
Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
I've explained this a million times before regarding desertrunner, but I'll explain it again regarding why he's not banned on PFA.
Yes, he gets some extra chances because of my personal friendship with him, but you won't find a forum owner on earth where that's not the case.
However, as you guys have seen, I was willing to ban him (for a long time) before, so it's not like that's off the table.
But that's not the main reason he stays here. Recall that I have let many people stay here over time who annoy people (and none of them were friends on mine), as I really don't like banning for that reason. Most recently, that "joe croupier" guy got a lot of chances before I banned him, and he had a shorter leash than everyone else because he was new.
desertrunner brings some value to the forum in that he is a topic starter. Some of the topics are of low value because they're niche interests of his, which are unlikely to spawn discussion. However, many of the other topics bring on real discussion, which is good for the forum. In fact, in some cases I'm about to start a topic myself, and see that desertrunner already started it earlier in the day. More importantly, he brings other topics to the forum which I think are good, yet otherwise I wouldn't have thought of posting.
We have a number of "reply guy" types here who are very good and prolific posters, but they rarely start topics. A forum with 100% reply guys will die, by definition. A forum with all topic starters will become a cluttered mess. You need a combination of both for a forum that stays active.
I try to start topics myself, and I do it while keeping in mind what people are likely to want to read and respond. Sometimes even I blow it, and a topic I'll start will get 0-1 replies.
But it's good to have regular topic starters besides me. sonatine is one of them, and I appreciate that. But desertrunner is another. And while desertrunner would sometimes overdo it, his topic starts is and was a net positive to the forum. I just had to get the number of topics under control, which I did through the software changes. That's why I made that modification, rather than just ban him. If his topics were mostly shit, I would have just banned him, despite our friendship.
Do I agree with desertrunner's assessment that PFA would be dead without him? Obviously not. It went on just fine during the time he was banned, and it would continue to be active if I were to ban him today. He does overvalue his own presence here, and he undervalues the longtime members here, acting as if they don't matter. In a small community such as this one, the longtime members matter very much, and it's important as a forum owner to respect them. He doesn't seem to understand that I am never going to ban longtime members just because he doesn't like them, and that this forum mainly exists as a continuation of a poker subcommunity which spawned in 2004. PFA is never going to be remade or reformed. It will stay mostly as-is, and the day I have to change that is the day it shuts down.