Two Plus Two Newer Archives

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- MOD DISCUSSION (http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/forumdisplay.php?f=52)

- - Bans (http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=523703)

For the most part I've been staying quiet about this to see how things would go. But with vB and the infraction system coming it's a good time to have this discussion.

Each of you bans in your own forum(s) for your own reasons, and you guys generally know what's up where you're assigned. It's safe to say you're all trying to do what you think is best when it matters. What you don't see, though, is the entire picture of exactly how many users are being banned for how long and for what reasons. I could try to spin this, but... some of it is starting to seem ridiculous to me and I hope for better with 2+2.

I'm unhappy with what I perceive to be a rush to use bans. Part of this is probably due to a lack of other available options right now. So my intent here is to start a discussion about what else we could be doing rather than just say, "Ban less."

My ideas involve the infraction system and talking to people. For instance, often I'll see a ban with a personal message from mod to user in the ban reason. In many cases I don't get it. If you're going to take the time, issue that same warning to the member privately without the ban. More often than not you'll find that's appreciated and works better than going to war with them, although I do understand that some forums benefit from more public methods.

The infraction system shouldn't start out like I had planned before. Those auto temp bans would cause more problems than they're worth. So how about we make it all straight points and custom reasons? It would basically be:

infraction for x -- x points -- expires x

Along with that we set a maximum level (50?) that results in an admin permanent ban. Additionally, we could add a level just below which strips you of the ability to start new threads. Not looking to end temp bans entirely. I just think they've become overused.

I don't think there's any way to hammer home to people anything meaningful without bans/suspensions. If you're looking to change behavior, you've gotta have some muscle behind your actions.

Why are they a bad thing?

I wish you would elaborate on "What you don't see, though, is the entire picture of exactly how many users are being banned for how long and for what reasons."

Any kind of system of escalation doesn't help much, because even a perma ban just isn't enough to deter people from coming back. Unless the new software really helps make a ban stick, I don't think warnings stop anybody.

Ryan for some sort of super admin. Perhaps Mason's dad?

Bans are a bad thing because they irritate readers. I held off reading 2+2 for a year because in the other poker forum I read at the time, 2+2 mods were regarded as nitty and power tripping. I don't want to think about how many people we've irritated either directly or through rumor. Few businesses are so eager to "discipline" their customers as 2+2 and it irritates people. Whether justified or not, getting banned irritates people.

Escalation backed by temp bans is fine, but I think we are often skipping the first step: warnings. This is particularly true because often times, users aren't familiar with rules like torrents and profanity filter. Even if the rules were clearly spelled out, I don't think its reasonable to expect users to be familiar with all of them because it would be a long read. We of the 5 figure post counts lose track of what the experience is like for new users, which partially explains my recent crusade against large avatars.

I disagree that warnings stop people. I would guess that less than 20% of the warnings I issue are followed by temp bans. Also, with the trend of not posting when we are issuing a ban, we lose most of the deterrent effect.

It was funny and effective when [censored] did it, but everyone tries to copy him and it just isnt the same.

we had the * system and everyone complained.

IMHO in general the mods here are too ban happy. Perhaps its just a function of the B&M forum, but I would venture to guess I hand out warnings & advice on a 9:1 ration vs bans.

I often wonder why some think it is difficult to talk to the user before handing out a ban. The only time recently that I have banned without a chat with the user first was when a warning was placed in the same thread followed by an infringing post - and even then its usually just a day and we include information for the user how to fly straight when they return from the ban.

For those of you who don't know what Ryan means by "breadth of bans":

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...ryCola/PMs.jpg

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It was funny and effective when [censored] did it, but everyone tries to copy him and it just isnt the same.

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this is exactly how i feel.

obviously a forum like bbv4l are going to have more bans than other forums, but the bans that are handed out for "just sucking" are jokeful.

1) iron, how did you do that (get the ban messages)
2) nation, let's not turn this in to yet another debate about oot ban policy, it's not the time or the place.
3) my comment:

ryan, others,

(apologies at this point, as this is rambly and I'm a touch drunk (lol not eating anything and then drinking margaritas with dinner.))

