Ban Process - the big debate!

Owen

Something's rotten in the state of boards.ie! I think it's high time we discussed exactly how a ban happens, and the process that follows. Currently if a ban is warranted, a few things could happen :

• A Mod can PM a user, and ask the user to edit their post.

• A Mod can ban the user with no discussion with the user themselves.

• A Mod can ban a user, and PM them to let them know they're banned, how to improve their ettiquette, and hopefully resolve the issue.

• A Mod can ban a user, and PM them in a condescending manner.

• The time of the ban seems to be at the discretion of the Mod.

Clearly, this is all unacceptable. There seems to be no policy visible to us simple users of boards for the Mods to decide what is right, and what is wrong in these situations (Please correct me if I'm wrong, and post the recommended process here). More over, there seems to be little or no intervention between Mods if they feel one is a tad more agressive with the ban button than others. The helpdesk forum is full every day with people asking "Am I banned?" - this clearly indicates a lack of communication. All learning process involve pointing out mistakes, correcting them, learning from them, and not repeating them. It's this educational process that Mods are lacking.

I propose the following :

• A Mod discovers a questionable post and PM's the Poster with why it's in breach of the Charter of that Forum, and asking for the user to edit it.

• If the user at this stage is unruly, the mod can edit the post themselves, and ban the user for 1 week. At this point the user must be PM'd to let them know they're banned - communication is vital, and the PM should be business like, and pleasant. After all, being a Mod is a priviledge, and should be treated as such.

• If after the week's temporary ban, the user is still unruly, they should be given once last chance to redeem themselves via PM, or on the thread itself, or face a permenant ban from that forum.

Communication is so so important here. Currently, the situation whereby a Mod instantly bans a user, whether it be for genuine reasons, or that the Mod is on some form of power-trip, they don't try to educate the user in the process. The only Mods I see actively trying to educate are Rymus, Ruu, Faith, and Thaedydal - something that's to be commended. From a negative action such as the above, only negativity can surface. A user will become more unruly, or worse still, leave boards altogether - and that's not something I believe anyone wants. If the Mods say there's not enough hours in the day to engage users, then the solution is to recruit more Mods.

So I'm opening this up for debate!

This is not a thread to air your personal grievances with particular Mods. It is for general discussion only. I would hope that the Admins of Boards note this thread with interest, and create a standard policy for Mods to follow before banning a loyal boards user.

And Mods, for the record, the majority of you guys do a great job! I'm an Admin of 2 sites, so I know the burden you bear. This is in no way meant to demoralise you. It's just meant to hopefully improve the experience of boards for the General Public.

Sarky

ned78 wrote:

Something's rotten in the state of boards.ie!

That'll be Asok. We keep telling him to see a doctor about it, but he won't listen.

gandalf

Actually there is a policy and it is posted on the mod forum. It is good practice to PM someone with a reason why they are banned.

The only time this is not applied is if the ban is obvious like posting pornographic or offensive links or if the account is a phoenix account, then a pm is not sent.

Given the volume of posts on certain forums here it is unpractical to sometimes engage in a discussion via PM, the same goes for editing peoples posts. As a user of the site you are expected to read the charter, its amazing the number of users who don't bother and use ignorance of the rules as an excuse.

In your case I am surprised a PM wasn't sent as Thanx 4 the Fish is one of the better mods on here.

Owen

Gandalf, this is not a discussion of my case, but of boards in general. If the issue is to do with too few Mods, and not enough time, the solution is simple. Get more Mods. Either there's a policy, or there's not.

oscarBravo

ned78 wrote:

There seems to be no policy visible to us simple users of boards for the Mods to decide what is right, and what is wrong in these situations (Please correct me if I'm wrong, and post the recommended process here).

You're wrong. Each forum has a charter, which is a policy visible to the users of each board for the mods to decide what is right and what is wrong.

gandalf

ned98 the system here is different from what you are used to fullstop. We expect the users to post like adults. If they are incapable of that they will have problems here.

BTW I was wrong about the ban procedure being part of the mod charter. But it was discussed in detail and decided that best practice is to send a pm with a ban.

Owen

oscarBravo wrote:

You're wrong. Each forum has a charter, which is a policy visible to the users of each board for the mods to decide what is right and what is wrong.

