This weekend the community has been asking us about what happened to Hakeem928; I'm now moving the discussion from that thread over here, since it's a moderation and policy issue, not a Magic Duels one.

An important thing to keep in mind before we proceed: as I mentioned before in the previous thread, here at NGA our normal policy is to never discuss or even disclose bans or suspensions with anyone except the people on the receiving end. Basically, if we take action against your account, it's nobody's business but yours. The kind of public shaming of moderated users that can happen when such information is public by default--whether by staff members or normal users--isn't something we're interested in seeing here. The only time we will ever comment on a user's ban or suspension in public or to other normal users is if and only if the banned or suspended user themselves wishes to make the matter public and specifically gives us permission to do so. As such, do not expect this kind of thread to arise every time a community member is moderated, suspended, or banned.

So, to answer the question from the original thread:

Hakeem928 received an official warning for his actions in the Community Projects to curtail boredom thread. In that thread, Hakeem accused NecromanticElf of being an alternate account of Shadowcran*, and when others asked why he made that accusation in public rather than contacting the moderators**, Hakeem explained that he did it because "A full-scale nuclear meltdown Shadow-style would be fine entertainment while we wait for BFZ."

So, in other words, Hakeem deliberately attempted to goad another user into flaming, and did so specifically to gain entertainment from the fallout, which is pretty much the exact definition of trolling and a clear violation of the NGA Code of Conduct:

Hakeem then continued to engage in trolling and flaming; when Stevolutionary posted in the thread shortly after Hakeem's second post, Hakeem attempted to provoke him similarly by insulting him. This kind of goading and flaming has gotten Hakeem into trouble on multiple occasions in the past; it's something the moderators have specifically asked him to stop and explicitly told him he will not be receiving any slack on.

Thus, Hakeem was issued an official warning. As this was his third extant official warning (his fourth overall), he was therefore issued a one-week suspension from the site, in accordance with our discipline policy. (The Code of Conduct proper has not yet been updated to reflect the recent changes to the discipline policy, in part because...well, this happened, and I've been busy dealing with this instead.)

And that's what Hakeem did.


* For those unaware of who Shadowcran is, he's a formerly prolific poster in the Magic Duels area who many users believe has been banned from the site.
** To be clear, contacting the moderation staff privately is always the proper course of action if you suspect a user is a suspended or banned user in disguise.

Can we:

A) Have ip bans for permabanned users, or any other alt-account prevention methods you can think of to prevent people from coming back repeatedly? It doesn't have to be for all perma-banned users. Just the ones who continuously ban evade over and over.

B) Can we have A) for spambots as well?

Sounds good thin theory, Jack, but someone who wants to keep showing up will, even around IP bans.

~SE++

It would at least stop some of the spambots (in theory).

Theoretically it can't hurt to make coming back a bit harder than the 2 minutes and a few clicks it is now. Every obstacle you put in someone's path is a deterrent.

I'm glad this has been cleared up. This entire series of events would have happened just the same whether I'd come back to the site or not, so I'm not to blame. The damage had been done before I even posted in that topic.

As Althalus said, and contrary to what Hakeem claimed, he'd been warned multiple times about this kind of thing, and chose to do it anyway. The sanction was fair, and he's only got himself to blame for it.

I bet that tickles your fancy Steve. Congrats.. you won the Hakeem/Steve war. Maybe you can take over posting decks, greeting newcomers, giving deck feedback, etc. now. You're king of the hill bro.

I'm going to ask that the sniping stop right now. It doesn't matter who it's aimed at--Hakeem928, Stevolutionary, NecromanticElf, Shadowcran, anyone.

It is not going to be tolerated here.

Who says we don't use IP bans where appropriate?

Unfortunately, it's a sad reality of the internet that in the end, there is absolutely no way to keep a sufficiently determined person away from the site without making things miserable for everyone else. Whack-a-mole is par for the course, and it's one reason why we need to rely on the community to let us know when they suspect that someone is visiting the site under false pretenses.

