If you are who you think you are, the reason for your ban is not your opinions. The reason is that you were wasting other peoples time. Your opinion has been heard and it is clear that the developers and people who contribute to the forum do not agree with you. It is fine to disagree - it is not fine to waste other peoples time or spam the forum with the same opinion over and over.

The problem is that you presented your opinion over and over often disguising it as a descriptions of new problems. You also asked for people to point out things in the code, which you then did not then seem to have any interest in reading.

There are volunteers here who want to help the users of Zotero, including you, with genuine problems. Now these people have spent perhaps hours replying to your posts that look like support requests, but turn out to be just repeating the same opinion over and over. This takes away time from genuine support requests, and this is the reason for your ban.


In any case, your opinion that collections should work differently has been heard. You have also been explained why it will not be implemented differently. Open source projects are not democracies: The people who code or who pay the coders salaries make the decisions. If you do not like their decisions, i.e. the way Zotero works, you can fork the project (https://help.github.com/articles/fork-a-repo) or use some other software.

The ban in theory just prevents forum posting. If it's preventing forum reading too, that's a bug, but I'm more interested in helping other users than looking into that at the moment. Beckengel, if you can't read forum threads, just log out, since the forums are open to the public. But your posts are no longer welcome here, for the reasons explained above and in the previous thread. And no, they have nothing to do with your "criticism".

Also, just to record them for posterity, we've also received these emails from Beckengel:

To: security@zotero.org

I have been banned from Zotero Forum because the staff does not accept criticism
The ban is both read and write which is quite unique
If you do not accept criticism you can ban the posting but if you also ban the reading it implies on a mentality of revenge too

I have never seen this behavior

To: Sean

Dear sir
As a user of Zotero I have had some critical articles in the Forum
My criticism was not accepted, although it was constructive and not destructive.
As a response I was banned from the Forum both reading and writing.
I wonder what is your policy on the Forum for Zotero
Since this kind of response from the staff is very aggressive, I wonder if it is for lifetime or if I may be banned from entry to the USA.
I plan to enter USA quite soon and would like to visit you as the director of the Zotero staff to prove my innocence.

To: Simon

Dear sir
I wonder why Zotero has banned me from access to Forum , both read and write
Is it a kind of revenge for having posited criticism on the program. My intention was to suggest improvements

Is it a life ban ? Am I now banned to enter the USA ?

Could you explain you ban policy )
I was planning to visit you soon
Maybe I will call you ; what is the best time you are available ?