Suggestion: allow users to appeal bans

Zaph0d

As boards grows in active members, perhaps a simple system for dealing with appeals from banned users should be introduced.

The feedback forum seems to receive daily threads from users complaining about their bans. These threads then follow a pattern of aggressive and dismissive replies from other mods and sycophants, trolling of the OP, defensive comments from the mod responsible for the ban and a descent into in-jokes and nonsense. Predictable clutter that makes boards feel like an unfair place.

In natural justice, people are judged by a third party with no bias towards one side or another. Each party is given a fair hearing. The punishment fits the crime.

So, what about nominating a couple of mods or other boards members to be appeal judges? When a user is banned they get the chance to make an appeal in an appeal forum. Only the banning mod, the banned and the appeal judge should post in the appeal thread. The appeal judge, who should have no connection with either party, then decides whether the ban should be quashed, reduced or sustained. As a disincentive to spurious appeals, sustained bans would be doubled in duration (similar system to penalty points).

You only get one appeal. System only open to users with >50 posts. No witnesses or legal reps allowed.

Benefits:

• No more 'Why was I banned?' threads
• Fairer
• Less trouble for admins
• Scales better with growth in member numbers
• Dissuades mods from arbitrary banning

ARGINITE

But would this not require quite an amount of time for it to work and not solve the problem of "why am I baned" threads in feedback.

Tar.Aldarion

In my ever so not humble opinion, No.

WhiteWashMan

.

Orion

How many "why was I banned' threads have resulted in a ban being lifted. I can't remember one. So why would an appeals system be any more lenient. Anyone banned has a right to appeal to the mod that banned them and then, if they must, to the admins. But mods are made mods because they're trusted and I'd say it's rare, if ever at all, that an admin would overrule a mods decision.

Besides I like these threads and the abuse they spawn

Zaph0d

ARGINITE wrote:

But would this not require quite an amount of time for it to work and not solve the problem of "why am I baned" threads in feedback.

users would be informed of their right to appeal at time of banning or sign-up. 'Why am I banned?' threads would be deleted from feedback.

The system should take less time than the status quo. There would be less appeals given the potential for an extended ban. Appeal threads could be locked following a decision.

WhiteWashMan

Zaph0d wrote:

As boards grows in active members, perhaps a simple system for dealing with appeals from banned users should be introduced.

why?

Zaph0d wrote:

In natural justice, people are judged by a third party with no bias towards one side or another. Each party is given a fair hearing. The punishment fits the crime.

the 'justice' system here is organic and natural. it has evolved over 9 years of experience.


youre talking about completely re-inventing the wheel, and there is absolutely no need for the 2 people that complain here every week.
2 people a week out of 60,000.
and its usually the same 2 people.
and they usually get banned for the same stupid things.

Zaph0d wrote:

So, what about nominating a couple of mods or other boards members to be appeal judges? When a user is banned they get the chance to make an appeal in an appeal forum. Only the banning mod, the banned and the appeal judge should post in the appeal thread. The appeal judge, who should have no connection with either party, then decides whether the ban should be quashed, reduced or sustained. As a disincentive to spurious appeals, sustained bans would be doubled in duration (similar system to penalty points).

??????????
wtf are you talking about?


'oh, i got banned for being a twat, i insist i get a fair trial', waste a lot of peoples time.

when you pay me or anyone else, then you can demand that i spend my time on stupid kangaroo courts. but until then, i dont think many people will be bothered.
and you know why?

becuase they system that is currently in place works.

the people that mod are there because they are trusted by the admins to carry out a role that they give freely and happily.
when i start being accountable for banning someone, then you start paying me a cheque every month. when you start demanding my time for some idea that will not work, then you better have pound signs before me.

Zaph0d wrote:

You only get one appeal. System only open to users with >50 posts. No witnesses or legal reps allowed.

why?
are people with over 50 posts more responsible?

why are you talking about a fair trial, and yet you have just disallowed people the right to contribute.
is that on purpose or just an ironic side effect?

