User Bans and Appeals

[AJ]

Hi All,

In another topic, the subject of banning and appealing bans has been brought to light. I just thought that the subject deserved its own topic and I have no problems with discussing this on the general forums (as opposed to the Moderator Discussions board).

It has been pointed out that private forums are not democracies but OTOH, we have obviously had past situations where users have taken badly to permabans and have attempted to disrupt the normal operation of the forums as a result.

When I was a more active moderator, depending on what happened I tended to give a couple of warnings, a temporary ban followed by a permanent ban (obvious spambots were instantly permabanned and always will be...).

My view now is that if I were to feel the need to permaban anyone, I would probably issue a temporary ban and then discuss the reasons for a permanent ban on the Moderator Discussions board before actually applying it. It seems to me that if moderators do this, none of us can be accused of having a vendetta against a user as we have run the ban past the other mods. I would personally be against asking the community in general whether somebody should be permanently banned.

As for appeals, I would hope to make my reasons for banning a user clear, but if they are unhappy then they have PM's and the list of moderators. It always used to be the case in the "old days" (early 2000's) that ban evasion lead to an instant permanent ban - this obviously makes sending PM's difficult!

Again - this is not run by democracy but I'm sure any thoughts here will help us to decide how to approach these issues if they arise again.

Cheers,
Adam

[iansjack]

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-psych ... eyre-right

[TightCoderEx]

I've always thought how bizarre it is to devote so much attention and financial resources toward finding the cure for cancer rather than determining the cause. In this case, the need to ban someone obviously is as a result of something. My personal take, far too many respondents find it incumbent upon themselves to voice their opinion rather than deal with the specifics of the question. This and other sites like it have an international awareness and that brings to the surface our cultural differences, notwithstanding varied levels of knowledge.

If you find yourself thinking anything other than, "yes this is a question worthy of an answer", then move on as I don't think any of us have truly mastered empathy to circumvent not sounding offensive. After all, that is the ubiquitous impetus to all conflict, not understanding.

[glauxosdever]

Hi,


Brendan refuses to be unbanned, yet he evades his ban? In order to attack someone else that also evades his ban? While I can see Brendan's point of view, this is rather, um, interesting.

However, Brendan is probably right that an "appeals" process would not work, for reasons already stated. And by "stranger", he probably means Chase. Disclaimer: I talked with Brendan about this over IRC some days ago.

Ideally, moderators should probably discuss and/or vote before banning anyone other than obvious spammers. Then, banned people would not be able to successfully claim they were banned because of personal differences and/or disagreeing opinions and/or arrogance and/or power abuse. However, there is still the possibility that multiple moderators may at some point have to deal with a false-positive, i.e. wrongfully banning a member. The probability of this scales down as there are more moderators, but it still exists. Contacting the administrator and/or moderators (and/or ban evading) and providing an apology and/or a proof that moderators were wrong should maybe work, as long it's not abused.


Regards,
glauxosdever

[Solar]

@glauxosdever:

You're right, I mis-read that part of his statement. I deleted that part of my reply.

[JAAman]

for the first ~5 years of this forum chase was the only moderator, and it wasn't until he selected carbonbased and me that he finally got some help with moderating the board -- I personally would never describe 5 years as sole moderator as "a stranger, uninterested in OSdev ... abandoning the site shortly after it was created"

[tempbb1]

for the first ~5 years of this forum chase was the only moderator, and it wasn't until he selected carbonbased and me that he finally got some help with moderating the board -- I personally would never describe 5 years as sole moderator as "a stranger, uninterested in OSdev ... abandoning the site shortly after it was created"

From my perspective these forums began when Megatokyo and whatever came before it merged. If you want to say the forums began 5 years earlier that's fine - it doesn't change the fact that Chase hasn't participated in the forums for over a decade, hasn't updated the version of PhpBB for just as long, never set any rules for moderators (Combuster and I cobbled together "guidelines"), hasn't provided an official position on things like COPPA, hasn't been involved in the selection of new moderators, has left PMs sent to "admin" unread for over 5+ years, and (as far as I can tell) turned back into a ghost less than a week after being summoned by Solar.

