[Chris is me]

This is not an easy question. My opinion on this has changed as much as I have while posting on CD... And my opinion is just that. I know nothing about the moderation policy of Chief Delphi. Treat this post as a perspective from an individual, nothing more.

I believe the appropriate response in terms of community moderation to that thread would be a deletion and a temporary ban. In the particular incident we are now having a public meta discussion about, the reputation of the team is at stake. The poster's identity is not persistent outside of Chief Delphi, but the team number is persistent, potentially long after the student leaves. People create permanent negative associations easily. A deletion and temporary ban allows the poster to "cool off" long enough to at least try and understand what happened.

I bet at least one person has now put that team on some kind of blacklist. And that's not fair to everyone else who ever put any effort on that team, even if the student was claiming to speak for them all. I know some teams have all out policies against posting on Chief Delphi to protect their particular brand. Others do not go so far, but (correctly?) reinforce a strong culture of "act as if you're always being watched" which serves them very, very well! It's a healthy lesson to learn in professionalism. I generally see the teams that take such preventative action as teams that have their act together enough that they don't "need" the help and support of places like CD as much as other teams, though.

If the user's post was deleted, the permanence would be less daunting. If the user was temporarily banned, with clear reasoning and an opportunity for a private discussion with their team leadership, if any, before posting again - that would help prevent the permanent damage to the team's reputation that posts like that would cause.

Now with damage control and moderation out of the way... I think the intent of this thread was to discuss how to react to people that basically don't "get it" - "it" being the general values of tolerance and respect for team structures different than one's own. That's... quite difficult. I'll get back to you guys on that one.