The portmanteau "megalodongs." Can I post this? I just really don't want to be banned any more so I thought I'd check here first. Because I keep getting suspended for what seem to me to be very minor infractions. Many of which I question and I wonder if we might be able to re-evaluate our system of suspensions and bannings. I know that the old site was overly relaxed but this new one seems to be a bit too heavily policed. Wow that escalated.

I would generally agree that I feel the moderation here is too much on the aggressive side. not that I disagree with anything that's been removed, but some of the things I've heard people getting warnings about don't seem worth real warnings. on the other hand, though, somehow I've managed to avoid ever being warned about anything, and I've never avoided doing something because I feared moderation (except for exposing Zammm's TERRIBLE SECRET) so there's clearly some room to function. might it be possible to introduce something in between "do nothing" and a hard warn? maybe strikes for minor offenses and if you do enough of those in a short period it becomes a hard warn? I don't know. that way one bad joke doesn't blow up your spot for a whole year, but if you get like 3 in a four week period that is a real issue.

that said, on the other side, I think that, no matter whether the rules are fair or not, if you've got a bunch of warnings telling you the sorts of things you can't do, it's not that hard to avoid them, so while I don't feel certain warnings were actually warn-worthy, you can generate up to five hard-warns per year without being permabanned so I don't have all that much sympathy either for people who keep running into the same wall. if you think a rule or warning is unfair, bring it up as a discussion, but don't just keep doing the thing you got warned for before and expect it not to cause problems. (not directed specifically at you, pablo, just general rant)

I received an unofficial warning before my first Hard Warning. Something to say "you can't do that and we WILL hit you with an actual warning if you do this again". I did it again and now my account has been level 1 for almost a year.

There is SOME wiggle room there.

In a few/some/many/most (deliberately leaving the numbers vague) of the cases I've seen where people tell other users why they got banned, relevant context is often omitted and the user often downplays their actions significantly.

(Why that might happen is left as an exercise for the reader.)

There is; a soft warn, which is basically a PM or in-thread message saying "Stop that." But with more words, generally explaining what the problem is and why it needs to stop.

while this is certainly generally true, in at least one specific case a user was able to directly point me to the specific thread and post that got them in trouble, which I had seen before moderators took action, so in that case I have all the available context, and don't see how it deserved a hard warn. (beyond perhaps issues the user had more generally, but it's also a user I know fairly well so I believe I have a good handle on that as well.) I'm leaving details vague to protect that user's privacy and because the post in question was obviously enough to get people in trouble.

that said, having been in the position of having to explain why I got banned before (as you may recall, razorborne getting banned caused a decently large kerfuffle back in the day on WotC) while I understand that the individual's recounting will be biased, I also know first-hand how frustrating it is watching the mod team repeat the "yeah, but you don't know the whole story" mantra when, knowing the whole story, you still feel you were wronged.

Though I'm not a moderator currently I was back when the site launched, for the first six months or so, and even now still tend to keep an eye on thing going on over on the moderation side of things.

I'm going to avoid speaking on any particular issue or giving specific examples as well but not only have a seen most of the hard and soft warns handed out, I've both handed them out myself and helped train newer staff and reviewed their decisions for approval.


A trend that I've seen is, as Althalus mentioned above, context is often omitted when a user begins to complain about having received action against their account. By this I dont just mean the context of the post and the thread that it is in but also the users history, both recent and long term. I can think of one specific example in fact when a user was given a hard warning and the PM for the hard warning quoted nine different posts of theirs that had broken the CoC in the 48 hours prior to the warning. In addition to this, earlier that week the user had been given two soft warns coupled with PMs detailing what they were doing that was crossing the line and reminding them if they kept doing it that action could escalate. Afterwards the user cherry picked one post of out the nine included in the warning that they felt wasn't bad enough to get them a warning and then began to parade around "look at this post, can you believe they gave me a hard warn for this?" leaving out the fact that they had been pushing the line all week and then finally stepped over it full force with a handful of CoC breaches.

Another thing that tends to be swept to the wayside is repeat offenders. Often time when a user has been given a series of warnings, both soft and hard, for a particular infraction they don't get the same benefit of the doubt as a first time offender. When a mod gives a warning, even a soft warning, a PM is sent to the user detailing what about their post was an infraction and how best to avoid repeating the incident. Even if its just simple advice like urging the user to use the report button and move along rather then engaging in a flame war or responding to baiting posts. Once a user has received multiple warnings for the same sort of behavior, staff tries to engage the person with private conversation in hopes of not only making sure the user understand what they are doing that has warranted action but also talking to the user to find out why they are doing those sorts of things.

As a final note, every user is always given the options to not only discuss the situation with the mod issuing the warning but also to elevate the discussion to include one of the moderator leads. Not all warnings are final and set in stone, and I can vouch that in the past, after discussion on the situation and full context of the situation understood by both sides, action has been lessened or reversed. If you've received a warning from a moderator and feel that it was either undeserved or heavy-handed then inform the moderator that you'd like to discuss it with one of the Moderator Leads. Its not just a tagline to the warning PMs.


TL;DR :
1. Context of a most matters not just looking at what was written in the post itself.
2. User history plays a part. Sometimes people quote what they got warned for, but omit that they've received multiple messages in the past telling them to stop that behavior.
3. Don't agree with a decision? Discuss things with the mod or elevate it to the moderator leads.

