Voltaire didn’t say that. It was said about him.
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It was said by a character in Voltaire’s Candide about Admiral Byng’s fate after the Battle of Minorca.
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Who was it that said, “Needless consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”? 
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http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/
In conclusion, many researchers have attempted to find the quotation in the works of Voltaire, but it has never been located. Evelyn Beatrice Hall probably crafted the statement which was disseminated in her 1906 work titled “The Friends of Voltaire”. Hall’s words memorably and gracefully reflected her conception of Voltaire’s viewpoint.
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I didn’t see much of the beginning of the case, but I did see at least one of MO’s posts explicitly asking why something was vanished (before it also vanished). Yes, that sort of thing would be better in a PM to a mod, but if someone’s reading a thread and sees their post has simply vanished with no indication of who did it or why (or even whether it was just a glitch) it seems like the default user response is going to be to ask right there rather than try to figure out who would be best to PM… and then the cycle starts all over again, with tensions for both the mod and the user ratcheted up a notch.
I’m not, of course, saying that making it easier for a mod to indicate a reason for vanishing a post would have fully solved the issue.
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The BBS is hosted in Canada. Technically, we don’t have “freedom of speech” up here. We have “rights and responsibilities”. Which is ironic, cuz one of the reasons its hosted here is to guard against invalid take down notices.
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You are right, it is ironic. I think in a practical sense, you have as much freedom of speech as anywhere in the world. I have lived in Quebec, BTW, and loved it there. The winter was brutal, though, -40!
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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. – Emerson
That which we call sin in others is experiment for us. – some guy
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Nope!
Boing Boing is, but the BBS is hosted by the Discourse folks in the US, not us.
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OOOOH! I stand corrected! I thought the whole shebang was up here! Inneresting!
Things make a little more sense now tbh…
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Thanks for the reply, correcting my quote and reminding me who said it. 
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Ok, I’ve held my silence on this Softbans nonsense for long enough!
Softbans are disgusting!!!
Unless they are somewhat green and firm, don’t even let me smell them!
That is all.
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Because the only options are stony silence or responding to every enquiry?
Instead of trying to derive moderator theory from first principles, one could do worse than look at how others do it. You were given a good start by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, all that time ago, but you may need to look at other sites that have successful moderation (according to some, at least) like — to pick an example entirely at random recently mentioned on this very blog — RPG.net.
The moderators there have a sliding scale of penalties, with permanent bans at the top of the scale, with bans of three months, a month, etc, down to a single day. And before that they have the — according to you, unworkable — thread bans, subject bans and forum bans. And below that, warnings and admonitions† (the former recorded, the latter not). The mods can delete if they wish, but generally don’t unless the post is completely vile. (Or spam, but I repeat myself.) They post their action in answer to the offending post, nearly always with a coherent explanation, and (except for admonishments and spammers) post the notice in the Infractions forum, so that everybody knows what’s going on. (It’s got a few joke penalties in there left over from April 1st at the moment, but the rest are cromulent.)
The mods are open to appeal. Any penalty can be reversed, if sufficient evidence, logic or promises of future good behaviour are made and the augers are favourable. There is a permanent Trouble Tickets forum in which mods can be consulted on things which aren’t to do with penalties or appeals, though there is the occasional, mod-led debate on moderator actions.
Although moderator action at RPG.net is transparent to a high degree, the mods do not feel compelled to answer all queries, or to let debate run until everyone but the last few obsessive-compulsives are exhausted. For their time is limited, and they don’t get paid for their duties. Yet still, they manage to run a ship that is both tight and slack where it needs to be, and that is appreciated by its many users.
I don’t know how it compares in terms of traffic with BBS here, but RPG.net must be at least the same order of magnitude, and must suffer the same sorts of moderator headaches as BBS, since people are the same everywhere, whether they’re happy mutants or players of games where they pretend to be elves. The problems here are not unique, and ways have been found to deal with them elsewhere.
† The mods at RPG.net don't have to follow these as a ladder: Nazis, racists, gamergaters and spammers, for example, can get booted permanently as soon as they make themselves obvious.
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As an aside, was there a change to the Discourse design to show usernames by the avatars now? (Or am I just noticing this because I’m on my iPad instead of phone…). It makes ghost avatars so much easier to consume.
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No, they’ve been on the desktop version a long time, if not the whole time.
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Yeah – I just noticed this today on my desktop PC since I was actually looking for it.
About 80% of the time I’m browsing BB from my phone which has the unfortunate side effect of not being able to tell who’s responding to who with Ghost World rules.
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I just watched @enso go over the edge with @jlw for no good reason, and a couple other people I enjoy are apparently flaming out, too. Mountains are arising from molehills.
Why can’t people just take a little time out, and see if they can get along better with the madd(en)ing crowd tomorrow?
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I can’t speak for them but people tend to react with a fairly cut and dry attitude when it comes to what they see as bullying.
Personally, I’m not so sure it reeeeaaallly is that but… damn it seems close.
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I think I’m going to take a break from the internet altogether and maybe listen to some terrible, terrible music, and cook an indulging meal.
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