You make a wonderful point. As someone who has staffed and/or moderated a number of popular forums before (including one with several hundred active members), it's very important to maintain an active and visible presence on the site you're overseeing. As demonstrated by the EU CMs, this means posting frequently and having disciplinary actions be visible - as opposed to deleting threads and having no trace remain.

This accomplishes two things. One, it demonstrates that staff is active on the forums and are probably reading everything you do. Lurking in the background and performing their duties without definite evidence leaves people with the impression that no one cares or is doing his job. Second, it establishes through repeated incidents a standard of what is acceptable content and what is not. This helps to not only allow people to learn what is likely to receive negative reactions by moderators, but it also ensures that staff maintains consistent standards because past examples can be easily, quickly, and clearly located for comparision.

I find both these posts rather ironic, partly because Blizzard did infact respond but mainly because you seem to suggest that the forum CM's aren't acting fairly - when infact they would have been applying unfair favoritism if they had let crimsonlocks get away with abuse, that would have landed anyone else a ban, because he has contributed good in the past.

The whole tribute to the european CM's is neat, I'm an avid user of the european boards and I much like our CM's - but I also very much doubt they would have handled this differently. At least I can't think of a single time where our CM's have responded to a temporary simply because the community demanded it. And how can they?

There are forum rules and they apply to everyone, and crimsonlock left blizzard no choice when he broke them in such a verbal manner.