I'm not disagreeing here, although again I do feel like "you don't know the whole story!" is a really frustrating excuse to hide behind. (speaking, again, from personal experience.) not necessarily because it's untrue, but because it's pretty impossible to have transparency when us plebs aren't allowed to get context. I can't think of a solution to that that isn't extra work for people who aren't me, but it's definitely irritating watching people I like get bans for things that don't seem to be an issue.

eh, screw it, I'll throw out a proposal, feel free to tell me it's too much work. have an opt-in moderation log for users. at a user's request, post their moderation history, including the posts they were warned for. (I'm assuming you guys keep a log of this already.) it should be in a clearly sectioned off area, since it'll obviously contain CoC violations, but that'd give a common ground for users to evaluate context, which as you say is important.

You don't really need to know the context to know that anyone who gets banned is:

1) On their second hard warning at least.
2) Has most likely had at least one soft warning explicitly telling them not to do something OR has done something so severe that skipping the soft warning was warranted.
3) Has to have broken the site COC recently.

"It's not that bad" =/= "that doesn't violate the COC"

yes and no. the CoC is purposefully and correctly left open to interpretation. which means there's a lot of grey area in enforcement. whether it's being applied in the way the community expects it to be is important.

I do absolutely agree that anyone who gets banned, especially for a long period of time, should have known that their behavior would have got them banned. but whether or not it should have is a different question entirely, and given what I know about certain bannings, perhaps one that should be discussed.



PS: "what I know about certain bannings" isn't meant to be an ominous implication that I have evidence of corruption or anything. just that, you know, people have told me their side and I don't have any other context because the rest of it has been deleted.

The mods can't be THAT bad. I haven't even gotten a hard warning yet, and I'm Cato.

I believe my warnings have come through reports. I believe that certain arguments I've had with other members on this forum have incited said members to find excuses to report me. I can be. . . opinionated. I have no hard evidence that this is the case, but perhaps there could be a way to limit one user's ability to report another? Perhaps a corroborating report? Cato, nobody could ever be mad at you.

As for Razor's suggestion, I'd be pretty interested in seeing my log as well as having it posted. As a Californian, I'm all too familiar with the inherit problems in X-Strikes Laws.

And since no mod addressed my original question, I'm just going to assume that the word in question is fine. If not, please notify me, and I would be happy to delete the post.

Whether or not a post was reported carries no weight in the decision of giving a user a warning. The report feature is a tool to not only draw attention of moderators to a particular post or thread, but also so that users can detail out why they feel something is worth bringing to attention and better explain the situation, give context, etc. Just because a post is reported doesn't mean that the poster will be receiving action and in fact there is quite a percentage of times where moderators choose that absolutely no action what-so-ever is the best decision. Additionally, the reporter is not given the results of their report, whether a warning was given out or not.

I can understand feeling frustrated at the thought that someone is 'tattling' and flagging all your posts but I assure you that the determining factors in a user getting a warning are the contents and context of their post: Whether the post breaches the CoC, to what degree the post breaches the CoC, and to what extent the user has already been contacted by moderators regarding exhibiting those sorts of behaviors.

Each time you received a hard warning you should have received a PM stating what that you were warned, what the warning was for, and links to the posts that resulted in the warning. If a warning also resulted in a ban you should have not only received that information via PM, but it should have been emailed to the address from which you registered. If you no longer have this information you should be able to contact any mod or either of the lead mods and they can send it to you via PM.

As to whether you can post the information contained within those PMs publicly, I would send a PM to either (but preferably both) of the moderator leads and discuss it with them. I personally have no issues with it as I'm an advocate for transparency, but as I am no longer part of the moderation side of staff it's not a call that I'd be able to make.


As for that word, obviously context matters. Obviously if used to be obscene, to flame another user, make derogatory comments, etc then there would be issues because all of those things are CoC violations.

From what I can tell from you posting elsewhere the word is just part of a tumblr URL and I see no issues with it in that usage.

out of curiosity, how often do mods take actions across forums? like, there's a set of mods for YMtC and a different set for D&D, if a random post is reported in YMtC but the D&D mods are the ones online will they take care of it? because if so that could present a problem with this, because if a user is actively trying to get a user in trouble by reporting them, the mods may not have the context to determine if there's a real problem. for instance, someone involved with the YMtC community would know, when I say Rush is a bad designer, that Rush and I are good friends and I'm just teasing him. but if you don't have that, and the post is reported as flaming, baiting, or trolling by someone trying to get me in trouble, and that's your first exposure to it, you'd interpret it differently.

(note that I'm not comparing seeing it while a member of the community to seeing it as a complete outsider. I'm comparing it to seeing it as someone who's been pre-informed that it's problematic. even as a trained moderator that affects perception.)

anyway I don't even know if that's a thing that happens. just wondering if it is. (and I also picked a really obvious example, there are a lot more available shades of grey.)

If you didn't have almost 3k posts razor I would have to search through them all for the Zammm secret but I don't care enough. Yes I have nothing relevant to add to this discussion, carry on.

While we are asking things we are not sure of, can I put this in my sig? You know, smaller but still.

please don't?

Wow razor, that's a remarkable post count for only being on the boards 4 months.

Oh wait. Never mind. I found the answer in the COC.

That being said, how do we make images smaller on the forums?

Like this!

Thanks for the reminder that I really need to update the Tips & Tricks page...

We have in the past done something similar upon user request.

Except for spambots, almost never. I can see it happening in the case of blatant violations where context is nonexistent or irrelevant--that's what spambots are, after all--but non-spambot issues of that kind are exceedingly rare.