rather destructive, as it deprives us of a member who could otherwise join in building the site?
It doesn't help morale. It feels like a failure. It leaves us all here discussing why the poster left and we all get more and more disillusioned...and start doubting that all of this can ever work. It leaves us feeling that we failed that poster, and that they might never see our efforts because they cannot access the board any longer. Basically it sucks!
A while ago I almost wanted to leave b77. But I decided that if I left, how could I come back and expect all the problems that made me leave to have been solved? It's like Eru making this thread- she was worried it would hurt feelings. It might. But if she didn't speak up about what bothered her, it might never have been talked about, and then could she have complained in the future that things weren't how she wanted them to be? Not really...we build this place ourselves...it's not like TORC where we can only email the admins and hope they will react...we have to be the ones making the actions here.
So...back to the bannings. I think that requests to be banned because of a dissatisfaction with b77 should not be honoured. The ones where people need to be banned because they'll lose their job otherwise... um well I don't know how to work that one out.
But if someone doesn't like this place and doesn't want to be here, they should just cope on their own. They can make a thread saying "I am leaving because...." but I'm really against admins being made responsible for whether they can or can't stay here. Must they also periodically send an email asking if the person would like to come back? I'm sure all of our current admins would feel obliged to do so. Not fair to put this weight on their shoulders.
(I realise reasons for wanting to be banned are much more diverse and complicated than I made it sound like in this post...but the principle is the same: If you want to make a statement make it yourself and don't expect people who don't agree to help you make it. )