You give them warnings, time-limited bans, etc. I wasn't trying to say it has to be binary, I was saying the rules are given too much emphasis by some people when they really don't matter at all.
E.g. I got banned from Stack Overflow for deleting my own comments in protest of their new policies, which is explicitly allowed by the rules, but hinders their new project of selling site dumps to AI companies, therefore it merits punishment, regardless of what the rules say. And it's not unique to SO - every community is like this - so we should probably acknowledge it.
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You give them warnings, time-limited bans, etc. I wasn't trying to say it has to be binary, I was saying the rules are given too much emphasis by some people when they really don't matter at all.
E.g. I got banned from Stack Overflow for deleting my own comments in protest of their new policies, which is explicitly allowed by the rules, but hinders their new project of selling site dumps to AI companies, therefore it merits punishment, regardless of what the rules say. And it's not unique to SO - every community is like this - so we should probably acknowledge it.