Jason, welcome back!!! I hope you'll stay!

I just want to repeat Aimless' description of how we mods do things. Most (not all) of the current moderator staff (including me) got into this role after the time you describe. The site was getting really low on moderators and, as Aimless mentions, Packlite invited half a dozen of us to join the staff. That was probably a year or more after you left.

First, we can't always check everything, so we rely heavily on our readers' use of the "Notify" button. Please feel free to use it!

Second, we issue a warning to the offender and discuss the issues on the moderators-only forum. However, if a post is particularly abusive, we may (and should!) edit it and issue a warning notice. Sometimes things happen rapidly; sometimes it's a slow process.

I like the idea of sending a PM to the person complaining--we won't do it for spam (although we thank the many spam spotters who help us keep it under control!), but for cases of abuse, we really should add this step so the person being abused knows we're working on it.

If the abuser rejects our efforts to enforce civility, we don't hesitate to ban.

Looking at the thread Aimless looked up (also before I became a moderator), I note that there were several posts calling for moderators, but did anyone ever push that "notify" button? If nobody did, the chances are excellent that nobody on what at that time was a very small moderator staff ever saw it. I'm sure I know who the offender is--he still occasionally posts nasty abusive stuff on other forums. If he comes back here to post in a similar vein, I guarantee he won't last long, reputation or no! I know I can safely say this even if I'm not longer here (I'm getting rather long in the tooth)!