Exhibit B in how to make a reasonable argument.
This is an entirely valid concern. At the moment, trolling (unlike abuse) is being treated as an intent-based rather than result-based offence. That is, if we believe a poster is merely attempting to rile someone with their post, and isn't just making a harmless joke or a genuine cricket point, then we'll give it an infraction. Hence, posts which people find offensive that we believe to have been misinterpreted or had no conclusive nasty intent won't be given infractions.
The problem with this is that it's very subjective, so while we as a moderation group believe it is entirely fair (and I'll ensure you it is no matter how many times you disagree) it doesn't always give the perception of fairness, particularly to those who insist on looking at posts in isolation rather than context. It's a significant problem and one we're discussing in the mod forum at the moment, but it's also a rather ironic problem to come from the infraction system, as one of the main goals we set out to do was remove the subjective intent-based moderation on the way we've handled abuse. We had a score of new members unable to differentiate between, for example, your posts calling Burgey a **** light-heartedly and their posts calling Burgey a **** maliciously, so we set out to give warnings (and eventually infractions) to all posts that could interpreted as abusive regardless of intent. Somehow, the new system has delivered us exactly the same problem with a different offence (trolling). Trolling in general is a much greyer area though, and it'll be harder to sort out, but we're discussing possible changes.
While these are genuine concerns and while they are being discussed currently, though, I definitely think people need to chill a little bit. In the grand scheme of things, sledger getting one infraction a few people think is dodgy is not the end of the world, even if the same people think it's not going to be consistently applied for the next forty years. I'm going to go on the record and say that this isn't perfect, and that we might (shock horror) get things slightly wrong on rare occasions. I'm not saying this is one of those occasions, but if you think it is, I still don't think it quite deserves the carry on it has received, particularly given he didn't get banned for it. If he does end up getting banned after another infraction he'll sit out a massive holiday of about two days. His infraction is not under review and it will not be reversed. He himself openly admitted that he made the post in order to provoke, and that was extremely obvious at the time. I know this was not the subject of your post, but I thought I'd get that in now.
While I welcome comments about the infraction system as a whole, the constant reference to one infraction and the resulting conspiracy theories about India are not worth our attention. I've taken the time to reply to your post as you've actually touched on an important issue and not just rabbited on about that one infraction; I appreciate your contribution.
