Seeing as yesterday's robot update went so well, I'm going to hack out the framework for the same functions but under an image update (a slightly more complex process, although not dramatically). Then I'll draft the IAM contingency manual, and I can travel knowing that no matter what, things here should keep ticking.
So given that there's been another little wave of freakout about it over on livejournal, full of the usual misquoted emails, strangely rewritten history (people who were TOS'd stating they were TOS'd for something else in a weird straw man argument*), and misleading statements like doubling IAM's cost, and so on, I thought I'd explain briefly how the TOS process works. First, the TOS is up for public viewing and I don't browse for violations — they are all user-reported. When I get a TOS complaint, I then verify that the complaint is valid.
If the issue is extreme, the account is removed then, but that's relatively rare. It typically only happens in cases where people have made the decision that they don't want to be on the site any more and have a “freakout” to get kicked off.
In most cases the account or a part of the account (ie. access to the forum system, etc.) is locked, and a note stating why is placed in the (private) TOS log. Then when the user accesses IAM, they are given a note telling them that their account (or part of it) is suspended and that they should contact the TOS panel for more information.
When they make that contact, they're then told why their account was suspended depending on what happened are either simply told what they need to do to keep it in good standing (usually something like “please remove that background image, you don't have legal rights to it” or “you can't use your IAM page just as a portal to another site; you'll have to decide if you want to actually use IAM or not”).
So most people who get blocked are back on the site in a couple of days. That is, if you get that message, it does not mean you're getting deleted, it just means something happened that needs attention. Anyway, hope that clarifies things a little. (And yes, moving this over to a panel is still on the to-do list, it's just not at the top of that list right now as the BME automation functions have to carry more weight).
It's weird… Crazy North Korea** has again threatened the US with a nuclear first strike. It says that it asserts the right to pre-emptive first strike as US forces build up in the area. Ri Pyong-gap has said, “the US says that after Iraq we are next, but we have our own countermeasures — pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the US.”
North Korea claims that they are firing up their reactor for electricity — it's a cold winter (colder than here in Tweed in fact!), and since the US cut off its oil supply, it has to generate power somehow to keep its people from dying. However, the side effect of that reactor being fired up again is lots of weapons grade fuel. So watch out Los Angeles.
North Korea has nuclear capable missiles — remember, a little while back our good buddies in Pakistan, our allies in the “war on terror”, traded their nuclear research for a bunch of North Korea's missiles. So now both nations have the capability to destroy cities a significant distance away — North Korea claims that they have missiles trained on and able to “incinerate” cities like Anchorage, Los Angeles, and much of the west coast of America and Canada.
Not that any of that matters… Bush et al are far more concerned about the highly questionable war on Iraq, which will have only one certain end result: more terror attacks on US civilians… How many people have to die before people clue in that the US government does not work for the US people? It works almost exclusively for the large corporations, with the oil and defence sectors leading the pack.
Closer to home, InTheseTimes is running a story on the US's secret “defensive” bioweapons program, and Canada (well, the NDP anyway) is sending a team of “weapons inspectors” to the US to determine if they have weapons of mass destruction (well duh!) and to make the point that the US poses more of a threat to global security than Iraq.
*
Do follow that straw man link — you'll see it used constantly by current politicians. It's one of their favorite games, and when a situation is complex and most people watching don't have time to do the underlying research, it's very easy and very effective.
**
If you'd like to see more of the anti-US posters from North Korea, click here, traitor.