There are some percentage of people that will circumnavigate a regular permaban but not an IP ban. There are also scripts you can use that will disallow people connecting from known proxies or tor nodes from registering. I imagine this works for some percentage of spambots too. Drawback is you alienate people who care about anonymity. There are probably ways around that too, though none that have worked for me.

Seeya round guys

The real question is: what happened to the first 927 Hakeems and how do you plan to stop Hakeem929 from rising to fill his shoes?

Well, it wasn't funny nor entertaining, but in the end a dozen hours have been filled here and on Reddit.
Plan has worked.

I hope Hakeen comes back after all this mess, because - I want to reiterate - this sort of stuff is just the inner self-inflicted boredom inside everyone of us that sometimes comes up to greet the world.
There's far worse stuff out there.

that's classified.

that's also classified.

Well it's clear now given the explanation and I think the ban was justified. It's still sad to see him go and take himself off but can keep up with his channel. I don't think anyone's gloating or thinking they won anything here! This was not a kangaroo court after all but a valid action by the mods based on the postings made.

I've been looking for a new place to post but seeing all this MTGS-lite rule structure and moderation and "this tiny forum is serious stuff" means sadly my journey must continue.

good like brave warrior

the forum still has a niceish community even if its a little anal so i wouldn't leave just for that.

I've never understood people who want forums to have no rules. like, do you like unfettered toxic aggression interspersed with undirected spam and nonsense? is that your ideal vision of a community? because I've seen plenty of forums without effective moderation and that's what they always become. NGA is 2 years old and has not become that, and pretending that that's unrelated to the efforts of the moderation staff is absurd.

what you should be worried about isn't whether there are rules, but what those rules are and whether they're fair. in this case, assuming Alth is telling anything even remotely resembling the truth, which I'm completely willing to assume, the ban is entirely justified. that sort of behavior absolutely shouldn't be acceptable in a healthy community.

it's not like the mods are running around warning and banning at will. they've let a lot of stuff slide for longer than I personally would've liked in order to make sure they weren't being unfair. according to the recent announcement, they've issued about 100 warnings total, which is around one a week. that doesn't seem upsettingly high to me. further, I have personally never received a warning despite making no particular effort to behave, and as far as I know that's true of most other forum users as well. it's hard work to get a formal warning.

I like forums with no rules because unfettered toxic aggression interspersed with undirected spam and nonsense is my jam. (though idk about the unfettered toxic aggression part there are some communities that can get along fine with good old fashioned peer pressure in my experience)

Its not really a question of rules and no rules though, the laxness of moderation is a sliding scale, and this forum is more strictly moderated than most of the forums i have participated in during my lifetime. Probably more infrequently moderated, strangely enough. But stricter all the same.

Not enthusiastic about the shifting of this discussion. Given the segregated 'no one comes out of their corner' nature of the subforums around here, relocating a discussion which is only meaningful to that subforum out of it, seems like a great way to stifle the topic. But I'll give benefit of the doubt that it was an aesthetic/organisational decision rather than that.

As for the ban. Im going to act as Hakeem's voice here (without his knowledge or consent!) and clarify that 'without warning, out of the blue' part of his complaint. This ban took place 2-3 days after the content in question was moderated away, while he was interacting with the community. In cases like this, where the moderation team has to deliberate a decision and get back to it....reach out to the user. Banning them out of the blue, several days after you've moderated offense away is jarring and pressed buttons a lot better than a ban issued during moderation of the content.


Which brings me to some feedback entirely my own. Why do suspensions work like this? I've used these board formats. You can restrict users from being able to post, without locking them out of their account. If you're not perma-banning a user....do this. Attempting to log on and being rejected and told you're unwelcome and to check your email.....is not great at resolving situations without escalation. Allowing them use of their account to view, PM and interact with moderators? I dont see the down side. At all.

discussion of moderation policy matters to everyone.

Be that as it may, since it is relegated here in Limbo it will be seen by few.

Not that it matters, from the time I've been on here, the Mods moderate inconstantly. Which is the problem.