An open letter to ILX & mods re: an alternative to the current system

What is the purpose of the suggest ban system? I am asking this now, in a lull, in the hopes that we can reasonably and non-specifically address a potential alternative.

-Is it to attempt to punish or reform the behaviour of out of control or problem posters?
-Is it to lighten the workload of the mods, and eliminate the need for "Ban Poster X" campaigns?
-Is it to create a general air of paranoia, fear and suspicion, dissuade posters from expressing views they fear may be unpopular, and drive the creation of new screen names and socks to express opinions?

It does not succeed in the first goal. The disconnection of the timing of bans occurring from the "offensive" behaviour, and the fact the culprits are rarely if ever told what posts or actions they were banned for renders any punitive or reforming value nil. Insisting that banned posters *must* be aware of what caused their banishment (in the presence of often conflicting information) leads only to defensiveness and a kind of helpless paranoia. It is not conducive to behavioural reform to tell adults how they *should* feel upon being punished instead of listening to how they do feel.

The SB system does not seem to dissuade clusterfucks or meta in any way at all. If anything, the resulting clusterfuck every time a poster is banned, or the suggest ban system is questioned is, IMO, way more destructive. I don't actually even know why it was created, but it has taken the process of admonishing behaviour out of the hands of individuals with, one hopes, a sense of discernment and judgement, and placed it in the hands of an anonymous mob who need never justify their decisions.

The biggest problem, I feel, is that the SB system, although it seems to claim to police *behaviour*, is that it is focused on the *person*, not on the behaviour or the posts.

Also problematic on ILX as it exists, is the lack of any system whereby a user can anonymously and safely report posts.

This is a problem for the moderators, as they may not be aware of what is going on, especially on fast moving threads. This is also a problem for posters who may have been negatively affected by problem posts. We have seen repeatedly that asking for moderation on "sensitive" topics often results in clusterfucks, with hostility often directed at the person who complains, rather than the person whose behaviour is being questioned.

The only recourse a person who does not wish themselves to be subjected to the trial by rubbernecker that IMP can become - is to use SB.

This is not ideal when the intent may be to have the post flagged, or the poster reprimanded, but the only recourse is to ask them to be removed from the site, with no reason given.

Also, there is no *reason* given for SBs. The person doing the banning is never asked to consider why they are administering this punishment - if it is a personal feud, a disagreement over opinions, merely thinking the poster is "insane" (perhaps because they come from a very different culture) - or if it is a valid reason, such as hate speech (racism, sexism/misogyny, homophobia) or ad hominem attacks, or trolling with the deliberate aim of hurting or bullying. An anonymous mob given no reason to justify its complaints is hardly an effective arbiter of behaviour.

I suggest that the SB system be replaced by a Report/Flag Post system, whereby 1) censure is attached to specific behaviour, not just the person in general and 2) a reason must be provided to establish *why* moderation is being asked for (and prevent abuse). This can be in the form of a drop-down list containing the things ILX condemns, for example:
1) Ad hominem attacks
2) Bullying
3) Racism
4) Sexism/Misogyny
5) Homophobia
6) Hate Speech (other)

Note what reasons are not given: this system is *not* for things one finds annoying but not mod-worthy ("you are an idiot" or "I disagree with you" or "OMG, shut UP with the derail/meta/hobbyhorse") - it is for specific behaviour that ILX will not tolerate.

If a post is flagged, it goes into a moderation queue. (I would suggest some kind of prioritisation if a post rapidly accumulates many flags, to require immediate attention and forestall meta clusterfucks.) It stays there until it is dealt with, instead of hanging around for months afterwards like SBs. A moderator can decide on the appropriate response - for example, on-thread warning, yellow carding, threadban, temp ban, etc. - and this response happens within a reasonable amount of time so that the offense and its punishment are causally correlated.

The other component would be a way of letting the "culprit" know what they are actually being punished for. I don't know if this is something that could - or even should be done automatically (for instance, a page where you can see your flag count a la your post count, I fear would be treated like a statscock by some people. This is not the intention.) However, the idea that someone or something can privately tell you "you got 17 flags for racism on X thread, knock it off" might actually be instructive.

Yes, it would mean more work for mods, though it would give more weight to mod decisions, if they are backed up by flags rather than seeming arbitrary or personal. But it would also mean that "oops, I didn't even know that was happening" is never an excuse, either for mods or for controversial posters.

tl;dr - flag posts, not posters. Punish behaviour, not individuals.

p.s. due to personal health reasons, I don't have the energy to stay and defend this suggestion against either rational argument, or people with an axe to grind.

