I'm proposing a name change for this forum, to maximize the fun and utility factors of being a member.
Normal people arriving in the O'club might assume that it's just another online forum designed to allow members of a community to associate with one another freely, choosing their own topics, responding to threads chosen by other members, and generally enjoying a free exchange of information and ideas.
Not here!
Here, threads get locked at random - I'm guessing after anonymous complaints from people who possess so little power and companionship in real life, that they're forced to mine these life-beneficial elements in dark, sparsely populated corners of the internet.
And after those threads are locked, offenders receive strikes against their social credit in the form of 'warnings'. Warnings do come with an explanation, but, as with the residents of the Gulag Archipelago, the explanations received neither explain nor allow for appeal.
After the prescribed warning limit is exceeded, the offending member is banned, losing what often amounts to years of work and reputational development - dead, essentially, within a community that has learned to accept membership as a temporary, fleeting state of being that can be summarily cancelled at the behest of some overgrown hall monitor with 20,000+ one-line, emoji-bearing posts which say nothing at all.
In fairness to the HiTech politbureau, the O'rchipelago's dead typically didn't belong here to begin with. They're the fun, life-loving variety of people who enjoy sunshine, original jokes, grilling beautifully marbled steaks over lump charcoal, and sometimes, just sometimes, a passionate word or two on the topic of religion, or politics (which can and does creep into any normal human dialog).
So let's just call it what it is, and that way, at least the doomed and damned among us can chuckle every time we check back into this intellectual black hole.
