Alas the avatar itself merely addressed Hezbollah's antiquated arsenal. How it could be construed as anti-Muslim or anti-Arab is truly beyond me. It is truly a reach to even suggest it. More to the point the Mod in question and I have previously discussed my outlook and I repeated to him, as I have umpteenth times in the forum publicly, that I have absolutely no problem with Muslims or Arabs but rather my problem is with Islam. Muslims and Arabs are people and have the ability to change or moderate their behavior where as Islam is a Belief System that is, due to inherent features, extremely rigid. One can criticise a belief in general without demeaning anyone. In light of that previous clarification the prudent thing to do would be to communicate concerns to me at which point I would have gladly explained both provenance and meaning.
As has been noted, Warnings aren't serious in and of themselves but they can certainly be used as a pretext for more serious steps. Another perspective is that they can be used to harass posters though I am not saying that 2 Warnings in 6 months even comes close to "harassment."
I think what Winding did in initiating the thread can only be viewed as positive in that obviously there is a disconnect in the process. If there is no concrete policy and the only rationale is a poster's history, i.e. the outlook they espouse over the course of time, it comes down to subjectivity (interpretation). The Mod obviously feels that I am racist. OK, I would ask that Mod why they feel that way when I have been more than clear about my views, and they do not involve denigration of anyone. In fact, the Mod in question acknowledged this in a previous exchange. So what then is the criteria being used?
Perhaps it has to do with "kindness to camels" or "kindness to camel testicles."
To me those make as much sense as the allegation. This is such a non-subject and yet because of this undefined area (nature of avatars) it is taking up time and energy.
Here is a different angle: Perhaps the policy that needs to be examined is the Warning System and not avatars per se. Perhaps, at least so far as undefined areas are concerned, it may be beneficial to have a concerned Mod simply communicate their views to the poster in question and THEN decide if a Warning is in line or not.
As for Socko's "allegation" and Alasdair's response, Socko isn't too far off the mark though if it was something worth discussing one can rest assure I would already be harping about it. I think it much more beneficial to discuss issues that concern the entire site than to latch onto more narrow concerns.
Escher: As to your last post, if a poster had an avatar that demeaned Louis Farrakhan would that translate into racism against all blacks in and of itself? Hezbollah is a well defined entity and yet the avatar did not even demean Hezbollah! As for "other than Hezbollah," the caption did not read, "Arab Rocket Launcher" though to be frank, given the context of Arab authorship and the subject matter having been the folly of the 2006 War I wouldn't see that caption as problematic either.
Political Correctness is a cancer and yet, I don't think the cartoon crossed any lines what-so-ever. As I offered earlier, the Mod more than likely perceives me a certain way and jumped the gun.