community moderation hot take
If someone gets asked not to do something by other community members, and responds by laughing at it and saying that he'll "do what he feels like"...
Ban them.
Doesn't matter if the person who asked them was "just another user". Doesn't matter if they're a productive contributor. Doesn't matter if they say they will listen to a moderator. Doesn't matter if it was just a small gripe. Ban them. Right away.
They are telling you that they have no respect for the well-being of other community members, and that this is a deliberate choice on their part.
There is no possible way in which they will ever be a positive addition to the community, unless they change that attitude. It will not magically improve over time. Waiting for them to offend "more obviously" will just harm a lot of people in the meantime.
Ban them. Do not let them return until they have rectified that attitude.
re: community moderation hot take
To emphasize: the point here isn't the specific thing that they were asked to stop. That may well have been something small and relatively insignificant.
The point here is that they have shown unwilling to consider the impact of their behaviour and words on others, as a matter of procedure, as a default response.
This means that the same will happen for more severe incidents, *including those that you will not recognize as incidents* because it affects a marginalized group that you are not a part of.
re: community moderation hot take
Since this seems to have confused a few people: the "do what he feels like" quote in the original toot was meant literally.
Yes, that is almost word-for-word what every one of these people says. Yes, the language really is that consistent. It's a very specific expression of entitlement.
re: community moderation hot take
@joepie91 I have only one argument against this, that I didn't see anyone else mention: if the original request was in bad faith itself, by which I don't just mean 'not reasonable in context', but that it's actually a microaggression, then I wouldn't worry too much about the response being 'entitled'.
Anyway I'm on a server with a rule against addressing unknown people as "guys" for gender reasons, and entitlement about it is a constant source of problems. Usually those people just leave on their own after the second or third time someone calls them on it, often with a rant, but mods have to step in sometimes. I'm not a mod there so I can't say how often anybody gets banned over it though.