I'm of the opinion that permabanning people is mean and shouldn't be done. I don't see what the problem with only banning someone for as long as they are a problem is. It solves the issue of them disrupting the site and isn't as harsh on them. A one-week ban or something whenever someone who has been warned enough times oversteps boundaries, for example. They have opportunities to learn and to come back.

You get several free shots in the form of soft warnings.

You get 1 free hard warning.

You get 2 "free" 1-day bans.

After all of that, they finally start to punish you with 1 - week bans, which are pretty severe as is.

After two of those, if you still didn't learn your lesson, what are the mods supposed to do? Up the time again? I know for a fact that some people would be willing to eat a very large number of 1 - week bans, especially if they can time it where they won't be on the site anyways for a large part of the week. In other words "gaming" the system.


Would 1-month bans make you feel better if a few of them occured before the permaban? Because at a certain point, 1 week bans are definitely too lenient.

What about a year long ban after a few one month bans? Would you mind that? Or are 1 month bans not enough? What happens if someone gets multiple 1 month bans, gets a year long ban, and then still refuses to change?



After a certain point, it becomes ridiculous that certain people are still posting on the site. It just so happens that where the line is drawn may or may not be fair depending on the site. On this site.... it's mostly fair. You have to screw up A LOT in a relatively small amount of time to get permabanned. Maybe a single 1 month ban before permaban would be nice, but realistically I am of the opinion that someone who can come back after their 2nd weeklong ban and still get in trouble is going to continue to be a problem.



Furthermore, you may not realize it but people who get hard warnings only get them after doing said activity a lot. Because the users on this site tend to let a ton of stuff slide and just not report it. The mods also tend to let things slide on occassion too. You have to do something really bad to even get someone to report you. Thus, is it really too much to expect that someone who does something like that 10+ times and still won't reform shouldn't come back?

I think that the person in question's ability to disrupt the site is hampered enough by a one-week ban that it isn't necessary to escalate the punishment, even if they're willing to accept the ban to break a rule. Either they tone down their behaviour to the point where they aren't a problem, or they're banned frequently enough that they're hardly on the site anyways.

But if they are in a constant state of 'troll, banned, return, troll, banned, return etc' then what exactly is the incentive allow them to return at all? Infinite temporary bans don't address any problems they simply make them a weekly event everyone has to put up with.

If anything this site is way too lenient on repeat offenders as is. Six hard warnings is an hilarious amount of second chances. Plus as mjack said above the mods here are soft touches anyway - if you manage to accrue the 9+ offenses it takes to get permabanned you probably deserve it.

If they care enough about being on the forum they won't make a post that gets them immediately banned once per week. The incentive is that them being on the forum as long as they are behaving acceptably is a good thing. Infinite bans address the problem in that they prevent problem posters from causing trouble on the forums while continuing to provide an incentive to improve behaviour, but also allow the poster continued opportunites to change their behaviour and come back.

I'm never sure if people changed their names or not, so I don't know if you were part of the YMtC community, but as someone who was, and who watched Kevin do this dance for 6 years without improving (and, arguably, becoming worse) I'm going to disagree with the idea of no permabans. I don't really care how many temp bans we set up in between (mjack's suggestion of switching to month-long and year-long bans at some point is a good one.) but I have seen people who will resolutely continue to terrorize a community against repeated temp bans and refuse to learn their lesson, and those sorts of people should eventually just stop.

The entire point is that they don't.

In fact, over in ye olde DOTP subforum its standard for whoever is about to get a ban to usually get at least 1 topic locked before it happens. Assuming we don't accept pages of bad posts to be problem enough of course.

So you're wanting people to be banned earlier? That's fine with me, as long as they're continually given chances to improve. I wouldn't mind handing out week long bans after a single warning, especially since people evidently think that trouble makers are being given leeway for too long.

nah, I think the day-long bans are an important step. they show fangs without really hurting anyone. it says "no seriously we will ban you" without ruining their ability to participate in the community. I'm fine with moving the goalposts back so it takes more warnings to permaban, but I feel like by the time you've got six hard warnings you clearly know what behavior is getting you in trouble and you clearly aren't intending to stop. I don't believe anyone's gotten permabanned for breaking six different rules.

like I said, I have no problem moving permabanning up to 8 warnings and filling the interim with month-bans. and honestly I wouldn't really mind replacing permabans entirely with year-bans.

I do not think the system needs to change at all, but if people really felt it did and the mods agreed this would be an okay compromise.

to clarify, I agree. I don't think the current system has a problem. but dealing with a couple trolls once a year isn't really all that big a cost, and if we don't send out reminder emails most of the real trolls will have forgotten about us by the time their year-bans expire, leaving only the people who actually want to come back and be a part of the community.

