The question is not whether it's deceptive, but whether "it has a disastrous effect on the forum or community". It is deceptive. Does it have a disastrous effect on the community? It doesn't appear so to me, so I think that needs supporting evidence.
> May I ask -was it your intent to come off as being condescending and borderline insulting? If not, you ought to be aware that is how that sentence came off.
How a sentence is interpreted has a lot to do with the context the person reading it is in. I didn't intend to be dismissive, but I think the point still stands, because I was actually trying to make a point. Why not just use one of the sites that doesn't do shadowbanning or censorship instead? This isn't some sly insinuation you should leave. It's an actual question about what is different here from there in the rules and moderation, and how and why that might contribute to how the community acts at each place respectively.
> It's also a hand-wave -meaning a distraction from my primary point which is about shadowbanning and the fact it injects a note of deceit into the moderator/user relationship.
No, it's a real question that you decided wasn't relevant so then went out of your way to avoid.
> but that does not change the fact ...and it is a fact... that I believe (and have no reason not to believe) that shadowbans have a negative effect on the larger community that they're practiced on.
It hasn't been shown to be a fact. You haven't even really shown how it could be negative to the community, much less provided evidence. "It erodes faith" is both unsubstantiated, and it's also not shown even if it was how that actually results in a problem (I'm not sure there don't exist forums with hated moderators that still function fairly well).
Shadowbanning is censorship and it is deceitful, but it's also aimed squarely at those the moderators think are not part of the community, or at least not productive parts. The whole point of it is to keep those people from realizing their account is banned right away and starting a new account to continue the behavior.
I would argue that for the most part, this has a positive effect. There are plenty of dead posts which you can see too if you want which provide little or no useful contribution to the discussion or the community.
> shadowbans undermine posters' faith in moderators and serve to undermine the credibility of moderation as a whole.
I haven't observed that. I think most people here trust the moderators to use that sparingly, and there's also a system which appears to let the community see and reverse shadowbans in the case it's incorrectly applied or the banned person in question provides more meaningful content later.