I was one of the first user mods of these forums (I think). When I started, I didn't ban that much. I did a *whole lot* of moderating in threads, PMing users, or warning them in forum about their actions, and in general "little things" that make the forum work well. I really cared about my forum at that time, and really cared about the user experience in it. There were a lot of people in the forum I enjoyed interacting with, and a lot of people there I counted as friends. Since I was very involved with both the strategy (OMG, we have strategy forums? You'd never know since 99% of all threads in this forum have nothing to do with one...), and the social aspect of the forum, I was at that point a fantastic choice for mod. I was invested in all ways in my forum.

Trouble began to arise when a few obvious trolls arose. While to a point, Mat had dealt with the fact that I was less than nice to a variety of posters, I had little temper or time for people who came to my board looking to do nothing but cause trouble. If you will do me the kindness, consider me a Buzz, but ahead of Buzz's time, and meaner. (To be fair, Buzz seems like an all around good guy, while I can't possibly claim the same of myself.) With the advent of people who weren't just being standard asshats in the forum, but were actively trying to "push the boundaries" or otherwise ruin other users' experiences, I began seeing red, and having problems. Users like Desdia, Megabet, and others suddenly posed a new problem. I wasn't allowed to be comically mean to them, and I really couldn't do anything aside from trash their accounts, wait for another account to emerge, and try again. Maybe in the middle somewhere I was helped out with some IP bans.

At some point, modding strategy forum became less interesting and new. The standard editing of posts, and dropping PMs to people who were stupid became routine. And at the same time, people I used to be friends with became uninterested with the game, as did I, and modding the forum became less fun for a variety of reasons (obviously not the least of which was that I was no longer interested in the subject matter). I started reading the forum mostly when I was alerted to a problem thread, and since I had no idea who most of the new guys were, just dropping a short term (or permanent) ban on them to clean up after the now deleted post.

All this, and I was still the mod of a strategy forum.

2p2 at some point became interested in "off topic" forums for many, many reasons. Business wise, it makes tons of sense to just have as big a forum as you can, and honestly the sloth-like pace at which new forums were rolled out, relative to demand, at times bewildered me. However, the off topic forums meant that we had plenty of people here who never talked about poker, and were just here to talk about things like "what to get for lunch on Friday," or "How much do I tip xxx?" While friendship and allegiance still happened in these forums, the traffic has been higher, and the "value" of one poster over the other has always been debatable.

The personal touch of the moderator began to deteriorate.

Stars with a warning to behave replaced edited posts and a PM.

Then came BBV, then B4L.

Almost none of the posters in these forums provide any value to any forum. To say that they are "good" posters in one or the other provides any worth to the forums, or to mankind, is laughable. And while, as moderators, we can appreciate a good joke, it's too easy when someone posts a picture of poop to just ban them and say "thank you, come again." What kind of personal connection is there to be made with people who think that the most hilarious thing to do 16 hours a day is to keep posting more and more offensive things until there's a moderator response? What to do when the average poster changes from a 30 year old poker hobbyist to a 18 year old who is just starting to learn the wonders of free porn on the internet?

The answer, I think, is that the moderators are alienated from the average user. With over 123,000 registered users (god konws how many are actually active), and something like 100 moderators, it's a wonder we do as well as we do. But to wonder why every infraction, particularly in OOT, B4L, and BBV, isn't preceded by 2 or 3 "chances" via PM or perhaps a phone call to the user, explaining why what they are doing is wrong, is somewhat laughable at this point. The inmates in large part run the asylum. They know where the rules are because we are, in large part, very good about telling them what they are. All the forums have stickies letting the users know what will and won't fly, and people in the off topic forums know exactly where the lines are that we never completely clearly draw out.

The fact that they decide that the whole humor of a forum is seeing how far they can toe that line, and then somehow becoming a martyr for getting punished for their hilarity, is I think at this point out of the control of the moderators, as formulated. If you want the forums to be as they are, you can't go forward without continuing to have bans. And lots of them. If you want to give us more facile ability to completely remove users, or want to cut back on what is, and isn't, in good fun in the off topic forums, then I assure you, we can do better. But with greyed lines that are "well as long as my grandmother, if she were to read it, wouldn't instantly drop dead, it's OK," in spirit, it's really hard to keep pace with the current lineup of users to do anything aside from just ban them and move on.

Do I think, as has been brought up in other threads, that we give too many chances to too many people? Obviously. Do I think that just dropping a couple dozen posters entirely would make the job infinitely easier? Duh. Do I think that either making the rules less stringent or more would clean up the situation? What do you think?

