> I can't imagine ever complaining about any forum or its moderators unless I was
> paying for access and desperately wanted to stay. So that in itself is pretty
> trivial to me.
>
> On the whole the rules seems geared towards trying to keep on the right side of the
> law (always a potential problem for forum owners in these litigious times) and
> trying to impose some kind of behaviour limits. That seems fair enough even if when
> written down such rules tend to look overbearing.

I left RSC for getting a warning for this video of a demo qualifying run
by David Coulthard made for some European TV station and one that had
been available on several web sites for a few years before I mirrored
it and posted the link at RSC:

http://jeffareid.net/real/spaf1.wmv

They claimed I violated a copyright, and put a yellow card warning
on all my posts, and refused to give me the time to show that this
particular video was in the public domain before adding the warining.

They're view was that I was guilty until proven innocent, and that
the yellow icon would remain attached to every post I ever made
at RSC until I could prove the video was in public domain by getting
Bernie Ecclestone, the owner of F1 racing, to send RSC a personal
letter stating the video was in the public domain.

At the time, there was nothing in the rules about their "infraction
system". If I wasn't using my real name at RSC this wouldn't have been
such a big deal, but as it was, I considered the guitly until
proven innocent yellow flags on my posts to be a violation of their
own rules since it was "false, abusive, defamatory, and harrasing":

RSC forum rule:
"2.1: Any content that is false, abusive, defamatory, or harassing
is not permitted in posts, avatars, and signatures."

A neighbor of mine at the time is a lawyer, and he stated that since
I had used my real name instead of a persona at RSC, the yellow
warning on all posts made with my real name, would be enough for
a viable civil suit for defamation of character. Few forum moderators
are willing to risk using such a public warning system as RSC does
because of the legal risks associated with defamation of character.

When I mentioned the defamation issue to RSC moderators, their
response was to perma-ban me. Rather than start a civil suit, my
neighbor suggested that I request RSC remove every post I ever
made there, to eliminate any chance of further defamatory harm,
which I did and RSC complied by removing all my posts.

Another issue at the time was that RSC was the "official" support
site for a few games, and any action limiting members access
to that support could be in violation of any agreement between
the game makers and RSC. Currently, I'm not aware of any game
that uses an outside forum for support, so this issue has
gone away.

I occasionally browse RSC, but I don't ever plan on rejoining
with their current infraction policy. RSC is the only racing game
forum that feels they need to chastise it's members with a public
warning system. All other forum simply delete unwanted content
and handle these matter privately through pm's or emails.