Zaph0d wrote:

Benefits:

• No more 'Why was I banned?' threads

no. we still get the 'i hate mods they are all wrong' threads, and then we will get the 'everyone is biased against me' threads.

Zaph0d wrote:

Benefits:

• Fairer

what makes you think its not fair now?
anyway, when did fair even enter into it?

Zaph0d wrote:

[*]Less trouble for admins[/LIST]

have you seen your own idea?
its an adminstraion nightmare.
its 10 times more work for twice as much trouble...

Zaph0d wrote:

Benefits:[*]Scales better with growth in member numbers
[/LIST]

well, we manage ok with 60,000 users.....

Zaph0d wrote:

[*]Dissuades mods from arbitrary banning[/LIST]

how? what are you suggesting we do to mods that give out arbitrary bannings?
smack them on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and shout 'bad mod' at them?


as for arbitrary, what strict rules do you feel we have in place that will accomodate some sort of law and court system.
i mean, if people cannot make decisinos based on experience, instinct and common sense, then they must be based on hard black and white rules.

are you going to right those up.
are you going to enforce them?
are you going to remove every semblence of interest and fun from this website.
i certainly am not.

while i appluade the thought that has gone into your idea, and im all for improving the site, this is far too big a change and it will change everything about this site.
and i suspect you have not been around here long enough to understand where this site and community has come from. there is a thing which i call 'the spirit of boards.ie'.
its a special thing. a delicate thing, but its something that all the mods share, whether they are aware of it or not. its not a strict thing, or a rule thing. its just a thing. but it rules what we do as mods.
and sometimes we are wrong. i admit it. but you know what, we are right far far far more times than we are wrong. and i think we can put up with the odd thread on the feedback forum form someone that has been banned for stupidity.

Gordon

We could just make a big sticky thread for them like the SIGPO thread.

Hagar

And poke them with pointy sticks...

flogen

There are very few bans that occour that should be repealled; far far less than is complained about on Feedback.
Giving users a dedicated space to appeal bans will just enourage them; they may as well throw in an appeal request every time they're banned, no harm done. Besides, I doubt people would stop moaning here about being banned, we'd just see a rise in the following:
"I was banned from a forum, I appealed it and it was rejected... what gives? The appeal judge mods are corrupt with powar!!!"

The admins are and should be the only ones allowed to counteract the actions of a mod or smod... what gives me the right to force another mod to repeal his decision, and vice versa?

The last thing we need on boards.ie is a rise in empty bureaucracy.

BuffyBot

Seems needlessly complex to be honest.

Beruthiel

No
Non
Nein
do you seriously think any of us have that kind of time to spend

RE*AC*TOR

While I think the idea as a whole is a non-starter, I agree with the impression that these threads normally follow, with the old-boys club & sychophants all jumping in. It strikes me as petty.

Zaph0d

WhiteWashMan wrote:

why? are people with over 50 posts more responsible?

No, but it would be impractical to allow spammers and instant trollers to make appeals.

what makes you think its not fair now?

It's unfair to allow a person to judge a case to which he or she is part.

what are you suggesting we do to mods that give out arbitrary bannings?

Nothing. In judicial and quasi-judicial systems, judges are motivated to make fair judgements partly for fear of having their verdicts overruled which reflects badly on them but has no other effect.

Would this be a large overhead in time? Is it more complicated than say the prison forum?

Doctor J

No. Just no to this.

You're just increasing the workload of moderators who do this for free. If my enjoyment of Boards was compromised by having to trawl through ****e like this I don't think I'd remain a moderator for too much longer. If people are acting the bollix they get a temp ban. Simple. You have to trust that the moderators in place were made moderators for a good reason and that, overall, the other moderators and smods keep the moderators in line. Of course there will be the odd error of judgement but on the whole the system works.

WhiteWashMan

Zaph0d wrote:

No, but it would be impractical to allow spammers and instant trollers to make appeals. ?

and would they not just be ignored like they are now?

