Matt

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In any community it would the of utmost importance to monitor the posts not just for bad language but to judge the level of knowledge of the member and asses if the member is worthy of contributing to the forum. 
That said its never a good idea to altogether ban a member. If not in the beginning at some point of time if he would grow and mature into an effective member of the forum. 
IP does most of this pretty well. Content Moderation, members cant see if the member is banned unless you log into his profile and only a preset number of infractions can ban a member. What it needs to consider is, as forums are all about opinions, should a member be able to read my post if I dont want him to. Is the member really interested or just trolling and passing cheap comments. Is there a way to ban IP addresses of that computer from reading my posts. While this can be done at the moderator level, should IP allow it at the member level. 
As we grow with time and age we will make an impact on a community. Moderation is no easy task and needs a very high level of judgemental power. What would be the right way of going about this. Any community needs full time moderators. Lets say six moderators that work in shifts. First few posts should be approved and disapproved with warning with in a few hours. As mentioned above the ability to asses if a member is really asking a question or trolling is a key factor in moderation. 
https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-internet-trolling-3485891

Short story, I have 3 boys ages 26, 22 and 9. So my 2 oldest ones grew up and left home and the wife and I were in the clear. I was working for a major automotive paint manufacturer at the time and was offered a position being a advanced trouble shooting tech. That position required me to basically travel the US waaaaaay too much, diagnose and fix issues with the most coveted customers the company had. Basically, when we had a great big money spending customer about to leave over a issue they sent me in to save the day. So anyhow, I got called into the Chicagoe area a few weeks after my last boy 22 left home. I took the wife, we had too many drinks and before you know...as Brittney would say... Oooops, I did it again... Damn... That was short lived freedom. Moral to this story is Brandon... Well, I don't know, just thought I'd mention this   
Since my youngest is 9 now, I have 9 more years to go...   But he's awesome and I wouldn't trade him for the world..  

Star Trek TNG was my childhood. Deep Space 9 is also acceptable. 

I don't think you have to be an oldie to think that, @Mark H
 

My favorites are soundtrack related music aka epic music:
Hans Zimmer Steve Jablonsky Ramin Djawadi audiomachine Two Steps From Hell Position Music Brand X Music Immediate Music and good old country music:
Miranda Lambert Zac Brown Band Dierks Bentley Brett Eldredge But I listen to all kind of music, thats just my 2 favorite genres.

Forgot to respond this week and probably the biggest question for me as of late. Love music but Classic Rock is my favorite. Tom Petty is by far my favorite artist, RIP my friend. Tom's music for me is one that I can listen to album to album without skipping a song and often do while I work.

I’m using my phone right now!

I’m using my phone right now!

You look around you (walking, on bus, plane, train ... in fact anywhere) and tell me what they cannot live without and it will be their phone whether it is for music, gaming, talking to friends etc .... they could not live without it for a week ... they would be pulling their hair out.
No matter where you look ... someone is using their phone
Would really love mobile operators to close their transmitters for a few days all at same time and see how they get on

There are a couple of them but this one tops the list
 
 
 

Woman.

Interestingly, I had a difficult time answering this one (which is why I didn’t actually answer), but as a musician I’m kind of ashamed I didn’t think of this lol
But yes, definitely music is a very important aspect of my life, and I can’t imagine day to day without it. It’s such an important aspect of my day to day, and something that just comes naturally, I often forget it’s there!  

Well besides the air, food, wife and kids, I have to go with the internet.

I would have to say "air"

Born 1973, my favorite Uncle owned a Videogaming-Davice... It was Pong.I loved that thing 

Myself, i started with a Philips G7000 (I wanted an Atari, but my parents was told, the G7000 is better for learning stuff... YEAH, it was the only Device with an integrated Keyboard, but i still  loved the Atari-Games (i also loved the G700-Stuff, too) ).

When, the Route took its way for PC: C64, Amiga, PC.... And for the Consoles... No....I know/own/love all of them... NES, SNES, SEGA-Devices and so on... i love them till this day (XBox One X is the nextt )
That said, i miss all the Arcades and Pinballs   (80s and 90s was a great time) - (I still own my G7000, C64, Amiga, etc.... )

Love the GIF commentary

Ooh. Music. Fantastic answer. I couldn’t live without that too. I listen to music all day and have air pods for when out and about. 

Ooh. Music. Fantastic answer. I couldn’t live without that too. I listen to music all day and have air pods for when out and about. 

Music.
As much as I value the few people in my life who mean a lot to me, in the end I believe one must acknowledge that your life is for you and you alone.  You are ultimately "responsible" for your life and no one else (even for what's out of your control and for those things of which you are not conscious - hence my scarequotes around "responsible" - don't get me started ).  Music is absolutely crucial to articulating both one's life and one's relationship to one's own experiences, and in ways that will never be explained by science and technology (neuroscience explains part of the how, not the why).
In an age where the more vulgar aspects of atheism seize on vulgarity and fundamentalism (and a highly flawed understanding of science, epistemology and ontology) to denigrate the idea of the religious (I'm neither atheist nor religious believer - don't get me started ), music is arguably the most important reminder that there are forces of affect and meaning that will always recede before attempts to contain it within rational discourse, even as they propel us forward to new possibilities of creative articulation and understanding.