Blah. This has all been entirely too long. Mostly what I meant to say is that we, as moderators, can't possibly care deeply about every single poster around here. In the off topic forums the traffic, user flux, and level of "humor" means that really it makes no sense to do anything but ban early and often. The idea that we should or could be personally invested in the micromanagement on a user level, of keeping tabs and dropping "little notes" to every guy who begins to "go astray" is totally absurd.

Anyway, drunk and in pain, that's my opinion ... somewhere in that.

c

citanul, mason is going to need to trim that to fit it the next book.

nick,

seriously, yeah. that was long.

my margarita was like 10 parts tequila and a dash of salt. wtf.

i guess i'm in the minority because i think there should be wayyyy more bans than there are currently.

there are tons of people in the strat forums who are nothing more than glorified trolls, yet i don't ban them because they aren't technically doing anything wrong, and no doubt i would get pulled up on it if i started nuking these guys.

but what is even the big deal about being banned? you suck, you get banned. come back with a new name. if you no longer suck, you won't get banned any more. it's basically just survival of the fittest, where fittest is the ability to avoid posting like a retard.

I feel like I need to comment here for Ryan's sake, largely because I have been more than filling my ban quota lately and may be responsible for this thread more than I'd like to be. Over in Micro, we've been running a ban gimmick for the last couple weeks. It came about because of the appearance of a troll, albeit a funny one, and then a great poster telling him "Less hugs, more bans." I picked that for the title of our NC thread and joked about being stressed out (true) and having an itch ban finger. People made a game out of it, and the gimmick was born. Aussie and I have been frivolously banning people for minutes or hours tops, not for punitive or correctional reasons, but for fun and sport. It's the forum's best posters that are getting micro-banned, not people who are actually misbehaving. For the most part, the response has been fun and positive, generally good for a cheap laugh. The gimmick is nearing the point when it stops being funny and starts being passe, but if you want me to stop this immediately rather than letting it die a natural death, I can arrange it.

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what is even the big deal about being banned? you suck, you get banned.

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Should we put that under the logo, you think?

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citanulforadmin

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Giggle

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1) iron, how did you do that (get the ban messages)

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Ryan posted it a couple months ago.

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The fact that they decide that the whole humor of a forum is seeing how far they can toe that line, and then somehow becoming a martyr for getting punished for their hilarity, is I think at this point out of the control of the moderators, as formulated.

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Generally those aren't the bans that make me frown. I'm talking about regular types of people getting blocked when they don't have to be just because of others. You mention inmates running the asylum in your post. That strikes me because acting like prison guards and firing haphazardly into potential mobs is exactly how I would describe how our moderation is viewed, and I don't look at dealing with what's going on from that perspective.

I'm starting to see a forum that probably would have banned or run me off with some of the current practices if I had not become a moderator of it.

And I'm not really that soft on bans either. I just don't see the point in a large percentage of the temporary ones. Most accomplish very little and only further the adversarial relationship between mods and users on 2+2.

If there are fewer bans I think the ones that are made need to be permanent.

in general, if i could simply suspend someone from starting threads in OOT, i think it would do away with a huge number of bans. it is not like i love banning people, i just don't have many other options at my disposal. believe me, i have tried to explain rules to people over and over and over. it generally seems to make things worse - hell even half the mods here can't understand them. if you think i am going to get into a ten part PM convo every time some tard can't understand that his particular medical problem is not OOT material, get bent.

i think people underestimate how much the cumbersome software on this forum limits the mods. no IP checks, inflexible options regarding user rights and monitoring, lack of centralized info, user notes that are in disarray and sometimes get deleted, etc. these were not things that we could have anticipated needing when this was a close-knit strategy forum - but now that we are a high-traffic forum with a variety of communities and our requisite share of persistent trolls and jackasses, we need the tools to deal with it.

in the meantime, i don't think there's any problem with the bannings as they are now. i really don't want to sound like a malcontent mod, and this isn't the first time i've made a comment like this, but a lot of times we don't get information right away from admins and we don't get new tools to deal with troublesome users, so it bugs me a little bit when, every month or two, people start saying 'why aren't we doing something different?' well, we aren't doing anything different because everyone pipes up to complain every now and then, and nothing comes of it. it's not that mods aren't adjusting policies and trying to be flexible. we are.

if you want to pay me to do all those things and more i would happily do it. hell it would be an ideal job for me. but as a volunteer it's just not something you can ask of me given the amount of time it takes and the relative thanklessness of doing it.

this is why i am excited about the new software. i really think it will give us some tools to do some good stuff and make the forums better. i hope everyone will be this active in the discussions when we actually have some tools to change things.