I have done my best to try and make ILX the kind of place I want to be on over the past few weeks, starting threads on stuff I'm interested in and trying to stick to them. But the fact is, my experience of ILX has been irrevocably changed by multiple SB's and it is no longer a place where I feel comfortable, or that I feel is even good for me. I have two choices: I can try to change that which is making it so uncomfortable, or I can leave. This thread is an attempt at the former.

That list of things ILX won't tolerate is fairly unobjectionable, but ad hom and bullying are gonna be tough judgement calls on occasion. And if the point of modding is to make the board a more pleasant/tolerable experience for its users, why would constant hobbyhorsing, for example, not be a valid ground for a flag too?

The reason I don't think that hobbyhorsing is a problem is because of posters like, for example Geir. I don't want to be on a board where that is considered a crime. Hobbyhorsing without rudeness or ad hominem is part of what makes ILX a diverse & interesting place.

The other thing I wished to add is to discern between "meta" meaning discussing the rules, mores and structure of ILX which is "deal with it" territory and meta meaning discussing individuals and posters which potentially is ad hominem and I feel is up for flagging. The terms are often used interchangeably. I am not using them in that sense.

whats hobbyhorsing?

Making the same "point" in countless threads with little to no effort to engage in a dialogue or advance the sum total of human knowledge.

...

1) Ad hominem attacks
2) Bullying
3) Racism
4) Sexism/Misogyny
5) Homophobia
6) Hate Speech (other)

the mods already take care of all these pretty effectively imo.

Note what reasons are not given: this system is *not* for things one finds annoying but not mod-worthy

i don't agree with it, but my understanding is that this is exactly what SB is supposed to capture: low level dickishness.

if the mods find it useful/reassuring to have the silent support of SBs before they make a moderation decision they would have hesitated to make on their own, then i'm all for keeping it. and when they make that decision, they can tell the problem poster why.

but 51 = 30 days, 102 = 60 days automated bans seem to be treated like a force of nature by the mods simply because keith wrote the code that way. and in practice they've resulted in a mixture of absurd and uncool popularity contest bans that make ilx a worse place, and perfectly sensible bans/timeouts for bad faith dickishness the mods could have done themselves. just get rid of the autoban, keep the "suggest ban" button as an "fyi this post annoyed me" if the mods fine it useful, and the system is fine.

Seems fair. I don't think the argument about what kinds of post should get you SB'd has much point, or will ever be agreed on, but the main flaw in the system at the moment is maybe caused by malicious feud SBs or something.

KDT, thanks for a well thought out and well expressed summary of yr objections to the SB system. I just got up and am processing 1st caffeine of the day, and won't post my thoughts on here without thinking them through and wording them carefully, but I did want to let you know that this thread has caught mod attention and isn't going to be ignored.

xp, or something, i think. would have to be a pretty weird malicious feud to get you 51 clicks before a mod intervened.

my impression is people SB it in two situations (1) obvious bannable offence, "i would ban this person right now if i were a mod" and (2) i find this person annoying or i don't like them or the argument they are advancing annoying or disruptive.

(1) is pointless, that's what mods are for.

and re (2), like kate says, having a piece of code ban people when 51 people click for the range of non-specific reasons that no one knows, including the victim, hasn't changed a single person's behaviour. it's totally passive aggressive and it's solved nothing.

but more important point from my POV is it's a bullshit 6th form popularity ban, and it makes ilx less interesting.

p.s. free dom.

Lamp was right, of course, that the main function of the SB system is to generate epic drama.

Saint Dominic of Northampton obviously not banned because of SB or because of a g.d. popularity contest, but yeah, free dom.

A click button registration of STFU aimed at an annoying post has therapeutic value, at least. Would be cool with a more harmless and funnier system being introduced.

as drama goes, sb clusterfucks are pretty mild. ilx is less dramatic than it was.

i think that's almost entirely because half a dozen posters were banned by mods, and has nothing to do with the presence or otherwise of sb.

feel like Karen D. Tregaskin makes pretty reasonable points

yeah

What is the purpose of the suggest ban system? I am asking this now, in a lull, in the hopes that we can reasonably and non-specifically address a potential alternative.
-Is it to attempt to punish or reform the behaviour of out of control or problem posters?

-Is it to lighten the workload of the mods, and eliminate the need for "Ban Poster X" campaigns?

-Is it to create a general air of paranoia, fear and suspicion, dissuade posters from expressing views they fear may be unpopular, and drive the creation of new screen names and socks to express opinions?

