Go on
I'm sure you're imaginative enough to come up with such circumstances yourself. But since you asked, Sherlock, enjoy a hypothetical villain's soliloquy:
'Well kept gardens die by pacifism' can be applied here (though it cuts both ways). This community's unique characteristic is its high signal-to-noise ratio. Consider if someone consistently flooded the board with perceived-no-value-ergo-noise comments. Given the low frequency of comments on this board overall, such a dribble would easily dominate/drown out the daily comment feed. Consistent downvotes to tell that commenter to, in effect, "go away", could be one response, especially given the near-trivial effort, the use of provided mechanisms and the lack of clear guidelines against (as evident by the frequent discussions on the issue, which did not focus on the technical aspect alone). Note that outright telling someone "this is the wrong place for you, go away" has also occurred. Is this subjective? Of course it is, what else would it be? Note that this was just one example. I could provide many more (as, I hope, could you), depending on time constraints and how finely we partition the categories.
That being said, I see more circumstances under which it is not warranted.
Can you provide an example where this wouldn't be obvious to the moderator examining the case?
I honestly put a very low probability on the occurrence of even a single punishment due to a false positive..
Below is a message I just got from jackk. Some specifics have been redacted 1) so that we can discuss general policy rather than the details of this specific case 2) because presumption of innocence, just in case there happens to be an innocuous explanation to this.
So... thoughts? I have mod powers, but when I was granted them I was basically just told to use them to fight spam; there was never any discussion of any other policy, and I don't feel like I have the authority to decide on the suitable course of action without consulting the rest of the community.