Most of what I know about Chase (which isn't much - former Java instruction for Sun, home address, the existence of a personal web site sharing the same server) came from "Internet snooping" I did a few years ago. The forums were down and I was trying to reassure people it's nothing to worry about while secretly wondering if nobody would ever see the site again because Chase had died in the 6+ months since anyone had heard from him last and got curious after searching for obituaries. Note that this is partly my fault (he always seemed busy/preoccupied so I tried not to bother him unless it was absolutely necessary) but I still typically know more about people I meet in person after 10 minutes than I know about Chase after "working" for him for 13 years, and I doubt there's many people that still visit the forums (besides yourself?) that don't consider Chase a stranger.

[bzt678]

Sorry, you are right. This is not the thread to discuss UEFI.

No worries. It's not about having a bit off-topic conversation, it's more about moderators not moving this UEFI discussion into it's own topic, but deleting my questions, even Solar's post instead.

I don't think OS development is pointless, and I don't think Schol-R-LEA thinks that.

Maybe he didn't meant that, but he wrote that, and undenialibly he side-tracked the discussion of why did a moderator deleted a flameless topic.

Thanks for the tip of irc. But I won't flee. I'm not doing this to get my account back. I'm doing this for the community, because I'm not the only one who thinks recent bans were unfair, because I'm not the only one who sees valuable members literally running away, and because I'm not the only one who thinks it's not right that people who hasn't wrote any OS are trying to rule this forum.

Cheers,
bzt

[kzinti]

bzt: can you please stop being annoying and just let it go? Thanks.

[StudlyCaps]

Yeah I don't think this is very productive.

[StudlyCaps]

Sorry for double

I have been thinking, and this thread has convinced me that ban evasion should be against the rules and that there shouldn't be a public way to appeal a ban. Ban appeals should be done in private with the moderators, not hashed out in public. This thread is the perfect evidence that this never accomplishes anything except to split the forum up and air dirty laundry for the sake of personal vindication.
In this case bzt is directly hurting his own case by making it apparent he is more interested in winning fights than being part of the forum.

[Solar]

Agreed; but so far we don't have a way to appeal a ban with the group of moderators, except via a thread on the forum itself. That's the subject being discussed here, and I feel -- conduct nonwithstanding -- that bzt should have a voice in this discussion as well.

(@bzt: I deleted that part of my post that was referring to Brendan myself, as it was based on a misinterpretation of what he wrote.)

[bzt678]

@kzinti: I won't let it go until moderators answer my question, why did they delete my flameless OS/Z topic totally unrelated to the FS/Z topic for which Brendan banned me without a clear warning. They keep deleting that question, falsely accusing me with harassment, even banning me and my IP although I have posted IN THIS TOPIC ONLY and I did not spam the forum. All I did, I asked a question, and I haven't got no answer ever. That topic deletion started this whole mess, lead to my unfair ban, and they have nothing to prove it was right. You have probably heard, "innocent until proven guilty". I'd say not answering but keep deleting that particular question and banning me for posting IN THIS TOPIC, is quite an evidence for me being innocent, don't you think?

@StudyCaps: if you don't like the dirty laundry of the moderators, and you prefer to put your head in the sand, hoping you won't be the next victim, then don't read the "Bans and Appeals" topic. Simple as that.
Btw it was clear from the start they never gonna unban my account. The community has spoken in @Brendan topic, the majority asked for it, long before I've joined the conversation and after that too, yet they haven't unban my account.

@Solar: I know. I was talking about Brendan's post, and your reply to that. Your first post in this topic now is in which you say you've deleted some parts of a now non-existent post...

[Antti]

Btw it was clear from the start they never gonna unban my account.

I wanted to unban your user account. I think voting was something like "fifty-fifty" on the moderator forum and unbanning was (still is?) very close to happen. These latest posts may have made it worse.

As a compromise, I'd suggest unbanning your account so that we can discuss in this topic without having those temporary user accounts. Could you refrain from making new user accounts until other mods comment on this suggestion?

[bzt678]

Btw it was clear from the start they never gonna unban my account.

I wanted to unban your user account. I think voting was something like "fifty-fifty" on the moderator forum and unbanning was (still is?) very close to happen. These latest posts may have made it worse.

As a compromise, I'd suggest unbanning your account so that we can discuss in this topic without having those temporary user accounts. Could you refrain from making new user accounts until other mods comment on this suggestion?

Yes, that's acceptable and I promise I won't create new accounts, as long as you promise me the moderators won't delete my question about the removal of the flameless OS/Z topic, and I'll get an answer why Brendan did that, and why did the moderators (probably Combuster) systematically deleted the question itself in the Bans and Appeals topic.

Kind regards,
bzt