Each Forum does indeed have a Charter. But you've missed the point completely. When I was referring to 'right and wrong' I meant the ban process itself, not the reason for the ban. We need to be able to see if Mods are following a strict criteria for communication with users, etc.

Owen

gandalf wrote:

We expect the users to post like adults. If they are incapable of that they will have problems here.

Again Gandalf, this is not a discussion about me, other individual users, or individual cases. This is general discussion. Please keep it on topic. It is impressive to see so many Mods posting on one thread though.

GuanYin

ned78 wrote:

Each Forum does indeed have a Charter. But you've missed the point completely. When I was referring to 'right and wrong' I meant the ban process itself, not the reason for the ban. We need to be able to see if Mods are following a strict criteria for communication with users, etc.

Honestly, as gandalf said, I'll usually PM someone when they are banned. The other option, which many mods use and some find acceptable, is to post in thread - this is what T4TF did and if you suspected you were banned, it would have been easy enough for you to log out to go into the forum and see why.

The one case were I may be lax about posting a PM or ban, is when someone post and obnoxious, insulting troll of a post, in which case, if they don't knwo what they did wrong, there is little a PM will do.

You have already admitted that your PM was meant to be insulting, so I don't know what you expected?

To be allowed in to a forum to be insulting and condecending to people to make yourself feel superior?

I don't know what sites you go to where that is allowed, but I'm glad I haven't found them.

Silverfish

ned78 wrote:

Again Gandalf, this is not a discussion about me, other individual users, or individual cases. This is general discussion. Please keep it on topic. It is impressive to see so many Mods posting on one thread though.

So the word 'users' is not allowed?

We expect the users to post like adults. If they are incapable of that they will have problems here

This is a general statement on boards usage.

gandalf

You flatter yourself the comment was not aimed at you and neither was my original post bar my comment saying you should have gotten a pm explaining your ban.

You asked for a discussion and on this forum I am not a mod but a user. I am the mod for the whole Society Category. And as for your suggestions sorry if I seemed a little in your face we do appreciate input like this especially from someone with similar experience on other sites.

Owen

psi wrote:

You have already admitted that your PM was meant to be insulting, so I don't know what you expected?

Can we please stay on topic? This thread has nothing to do with me, nor my ban from the Paranormal Forum. And Mods hijacking this thread to change the subject matter is hardly fair. I would appreciate if you could all edit your posts to remove individual cases. And I will too.

This is a forum for users to discuss the ban process. Nothing more.

oscarBravo

ned78 wrote:

We need to be able to see if Mods are following a strict criteria for communication with users, etc.

You need? You need??

You seem to misunderstand a fundamental principle here: your ability to use this site is a privilege, not a right.

GuanYin

ned78 wrote:

Again Gandalf, this is not a discussion about me, other individual users, or individual cases. This is general discussion. Please keep it on topic. It is impressive to see so many Mods posting on one thread though.

Mod actions are dictated by the rules and the rules are dictated by the behaviour of the consensus community.

By and large, boards operates to a mature, adult population who don't break rules and don't act the ass. The rules and methodology are set up with those people in mind and when someone who doesn't act in a mature, adult fashion comes along, you may forgive some mods for assuming its just some troll and not spending much time on the PR side of things.

By and large, I think a fair guideline is to give the poster an equal amount of consideration and respect as the poster gives the forum they are in.

Owen

oscarBravo wrote:

You need? You need??

You seem to misunderstand a fundamental principle here: your ability to use this site is a privilege, not a right.

Well now. There's a can of worms. I would say that being a Mod is a priviledge, and that that priviledge comes with responsibilities.

Owen

<sarcasm>Would it be more beneficial if Mods didn't post in this thread for a day or two? With clearly objectionable arguments coming in from Mods, it's small wonder why ordinary users aren't posting here - we'll all be banned soon </sarcasm>

Seriously though, users, if you're out there, chime in!

RuggieBear

I'm getting a very strong sense of deja vu

Silverfish

RuggieBear wrote:

I'm getting a very strong sense of deja vu

Do you mean deja moo?

kaimera

psi wrote:

The one case were I may be lax about posting a PM or ban, is when someone post and obnoxious, insulting troll of a post

Ditto. The only time now I don't even bother with a PM is with the aforementioned type of posts.

A PM is a courtesy, not a right. If the poster is well beyond acceptable limits of what can be posted as stated by the charter, us mods are not babysitters and damned if I'm going to point out to the user the RTFC.