Mine was also a ZX81 at home and some weekly lessons at school which involved punching cards and reading paper-tape but for the life of me I can’t remember what we were trying to make the thing do!
After that I have recollections of an RML380Z at secondary school: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Machines_380Z

Wow, that brings back good memories.
Mine was a ZX81 (1K RAM) ... can you imagine that 1K, yet it worked fine, was a friends that he showed me when I visited him.
I was so impressed that I ordered a ZX Spectrum 48 (this was 48K memory) a few weeks later then had to purchase a cassette recorder to connect to it to load the games, I remember getting that on credit and was so pleased when I got it, eventually started to try and write my own games (in Basic as it was called then)
I used to play games on that but got fed up losing all my lives (usually 3 or 5) and having to start game again so started to learn to 'hack' into the game and changing the code to get endless lives.
Then progressed to Spectrum 128+ (128K ... ok you already guessed that I suppose) with disc drive and managed to convert all my games (which were on cassette tape) to the discs and carried playing games and still practise Basic code and then the Z80 code which was fairly simple at the time for me. Bought books and magazines to help me. I still have some of the old discs lying around (some still with the games on and some unused as well) but sadly no Spectrum
Had that one for years and still had it when got married and got the wife playing some games as well, some nights up until 4am (no idea where the time went as ... 'just one more game then go to bed' and before we knew it we found it was 4am)
Good times had with those, but ask me about the code of nowadays ... forget it .... wouldn't even know where to even start.
 

As I am 16 years old, I cannot bring up some interesting old stories as you do, but maybe you like mine, too. 
I started in 2011 with my first own computer, some 300€ faeces from Acer I got from MediaMarkt. The first programming skills I got were VisualBasic (things like a program that asks you things like What's your favourite colour, how old are you, etc.), a little bit later I started with HTML & CSS to build my first website for a Minecraft server I built up with friends.
I kept that computer for a long time, its still here in the mouse, but 2014 I got a MacBook from a friend and started to dive in into mobile app development. 2014 was the year apple pushed iOS 8, the iPhone 6 / 6 Plus and of course Swift, which was the first serious programming language I've learned and experienced.
After 1,5 years of learning, I've worked on my first serious app which was FrostyFashion, a thing I built up with two friends - a graphics design guy and another cool guy who has great experience with server-side programming and built up a great beackend for the app. It gathered your location and told you what to wear based on public weather data. You could also save in what you were the last days (including photos that were synced to all your iCloud-enabled devices) and based on that it made a 50 / 50 recommendation on the weather data and what you've worn before.
This app got around 300 users - only 20 of them from Germany - but many from New Zealand (don't ask me why, I don't know). Later on, we pushed a v2 of this with groups and a party option to discuss what to wear on parties and festivals and so on based on polls and opinions - and of course: the weather and what you've worn the days before. 
In 2016, I've applied for a WWDC scholarship with that app and got accepted, made my first trip to America and got to know many cool people, learned very much about the Apple ecosystem, platform and how the people work there. That year I purchased a MacBook Pro which I financed with my first job offering by a small startup here in Stuttgart, I built an app for their shop based on Ionic.
This is how I started. When finishing school next year in July, I want to do something with programming or at least computers, but I am not sure which specific thing interests me the most.

Mine was a commodore 64 that i got in '86 for my bday (i'm still angry DAD, i had asked for a NES! got that for xmas tho lol) but i'm glad he did, i learned a lot about computers from it (oddly enough not a whole lot about programming lol). I had scratched my initials into the back of it, with an infinity symbol (cause i was obsessed with the concept of infinity when i was a kid). sold it at a garage sale in 92 when my dad had gotten me a second hand macintosh. then years later, around 2012 i was at a salvation army thrift store with my sister, looking around. saw a shelf filled with old computer parts, and found a few commodore 64's and when i flipped the one over i found my initials and the infinity symbol. it made me smile that it was still out there. I didn't buy it, it needed another master .

ZX Spectrum** in 1984, see I'm showing my age now *sigh*
**This was sold as a  'Timex' for those 'across the pond', well it was almost the same machine anyway.
Later on, a BBC Micro. I still code a little bit to this day for the Spectrum too, being involved in the 'retro' scene as such, and we have released a few new games over the past couple of years although they are based on a core engine of an existing game, extensively modified however in nearly every way.
I do not have much of a 'collection' these days although I have somehow managed to hang on to about 60% of the tape based software I purchased 'back then' although I do own a couple of Spectrums and a few BBC Micro's  as well as an Amstrad 464 and an Oric Atmos, all were very good machines in their day in their own ways.
I did have a slightly similar thing happen to me as happened to Matt regarding 'teacher incorrectly assuming' things, most annoying at the time. this too on the BBC Micro as that was used in about 95% of schools "back then" given its general ruggedness and ease of expansion.
 
 
A school friend had one , complete with the plus3 and plus 1 'expansions' IIRC. They had the ADFS "L shaped" addon drive for sure. It was a decent machine, my only real caveat about it was the lack of Mode7 really as the other modes ate a bit too much precious ram...