Zaph0d wrote:

It's unfair to allow a person to judge a case to which he or she is part.

there is no judging of cases now.

and again, who said anything about things being fair? if i ban someone then its becuase i think someone needs a ban.

Zaph0d wrote:

Nothing. In judicial and quasi-judicial systems, judges are motivated to make fair judgements partly for fear of having their verdicts overruled which reflects badly on them but has no other effect.?

but im talking about moderators that makes these arbetrary decisions you talk of....

judges, judicial systems, verdicts?

Zaph0d wrote:

Would this be a large overhead in time? Is it more complicated than say the prison forum?.?

yes. it would be. who is going to set it up. whos going to administer it?
who is going to pay me to take part? who is going to enforce it? who is going to take it seriously?

and whats complicated about the prison forum?

it takes about 15 seconds to put someone in there and not allow them to post anywhere else.
how is that complicated?


let me ask you a simple question.

why do you think your 'idea' is needed?

Steveire

If you want fairness, I think it would be a better idea for you to write a few guidlines on what to do when you get banned.

I don't think there is any advice set out to tell banned users how to react when they get banned. Common sense in relied on, unreliably.

There's plenty of posts in the many threads here which would tell the users exactly what do to, but people who get banned are not the people reading the feedback forum or the people that use the search function.

It would help if you wrote it coherently. You could even put it in the biki and make a community project out of it.

The guidelines could be as simple as:
If you get banned, don't be abusive, or react straight away.

Step 0: Find out why you were banned. nologin.boards.ie if neccessary.

Step 1: PM the Mod. If you don't know who the mod is, there's a handy biki page for each forum on this website with a PM link to each of the dedicated mods of the forum. Just because it's topical (and it's a better page than most board pages), I'll link you to [wiki]Board:UL[/wiki] as an example.

Step 2: If you weren't abusive in the PM and the mod still didn't unban you, and it's a ban for a short length of time, take it on the chin. It's probably only a week.

Step 3: If you were ignored, or you still think the ban is unjustified, consider a feedback thread.
Don't make it abusive.
Don't demand anything or expect the ban to be lifted.
Don't make generalisations about 'all mods', or 'some mods'.
Don't accuse the banning mod of anything without linking to where s/he 'locks threads for no reason', 'bans users for having an opinion' etc.
Don't mention Dutch Gold.

Do say you already PMed the mod.
Do say what you did wrong ('allegedly' if you want)
Do a search on previous simliar threads. Link to them, and say how your case is similar or how you bring something new to the table.
Do be prepared to have pointed out to you in plain terms why you deserved your ban. Try to accept it.
Do understand that boards is deliberately non-democratic. You have no rights, only privileges.

I'm just brainstorming a bit. It could be put a lot better.

Here's a thread from a user who got unbanned: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054894983

There are others if you look around, but that one is a good guideline for a feedback thread anyway.

Others have suggested the need for changes in this forum, but I think guidelines are all that's really needed.

GoneShootin

This problem of "why was I banned" would be reduced if mods took the 2 minute to tell the user why they were banned.

When you ban someone, modutils.php allows you to pm the banned person directly. So all you have to do is something like:

a recent ban pm wrote:

Banned from FS Mobiles

For not giving a guideline price in your sale you have been banned for a period of 2 weeks.

That way all furthur conversation will hopefully be between mod and user. I suppose it doesn't prevent the banned person asking for his people to be set free in Feedback, but it would probably cut down on quite a bit of the ****e in Feedback wrt "why was I banned". At the moment it is left open to mod discretion as to whether to inform the user or not. I'd prefer it was made mandatory.

A cleaner form based banning system with tracability would be ideal, but that's a seperate development project of it's own.

RuggieBear

Zaph0d wrote:

So, what about nominating a couple of mods or other boards members to be appeal judges? When a user is banned they get the chance to make an appeal in an appeal forum. Only the banning mod, the banned and the appeal judge should post in the appeal thread. The appeal judge, who should have no connection with either party, then decides whether the ban should be quashed, reduced or sustained. As a disincentive to spurious appeals, sustained bans would be doubled in duration (similar system to penalty points).

