Since there have been many posts since my explanation, I'll just add a couple comments.
First, banning a member is never done lightly. This has been building for a while, and I have been receiving complaints for several months. In fact, when I was travelling for Thanksgiving, I had to spend several hours on my laptop trying to put out fires of angry forum members demanding I do something then. At least one well-regarded, long-term forum member said he wouldn't be back.
Second, Immersion was warned several times behind the scenes. One thing he did improve was cutting down the direct personal insults, at least in terms of removing specific WORDS that can be considered insults... such as "stupid" or "idiotic." Having said that, it's certainly possible to insult a person without using any such words. Telling a musician or record label owner that if they want to charge people for their music, they're not better than a prostitute, is such an example.
Third, we are all human beings here. If you taunt and provoke people all around you, and constantly inflame everyone so they're all upset, sooner or later you'll fire up the emotions and the anger in a person who has the power to delete your posts or ban you. Doing this after you've been warned multiple times to cool it is simply playing with fire, and much as I hate to see someone banned, in this case it's nobody's fault but the member who was banned.
Fourth, as a general rule in life -- not just on internet forums, but in relationships, in family, and workplaces, if you are a member of a large group of people who are all getting along, and nobody has a problem with anybody else, nobody fights or argues... then you enter the group and suddenly provoke fights and disputes with otherwise peaceful people... sorry, but the problem is YOU, not everybody else. Acting innocent and proclaiming "it's just my opinion" after the fact, that's disingenuous.
