The last remaining theory was that somehow the toothless ban message was due to something on my or Shades client devices. A cache artifact or perhaps an IP address issue. The latter I ruled out because I get the message from mobile phone or PC on totally different networks. I tested the former theory this morning.
My original Dr. Moore account continues to display a red welcome banner each time I attempt to post a comment. Note that clicking the Post as Dr. Moore button does indeed work.
From that same location on the page, without changing anything else on my computer (no windows closed, no file operations, nothing), I logged out, and then used the same drop down menu to join the discussion by logging in again, this time through the 1-click new Disqus account option. For this new account I named the avatar "Dr Moore" without the "." and I used a different Gmail address. The comment bar now supplies me no warnings. I am once again an invisible ordinary citizen insofar as the blog is concerned.
In the spirit of moving forward, I chose let the whole public banning-gate spectacle fade away, but as you bring it up again here, back in early September I was able to make contact with a product support person at Disqus named Kenneth Lui. That alone was an arduous task... Disqus actively hides its people from pesky users. Not only is there no listed Disqus phone number
anywhere online, but email contact was possible only after by working downward through a labyrinth of employees at the parent company, Zeta Global.
Anyway, this is what Kenneth wrote in response to my query as to whether or not he could identify any ban flags or records on my Disqus account.
So it would appear that any banning messages displayed due to a "glitch" would exist only in the application database or Disqus integration database at Patheos, managed by individual site moderators. And as it relates to specific users being banned and unbanned, the only person with access to those records would be the moderator.
My best guess is that the integration between Patheos and Disqus has an issue, and that's why some of us continue to appear banned even though we no longer are.
One idea, and this is just one, is that the ban was so short lived that one or more of the related application databases didn't update in time (perhaps bans are updated hourly in the Disqus database, but immediately effected on Patheos, for instance), leaving a display artifact that doesn't register with the logic behind the "Post as" button. Again, that's just one possibility. To rule that one out, I would pick a random SeN user, ban them for 1 minute and then unban. Try again for 15 minutes, an hour, a day. See what happens. But as Disqus keeps no records of bans, only the moderators of each site can answer the question of whether or not someone was ever banned.
But unfortunately, since Disqus is a horribly outdated product with no support, debugging is a fools errand. The better solution is for Patheos to just bring in a better chat product, one with a real support line for starters.