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if you think i am going to get into a ten part PM convo every time some tard can't understand that his particular medical problem is not OOT material, get bent.

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There may be some misconception about my views on this. No, I'm not suggesting you do that. At most it should only ever require 2 PMs in the current software. Use of the infraction system in vB will help out with some of that too. People will sometimes want to argue with you, of course, but the warning was never intended to be a whole lot of discussion. When I say talk to people I mean that more generally polite warnings would be nice instead. How much you want to discuss with them after that is personal preference.

You guys sometimes mention not wanting to have to do more. I don't believe I'm asking for that. I'm actually suggesting that you do less of something and replace it with whatever else. Regardless, we still need to discuss the infraction system. It's not going to be like some separate thing that can always be ignored or used whenever. Integrating it with how the site is moderated is an important thing to figure out before we get there. If nobody has alternatives for that, I'll go with the 50 points idea.

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but as a volunteer it's just not something you can ask of me given the amount of time it takes and the relative thanklessness of doing it.

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BINGO

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The personal touch of the moderator began to deteriorate.

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You can only be so patient for so long. When POG first started I was religious about updating things like the calendar and so forth, or updating links in the sticky, but like citanul said it's easy to outgrow your forum where it no longer is important to send a personal PM after doing this for years now.

Thats why in STT's case citanul and I offloaded most of the more routine work to first tigerite and bluefeet and now wiggs and DevinLake. It's just too much work to ask for volunteers to give THAT much attention to what eventually becomes really routine situations. STT is a fairly high traffic forum but I expect the problem is much, much worse in BBV4L and OOT.

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believe me, i have tried to explain rules to people over and over and over. it generally seems to make things worse - hell even half the mods here can't understand them.

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Could this statement be part of the problem? My general opinion is that rules are for people that lack the ability to utilize common sense. If people are not understanding the rules maybe there is a problem with 'that specific rule' and not the posters.

I do not venture into oot very often and certainly am not pointing the finger there. I have not even read those rules in several months. I do understand that a few of the forums are much harder to moderate than others. I think most of us would agree that 'the younger targeted forums' are much harder to moderate.

I think permabans should last forever (or at least one year). I also think permabans with users having more than 100 posts should be suggested by mods and approved by reds. A permaban should be a 'ban on sight'. If a user is causing problems and deemed undesirable by reds they are not welcome back under a different name. JMHO

Thank you,

Jim Kuhn
Catfish4u
[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

ryan,

i don't think you expect that, sometimes when i get going i start remembering dumb things other people have said to me and don't really differentiate.

the problem is that if i DON'T humor them for a long back-and-forth convo the result is they tend to be like 'whatever you can't even explain your own rules' and go on doing what they want until i do something that inhibits their ability to do what they want.

i agree, we should talk about what the infraction system will entail... tomorrow. i have a paper to write and i'm wasting a lot of time. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

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BINGO

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Saying you have to ban because doing otherwise would be asking too much doesn't make sense to me. You're more or less making an argument for bans that can never be opposed using that premise.

In my personal opinion, the solution for those who would never want to do anything more is that they do even less. Just don't ban. Let the admins deal with it if necessary. Being a mod has always been a volunteer thing. You only do as much as you want to do. However, you're already doing something that affects 2+2 when you ban a user.

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Could this statement be part of the problem? My general opinion is that rules are for people that lack the ability to utilize common sense. If people are not understanding the rules maybe there is a problem with 'that specific rule' and not the posters.

