Josephine hi Josephine, I’m 99% sure I know who you’re talking about. You are not being paranoid, and I think most people who were regular members of the ABF have a very good sense of what you’re talking about. But I think this is one of those areas that is very challenging to moderate, for reasons that others have brought up.
There are a few members on PW who have very complicated personalities, and they rub different people in different ways. I will say, the ones who have ticked me off the most are not in the Most Likely Suspects category. I think we all have different triggers, so unless people are quite obviously breaking a particular rule, it is difficult to draw lines. There is also an obvious issue of enforcing bans. There is at least one member who has come back in various guises after being banned. I don’t think the moderators were dumb or naïve or out of touch. I think that they recognized that if someone was bound and determined to participate, they would just create new accounts.
With regard to the person you’ve had issues with, I will say the following. I absolutely understand if you feel the behavior was bullying. It’s not clear to me that this was the intention, but it is quite clear to me that what was written could very easily come across that way, and I would wish the person had the insight to realize that this was how their behavior/posts frequently were interpreted. I will also admit that with regard to the content, I tend to agree with this person much, much more often than I disagree. But I also feel that this person frequently fails to listen, and especially for adult beginners (or people who are not beginners but have significant insecurities), this kind of attitude is not helpful (and probably inappropriate). My personal view is that people should feel like the ABF is a safe and supportive space to talk, get advice, and share. It is not the Pianist Corner, where blunt talk and criticism is to be expected.
I think that one option might be to designate the beginner’s forum (or whatever forum serves in this capacity) as a place where the atmosphere is supposed to be particularly supportive (and therefore, the threshold for actions that are considered bullying, intimidation, or harassment, are somewhat lower than in other parts of the forum). I don’t know if it’s possible to ban someone from posting in just one area, but if it’s not, people can get warnings that if they do post in that part of the forum, they will be banned from the entire forum.
Anyways, these are just a few thoughts I had. As a community grows, it becomes more challenging to accommodate different points of view. But I don’t think it’s impossible, and I absolutely think it’s worth being thoughtful about how we would like the rules to be structured.