I nominate Amp.

Fighting Irish

How about only banning people for breaking the rules?

If a rule isn't broken then they can't be banned, most "why am i banned" threads happen because the user pisses off a mod but hasn't actually broke any rules so the user comes to feedback.......

Fighting Irish

GoneShootin wrote:

This problem of "why was I banned" would be reduced if mods took the 2 minute to tell the user why they were banned.

Very well said, i asked about that before and said it should be made a rule, but i got flamed as usual

Zaph0d

WhiteWashMan wrote:

why do you think your 'idea' is needed?

I'm going to expand on the benefits I listed in the first post. I have a tendency to be too brief sometimes.

• No more 'Why was I banned?' threads
  These threads are repetitive and clutter the feedback forum. They lead nowhere and are at times cruel to the posters who tend to be juvenile or unwise.
• Fairer
  I had presumed that a fair forum was a good thing. I may be wrong.
• Less trouble for admins
  Only one admin has judged these threads in the past 6 weeks. A large workload for one person.
• Scales better with growth in member numbers
  There were 8,000 members who posted in the last month. A few months ago that number was 5,000. The number of banned users and appeal threads will presumably rise in proportion to the growth in active users, making the current system less sustainable.
• Dissuades mods from arbitrary banning
  Absolute power corrupts. While mods and admins may privately deal with other mods who cross the line, justice is more credible when it is seen to be done. Mods will be more respected when seen as members of a fair authority.

As for the overhead in setting this up - I may be missing something but does this not require simply the creation of a new forum and the allocation of some calm, volunteer mods with the power to revoke or extend bans?

WhiteWashMan

can you go back and put up links to all the threads where people have been banned without good reason?

id be interested to see.

Doctor J

Zaph0d wrote:

some calm, volunteer mods with the power to revoke or extend bans?

They already exist, they're called SMods... dunno about the calm bit though

Zaph0d

WhiteWashMan wrote:

can you go back and put up links to all the threads where people have been banned without good reason?

id be interested to see.

I imagine that bans are most often justified. I am not suggesting otherwise. However mods are not infallible. Steveire has posted a link to a thread where a user's ban was revoked.

RuggieBear

Zaph0d wrote:

I imagine that bans are most often justified. I am not suggesting otherwise. However mods are not infallible. Steveire has posted a link to a thread where a user's ban was revoked.

In that example, it was a justified ban but somebody had simply forgotten to unban julep...no?

WhiteWashMan

Zaph0d wrote:

I'm going to expand on the benefits I listed in the first post.

first off, there is a huge difference between benefits and why you feel its a good reason.

its a good reason if there are issues that need addressing. i dont see that there are those issues tbh.

but lets go through your 'benefits'

Zaph0d wrote:

• No more 'Why was I banned?' threads
  These threads are repetitive and clutter the feedback forum. They lead nowhere and are at times cruel to the posters who tend to be juvenile or unwise.?

well, i wouldnt really say they clutter up the place. and after all, the feedback forum is the place for them.
besides, people will always complain for the cimple reason that you cannot please all of the people all of the time.
regardless of the how these threads degenerate into drivel, they areally are no different thatn anything that goes on in an AH thread. perhaps we should clear AH up as well while we are at it. although, thats an anwufl lot of banning...

Zaph0d wrote:

[*]Fairer
I had presumed that a fair forum was a good thing. I may be wrong.?

do you think that boards.ie is unfair?
in what way?
why do you feel that a fair forum is a good thing?

fairer isnt really a benefit, and it is subjective at best. after all, my idea of fairer is vastly different to yours.
i find that most people are banned for breaking rules. is it not fair that they receive the crime that fits the punishment. the fact that they come complaining here may be a failure to tell them why they are banned. mostly its just sheer bloody mindedness, or it passes the time until they are unbanned.

