I don't think that anyone is suggesting that the Administrator does not have the authority to moderate this forum, however they so choose. However, I would like to offer the following comments to add to this discussion about Doug as a poster... I have been personally reading posts from Doug for many years, stemming all the way back to the days of Packing.org - well before this forum came into existence. Doug never shyed away from letting his personal feelings on certain topics be well-known and we all came to understand that over a long period of time and over a period of literally thousands of posts.
I am sure he is in frequent violation of the forum rules, particularly if there were nasty PM's that we are not able to review. But to be perfectly honest, there are hundreds that post here that are violators on a regular basis. I have only called for one poster ever to be banned and it took over a year for that to finally happen and it ended up not having anything to do with me or anyone else that was complaining at the time that I was. For there to only be 5 people in thousands that post here to ever be banned suggests to me that there is a glaring consistency with regards to the allowing of heated opinions and posts that consist of language and content that does not fit into the listed rules of this forum. It goes in spurts and there are times when it can be seen everyday.
He received a lot of flack, but lets just be honest.. Is Doug absolutely incorrect in his reasoning for his disdain for the NRA? I think if we all look at the facts over the period of about 75 years, we will see that he is correct. Does it violate forum rules to post about his disdain? Yes. But that doesn't mean he was wrong in his reasoning, it just means that the administrator doesn't want it talked about on his forum.
I think that posters would have less of a problem with this if the rules were absolutely enforced for everyone. There seems to always be a couple of posters that leave little pee drops on virtually all discussion topics which is one of the main reasons that I don't post here that much anymore. If it requires input from the masses for the moderators to notice or to do something about a violation then that tells me a couple of things. One, this forum is too big to actually moderate or there are not enough moderators. Two, before the transition to this forum format, when PM's were sent about certain posters, it appeared to me that nothing was done about the concerns despite overwhelming evidence to support the request. Either way, the enforcement has been consistently inconsistent.
Doug is not a troll and has offered a treasure trove of information and logical and philosophical discussion over the many years. I think this is indeed a sad day for this forum.