I read this banned user post last night, and though I could see raven's point I still thought that banning was the way to go. Later that evening I happened to read dag's comment on this video. Intrigued, I wanted to see what a sift war actually looked like, so I clicked the link in his comment, and it lead here.

Lo and behold, a sifter was caught self-linking, and was NOT banned. I didn't read every single comment in that discussion, but in essence he was allowed to stay on because he was (and still is) a big sifter, and so in some people's opinions he brought a lot to the Sift because of his presence.

NOW I always thought that the policy was black and white, no exceptions. But apparently it ain't so. In light of this, should we have an official policy that is more lenient, or do we need to ban the offender mentioned in the linked discussion? I'm NOT trying to open old wounds; I just think that if we're going to ban the little self-linkers then we need to ban the big ones too. In other words I agree with raven's stance now. However, if we can't adopt a more lenient policy, then in the interest of fairness we must ban ALL self-linkers, REGARDLESS of their rank or standing in the VS community. Because really, should a person who's been here a long time and therefore KNOWS the rules full well and breaks them anyway be given more leeway than a new guy who might not have fully understood the rules when he signed up?

You know my opinion, so I'll leave it to the rest of you to decide.