[/ QUOTE ]

hi jim,

in general, the difficulty with OOT is that it has a particular culture that has developed, in part, out of the arbitrary nature of its rules, and their subjective enforcement by mods. my job is very different from [censored] - nobody wants me to be like [censored] and i don't want to either. but his style still defines the way some of the older OOT posters think about rules and moderation in that forum.

it sounds kind of dumb but part of the reason OOT's core posters like OOT is that you have to put in a little bit of effort to understand the rules and forum culture.

but then when you get too comfortable with certain aspects of those rules as a mod, suddenly you find out people are actually sick of that part, and they want to emphasize something else.

short answer, yeah, it does make it more difficult for everyone.

someone may want to come along and remake the whole forum eventually... being a crotchety old timer i am trying to just make do with inevitable, gradual change.

i think a lot of this difficulty with ambiguous or unspoken rules starts to come up when forums explode in size, like 2p2 has.

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BINGO

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Saying you have to ban because doing more would be asking too much doesn't make sense to me. You're more or less making an argument for bans that can never be opposed using that premise.

In my personal opinion, the solution for those who would never want to do anything more is that they do even less. Just don't ban. Let the admins deal with it if necessary. Being a mod has always been a volunteer thing. You only do as much as you want to do. However, you're already doing something that affects 2+2 when you ban a user.

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well, i can't speak for bbv4l/oot etc. but i almost never ban people that aren't spammers/nosnos anyway.

ryan,

that argument doesn't really make sense to me. if i do what you say OOT will basically suck. why am i a mod if i am just going to let OOT suck? if i 'do nothing,' are you going to come up with a set of rules and decide how they should be enforced, then enforce them?

Somehow my point is being lost about this particular, so I'm going to make it in a way that's not quite how I intend it to come out.

- mods don't have to do any 'work' they dont want to do
- mods must follow the guidelines reds put in place
- reds put these guidelines in place to shape the community and improve 2+2s general image

I'm not asking you to let OOT suck. I'm asking you to find better ways. The purpose of this discussion is to look into what people think about alternative solutions. At this time no new official rules are planned.

But fwiw, I've always been pretty open about my dislike of lots of forum specific rules. That's not something I feel we need to change, just personal preference.

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With over 123,000 registered users

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where are you getting this number?

Ryan,

"- mods must follow the guidelines reds put in place"

"At this time no new official rules are planned."

I don't feel like your position is fair to mods like NT. The whole Lionel Hutz horse porn thread imo illustrated how ambiguous the forum rules are. And if that's the way you guys want it, fine. But then it doesn't seem fair to me to criticize mods for coming up with policies to deal with that ambiguity.

RR,

"If there are fewer bans I think the ones that are made need to be permanent."

You are smart.

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You are smart

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I thought this was obvious. On a possibly realted note I believe I am the longest posting 2+2er that isn't Mason, David, or Ray.

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it doesn't seem fair to me to criticize mods for coming up with policies to deal with that ambiguity.

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I had an opinion so I spoke up. Often I stay quiet because I don't want my personal views to get in the way of my role as an administrator. I'm also not trying to be critical. As I've stated several times in this thread the purpose behind starting it was not to have the discussion we're having now.

Mods coming up with their own rules is still fine too. Just because I've never liked that method doesn't mean I necessarily think it's bad. Also, trying to create less ambiguity while keeping the above intact is its own puzzle.

yeah more or less what diablo said. i know it is just an opinion and i am not being asked to specifically do anything, but i also know that when i keep hearing stuff like that every month or so that seems to go around in circles and doesn't really address the underlying issues, i just listen to it a little bit less each time. and that's not really good for anybody.

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i also know that when i keep hearing stuff like that every month or so that seems to go around in circles and doesn't really address the underlying issues, i just listen to it a little bit less each time. and that's not really good for anybody.

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I've attempted to address the underlying issues here, although I may not have done so to everyone's satisfaction. Otherwise we're in complete agreement about that. I don't want to have to bring up something similar again either.

But to be perfectly honest, yes, if things don't change on some level sooner or later new rules may be required. I haven't gotten to the point that I would seriously consider that yet and it's outside the idea for this thread.

if by addressing the underlying issues you mean the software switch, then yeah, i agree, i think that gets to a lot of this stuff and we will def make it work.

I was referring to that and any other underlying issues.

EDIT - The point here was to put these ideas out there. I understand people will disagree with me and that's fine. I'm pretty focused on vB so don't get concerned with drastic new policies being around the corner either. I'd much rather you guys be excited about the options you'll have than getting down about this or that. I am.

what am i being left out on here?

what underlying issues? are you two having an affair?

Look, it's really just for the best to keep our personal lives out of this.

answer the number question in jim's thread then