I think its important that users be given an infinite number of chances to correct their behaviour, as long as its not significantly impacting others enjoyment of the forum. I think the issue with kevin was more that the administration wasn't doing enough about him than that they refused to hand out permabans. People shouldn't have to deal with people like him; if they're banned shortly after they're unbanned each time then they won't be seen around much.

Continuous year long bans as the maximum penalty would be better than permabanning people, but it still seems excessive to me personally. A week may be too short if people are overly troubled with it, there's certainly a lot of ground in between a week and a year. I don't expect people here to find giving people an indefinite number of chances as important as I do, though. I just ended up posting my opinion because the thread was bumped.

I get the principle, but at some point I think it's fair to ask not just what's good for the individual (chances to reform) but also what's good for the community. (not having to deal with them until they do.) it's also a question of work for the mods: if every week they have to reban Kevin, and a couple other people wind up like that, they have to wind up manning the revolving door in a way that isn't really fair to them, and if none of the pertinent mods happen to be on when that person is unbanned they can wreak havoc for a couple hours every time before they get locked out again. but inserting a couple month-bans before the permaban (or year-ban as the case may be) seems totally reasonable to me, if that's a thing the mods think is worth it.

I think that the secret lies in healthy mediums. I think that the benefit to the individual (and the people who may appreciate their presence in the community) can outweigh the trouble they cause the community given the reoccuring bans are long enough. The value in giving another person another chance might not be worth having to hear from them every week, but it could be worth having to hear from them every month, or once every two or three months. The mod's workload can also be lessened by increasing the time.

Putting in more medium length ban punishments, probably somewhere in the ballpark of a month, before a yearlong or permaban would be better than the current system, since it keeps people off the site while giving them more chances to improve.

As an aside: It might be fun to experiment with different punishment systems even if it is just tweaking the numbers a bit to see if people actually behave any better under different types of punishments, especially if you could quantify it using warning frequency. There are probably a few reasons it wouldn't work out, but it is a neat thought.

We have actually been looking at the current warning system recently with an eye to revising it. However, from the data we have it appears that there is little to no need for increasing the number of chances given to existing users before they hit the wall.

There are currently less than ten users who have received six warnings and a permaban. Nobody has five. There's one user who's received four warnings and four users who've gotten three warnings. Of the remaining users who have received any warnings at all, a third of them have received two, and the other two-thirds have only ever received one. If you only include "active" warnings--ones that occurred within the past year (and don't count the permabanned folks)--the number of users with more than one warning can be counted on one hand, with room to spare.

What this says to me is that any warning at all is generally enough to set people straight, and a dayban suffices for most of the remainder. The week ban is a shocker, and the people it doesn't suffice for generally aren't helped by any additional rope we may give them after that--they just keep on going exactly as they have been until they reach the end.

so, while I'm not going to quote the actual content of the post, a post was made in general that was clearly inflammatory in nature, by a known troll. I reported it immediately. it just got deleted. while I can't look at the exact posting date now, I believe it went up fairly soon after the thread in question, which meant it sat there for three days. also, while it was deleted, the thread is now derailed by discussion of it that the mod in question did not remove.



PS: oh hey a clearly offensive joke thread in YMtC was just removed after four days.

PPS: my point is y'all need more active mods for those sections.

I highly doubt they are getting so many reports as for the volume to be a problem. We don't have that many posters, and we definitely don't have that many repeat problem posters as demonstrated by the above mod comment.

Unless I'm mistaken, the mods on site wait a little while and discuss these things among themselves for a while before doing anything, and only lock the thing in a severe emergency.

The mod in question was concerned that deleting the response from Elle-Elle might be perceived as defending the instigating poster to some degree, which we definitely didn't want to do. On review, I felt that re-railing the thread was the better option, and the mod's concern would be best mitigated through other means, so that's what has now been done.

Razorborne, in this one instance is right though (beware his sig). The response time still could have been a lot better. I highly doubt that the content in question wasn't reported within some reasonable amount of time. If it wasn't, that's a community failing and we need to work on that . But I think it's highly likely it was.

an attack on a suicide victim was left up long enough for that suicide victim's widow to see it.

that is the least important part of my problem. I'm glad you fixed it though.

anyway, DaleCooper seems to be primarily M:EMfolk, and Kiki-Jiki hasn't posted in uniform since December. I don't know who they are out of uniform, but I'd say that they aren't online often enough to effectively moderate the forums they're assigned to. please consider instating more/new mods for those areas.

in the case of the first one, I can confirm that it was reported in a timely fashion because I reported it. in the case of the latter, there had been discussion in the thread so I assumed someone flagged it. perhaps I shouldn't have, but an active mod in that area would have caught the problem anyway.