Owen

kaimera wrote:

and damned if I'm going to point out to the user the RTFC.

You should follow Thaedydal's example. Professionalism at it's best.

CiaranC

It might be an idea for people to remember that its the users who create 99% of the content of this site and 100% of the reason why people visit it.

Battling against egomaniacal moderators when you inadvertently violate some obscure line in one of 100s of different charters grows a bit tiresome.

Goodshape

ned78 wrote:

I would say that being a Mod is a priviledge

Mod's don't receive too much in the way of special attention, at least no more than any other respected member of the community who has proven their worth over time.

And being a mod of 'Sleeping & Dreaming', for instance, offers me absolutely no extra say in what happens anywhere outside the 'Sleeping & Dreaming' forum. I am a user too, just one that has been around long enough to have seen this exact thing explained many, many, times.

Talliesin

It sometimes helps the forum if a user temporarily banned knows why.

It often helps the forum if the other users know.

It sometimes amuses the forum's users if the mod refers to the fact that they just banned the problem-maker in an amusing way.

It sometimes helps the forum if the recent posts were deleted.

It sometimes helps the site if a user is sitebanned and every post they made is deleted.

Mods try to judge which situation applies in each case.

oscarBravo

ned78 wrote:

Well now. There's a can of worms. I would say that being a Mod is a priviledge, and that that priviledge comes with responsibilities.

I just had the privilege of cleaning up the mess a spammy muppet made in Politics. I didn't bother with a PM.

If I have a responsibility, it's to those users who want to use the site in a constructive manner - i.e. according to the rules laid down for each forum - and to the admins.

Owen

oscarBravo wrote:

If I have a responsibility, it's to those users who want to use the site in a constructive manner - i.e. according to the rules laid down for each forum - and to the admins.

So lets say one of your users make a minor slip up, and breaks the rules. Would you make any attempt at reconciliation, or would you just ban without a PM?

oscarBravo

CiaranC wrote:

Battling against egomaniacal moderators when you inadvertently violate some obscure line in one of 100s of different charters grows a bit tiresome.

Oh dear. Has your tiresome battling left you too worn out to answer a simple question?

Hagar

ned78 wrote:

I would say that being a Mod is a priviledge, and that that priviledge comes with responsibilities.

I would agree 100% with that statement. However, my reponsibilty is to Boards.ie as a whole, not to individual users.

I do my best to protect the interests of the majority of the people in the forums I mod. Sometimes this appears to infringe on the interests of an individual poster in much the same way as a Garda infringes on the interests of a criminal.

The Gardaí are just there to protect the meatworlders from criminals and the mods are here to protect Boards.ie from muppets. The only difference is that we do in our own small way make some of the rules. Once made though we apply them fairly to all concerned. People just have to read the rules and follow them or pay a forfeit.

Talliesin

Slip up, and once off, I'd most likely ignore it if it went ignored by others (no reports, no danger of a flame war starting) and warn otherwise.

If you think that I'm going to do anything to someone Spamming links to their porn sites than kick them out on their ear, then you're pretty damn stupid.

All of this is irrelevant to most users. Most users don't get banned, because most users don't break the very simple, mainly common-sense*, rules that we have.


*Some rules aren't 100% common-sense, in the sense that it's not immediately obvious why they are there. These rules tend to have the largest degree of leniency in how they are applied though.

oscarBravo

ned78 wrote:

So lets say one of your users make a minor slip up, and breaks the rules. Would you make any attempt at reconciliation, or would you just ban without a PM?

For minor slip-ups: warning, temp ban, whatever - depends on the circumstances.

For a troll who wades into the forum and ridicules all the serious participants: instant ban, no PM. I've done this on Archery, for example.

CiaranC

oscarBravo wrote:

Oh dear. Has your tiresome battling left you too worn out to answer a simple question?

:rolleyes:

Owen

This thread is slowly moving away from the original post. What I had intended was for the ordinary users of boards to look at my suggestions, critique the process I laid out, and hopefully come up with a concise, and fair list we could present to the site owners.

Instead, it's become a soap box for Mods. Each Mod with a few exceptions on this thread has posted with - I do this, I don't do that, I don't bother with PMs, etc. This doesn't exactly paint you in a shining light. If I was a Mod at this point, I would be thinking "What's best for boards in the public's eyes?", not "What's best for boards, but easiest for me?".