Originally posted by
Fred Steeves
Not that it's a really big deal, but I am a little confused about what exactly means what so far as these different categories are concerned. I've always been under the assumption that Retired was a voluntary thing but apparently I'm mistaken there. Perhaps a tutorial thread is in order to avoid any future confusion?
I can see why you are confused about this, Fred. In the past, before I became the administrator here, we actually didn't have the retirement status as it exists now. What we had back then was the "unsubscribed" status, which was a vBulletin default. Members could be unsubscribed as per their own request, or they could do it themselves by way of a link on their profile page and in one of the menus under the navigation bar.
And then it worked somewhat similar to how registration works, in that the server would send them an email with a link that they had to click in order to confirm that they did indeed want to be unsubscribed. And if they then clicked the link in that email, then the forum would automatically move their account into the pertinent user group without intervention from an administrator.
Note: A member's permissions are always linked to the user groups they are in, and all members have one primary user group, although they can technically belong to several additional user groups. We're not using that here at The One Truth, but I do know for a fact that they are using it over at Project Avalon.
Members like that had the title "unsubscribed" under their names next to their posts, and like banned members, they didn't have any access to the forum anymore. The difference however was that they simply got to see a generic error message that they had requested retirement, while people who have been banned and who then connect to the forum get to see a special message with the reason why they are banned. Or that is to say, if the super moderator or administrator who banned them had bothered to set a reason, because some of my predecessors often forgot to do that, and we still have people on the ban list today of whom I don't know why they were banned. Some may also have been banned a bit gratuitously, depending on who banned them.
I think I was still a super moderator when I pleaded with Malc to have the permissions relaxed on account of unsubscribed members, and then Malc did that, and he set the permissions to the same as they are for unregistered visitors. Once I had become the administrator here, a member requested her — and I quote — "respectful retirement". That's when I decided to rename the pertinent user group from "Unsubscribed Members" to "Retired Members" and changed the user title for that group accordingly.
Note: If you still come across a post by a member under whose name it says "unsubscribed", then please let me know about that, because both Malc and my predecessors often set the user's title manually in their profile, with as a result that this option must first be unset again in their account before they get the user-group-specific title of "Retired Member".
Anyway, to continue, it is understandable that one would expect retirement to be voluntary — banning is of course always involuntary — but like I said, there are circumstances where it's hard to decide on whether we really want to be so blunt and cruel as to completely deny access to the forum to a member who doesn't fit in for whatever reason. And in those cases, graceful retirement may be more subtle and merciful than an outright ban, which invariably always carries the unspoken/unwritten message in it of "Go away, you #@§!{}!"
I can name you a couple of earlier instances — and the circumstances — that led us to the decision to kindly shove a particular member out the exit, rather than kicking them out and slamming the door in their faces. Because that's what a ban essentially does. I am however not going to be naming any names out on an open thread. If you must know, then you know where my mailbox is.
I either way do want to emphasize that this method of telling a member that they've used up their credit here is rather the exception than the rule. We will only deny someone their membership here if there is a valid reason for doing so, and I think you know by now that we're quite a tolerant bunch up in the mod room. Or at least, the current staff members are. I know that this hasn't always been the case, but I cannot fault our predecessors, because those were different times.
They all did what they thought was best, even if hindsight revealed that it hadn't been. And we all make mistakes — yours truly included.