Zaph0d wrote:

[*]Less trouble for admins
Only one admin has judged these threads in the past 6 weeks. A large workload for one person..

if the admins wanted to have some input here, they would have some input.
believe it or not, these forums are pretty self sufficient. we dont actually need to call down form on high to get gods own judgement. we are all pretty good at working things out for ourselves and as such devine (read: admin) intervention is often not required.

all i see with your idea is more effort and more work and more time for everyone becusae someone who broke a rule and was banned thinks they should get heard.
well, they get heard. they put up a thread, we debate. at what point is their point not heard?

Zaph0d wrote:

I'm [*]Scales better with growth in member numbers
There were 8,000 members who posted in the last month. A few months ago that number was 5,000. The number of banned users and appeal threads will presumably rise in proportion to the growth in active users, making the current system less sustainable.?

why dont you go back and count the number of threads that complain about bans over the last 5 years.
your snapshot view does not include any figures for bannings or threads, so i fail to see how you can offer a solution when you dont even know what the
numbers are.

as for scales better, how do you know?
your rules and judges idea is untested.

how is an untested idea better than a working option that we have right now?

Zaph0d wrote:

[*]Dissuades mods from arbitrary banning
Absolute power corrupts. While mods and admins may privately deal with other mods who cross the line, justice is more credible when it is seen to be done. Mods will be more respected when seen as members of a fair authority. [/LIST]

do you actually think i give a monkeys how i am viewed?
ive been on these boards for 8 years. i ve been a mod for all 8 of those years. i was here before there was a boards.ie.

i wouldnt think i am corrupted. i ban people who break rules. i ban users, and i ban other mods. i have even tried to ban an admin once. it was never going to happen, but it was a point i wanted to make.

and what power do you feel that i have?
and you keep going on about justice.
what is this justice?
yours?

becuase there is already justice being done.
its mine. its the mods. its the admins. just becuase you dont agree with some of it, does not mean its wrong. it doesnt mean its right, but you know what, it works.
really, it works.

and again, if we cant make decisions based on our experience and the situation, which is really what yo umean by arbitrary, then what do we base our bannings on?

rules?

hey, i forsee a whole host of threads on feedback with the title 'x rule fúcking sucks!' or 'i got banned becuase y rule is really stupid'.

and so round and round we go....

Zaph0d wrote:

As for the overhead in setting this up - I may be missing something but does this not require simply the creation of a new forum and the allocation of some calm, volunteer mods with the power to revoke or extend bans?

i dont know dude. its your baby. what, are you just going to suggest something and then wait for some other fúcker to set it up.

come on, you tell us.

as for volunteer mods with the power to revoke ot extend bans, hey, thats what smods are for.
or are they all punch drunk of the dark power of boards.ie modship as well, and therefore too untrustworth for you?



there is no compelling event for it to change.
there is no support for it to change.

and i am still unsure why you feel it needs to be changed!

Terry

Macros42 wrote:

How many "why was I banned' threads have resulted in a ban being lifted. I can't remember one.

yay for me.

WhiteWashMan

Zaph0d wrote:

I imagine that bans are most often justified. I am not suggesting otherwise. However mods are not infallible. Steveire has posted a link to a thread where a user's ban was revoked.

that was actually aimed at fighting irish

Steveire

RuggieBear wrote:

In that example, it was a justified ban but somebody had simply forgotten to unban julep...no?

My point was more that the OP was not abusive, gave information that others would have asked for anyway (previous ban), didn't make demands (did the opposite in fact), etc. WWM unbanned someone after a feedback thread too recently. I don't remeber which one that was.

RuggieBear

Zaphod could request a hosted forum called "Ban Appeals" and be the Appeal Mod.

You could judge for yourself how many bans were unjust and bannees treated unfairly.

Steveire wrote:

My point was more that the OP was not abusive, gave information that others would have asked for anyway (previous ban), didn't make demands (did the opposite in fact), etc.

oops. I see your point now. Yeah, that's a good way to inquire about a ban