Why am I banned?

[Felipe Contreras]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 1:38 AM, Peter Lawler <bleeter at gmail.com> wrote:
> Felipe,
> If one goes to a pub, is disruptive, and told 'If you continue that
> behaviour, you'll be banned for life' then goes on right ahead and continues
> the behaviour... EVEN IF IT'S ON THE WAY OUT THE DOOR... the establishment
> has every right to ban that person for life as they have demonstrated
> clearly their contempt for the rules laid down by the establishment.

Nobody said "for life".

> Every IRC channel has limits. The most basic is; what Ops say goes, annoy
> the crap out of an Op at one's own peril. If an op says 'stop or I'll
> ban'... STOP. IRL, if a policeman says 'stop or I'll arrest' one doesn't
> keep on going doing whatever's pissed the copper off, then cry at the courts
> later 'oh it's sooo unfair it was only a little I continued to do but I
> never knew I'd be arrested'... to coin a gaming phrase .... srsly.

Are you familiar with the term "police abuse"? Maybe it will come as a
shock to you, but yes, power can be abused.

It looks like you are not understanding correctly what is happening: a
warning for a *temporal* ban was used in order to issue a permanent
ban without any explanation. I realized I was banned permanently
because none of my private emails were being answered, and after a
month I still was unable to join the channel.

Given the fact that I've contributed substantially to the project (I
wrote most of the MSN prpl[1]), and that I've been involved many
years, I would think I deserve at least an explanation. Moreover,
whatever Pidgin developers think of me, I was still helping users on
the IRC channel.

Anyway, I don't see the point of even trying to collaborate at all
with this community. I guess you've achieved your goal: I'll not try
to join #pidgin any more, unsubscribe from this list, and stop
announcing msn-pecan releases. You can also forget about the git
mirror, and therefore the ohloh enlistment[2].

See ya.

[1] http://felipec.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/who-wrote-pidgins-msn-not-who-you-think/
[2] http://www.ohloh.net/p/pidgin

-- 
Felipe Contreras