1 yes, 2 no, 3 no.

I'm not a board historian so my memory of the situation may be faulty; if I have any of this wrong, please let me know. When administration of the site passed from Andrew Eneff to Stet, he and Keith determined that it would be a good idea or even necessary to rewrite the site coding from the ground up, and took that opportunity to write in a bunch of additional functionality. One of the big knocks against then-current site moderation was that all the policing power was in the hands of a very few, so the SB system was created to let everybody have a say in identifying, censuring and banning problem posters.

It certainly didn't lighten moderator workload, since the automatic-banning function either broke or was disabled early on. For most of the history of the SB system, mods have kept an eye on accumulating SBs and acted on them without any automated system in place.

It's a very flawed system. There are instances of people getting SB'd for being who they are, not for what they've posted -- coming back from a month's ban and getting SB'd for a completely innocuous post by someone who simply does not want that person posting on ILX. I have been loath to delete these bogus SBs because it seemed like a slippery slope where mods go down a list of SBs and say "your opinion is worthy...your opinion is unworthy...worthy...worthy...unworthy..." etc. But the result is people having SBs they shouldn't have. The six-month expiration of SBs has ameliorated that to an extent, imo.

Which brings us to the present day.

Long answer short: I like the idea of the Report/Flag Post system, and the idea of censuring posts, rather than posters. I do think it would be a huge improvement on the current SB system. It totally throws the ball into stet's court, though.

I won't comment further on the devil-in-the-details of a Flag Post system until stet has weighed in on it. But I do agree that there are enough problems with the SB system to consider scrapping it for something better.

I don't see any issues with the sb system and I see no reason to change it. This is like the tenth thread we've had about this, and I would prefer not to do all this over again, but if we have to, I'll go ahead and bring up the same arguments we have every time.

cosign with jjjusten

arguing abt it is completely pointless tho, people who hate SB are resolute & people who don't see a problem with it think the objectors minimize the problems created by people who constantly attack, derail, obstruct, etc

i do think though that anybody who coded an alternate system would get a fair hearing tho. not described what the code might do, but coded it themselves. it would be a lot of work, but not really much more work than participating in heated anti-SB threads.

n/f jaundy slobs on mod's knobs

i mostly wish that the mods hadnt implemented an expiration d8 on sbs - wouldve been lol to see who the last non mod standing was as all regs slowly got 51. as it stands nowwwww feel like you have to be p socially retarded not to get why ppl h8 u but i guess 'being socially retarded' may well be the reason so many ppl h8 u

wld LOVE to force ppl to give reasonings behind sb - this is only for lulz - wld sb p much everyone of this was the case fyi

I like Lamp's stance on this because it's this very benign sort of berzerker sociopathy

I think the SB system is better than nothing, but I also think KDT makes legit points.

yeah, i've seen post flagging (v user flagging) work well on other boards. makes a ton of sense imo

foursquare with jjusten here. not sure what new points have been raised, though it's useful to start a new thread for each poster who has a problem with the sb system, definitely.

maybe tuomas can start his own one when w're done here, then whiney then gabbneb then lj twice, then etc

not sure what new points have been raised,

flagging posts instead of posters has been brought up before?

Re: post flagging - that's how sb works tho, mods can see which posts have been sbed - so not really sure what the difference here would be.

because there's no accumulated point system to notifications.

the difference is the user is aware of flag not just mods (xp)

i would hazard the guess that most of the people who get 30 day timeouts don't really give a shit if they piss people off, because ILX isn't that crucial a part of their well-being.

and - so if we implement this post flagging thing, we can have clusterfuck threads about flagged posts!

simply letting people see how many sb's they have would address a lot of the complaints about the current system with minimal extra work (as compared to a whole new system, flagging posts, etc)

i would hazard the guess that most of the people who get 30 day timeouts don't really give a shit if they piss people off, because ILX isn't that crucial a part of their well-being

i guess thats why so many of them still read it all the time & use intermediaries to post shit

there's a difference between a habitual distraction and crucial part of one's well-being

just sb'd you in the interest of field testing this theory

LOL!

idk a clusterfuck about the content of a flagged post would at least be more interesting and productive than another clusterfuck about the validity of abstract sbs

4 billion xps to sarahel

limited no of sb's you can give in 6 months, say 51?

but i'm pretty sure all of this has been discussed.

the 'flag a post, not a poster' idea just throws it back on the mods to do what they've always done, and there were neither fewer bannings nor fewer dramas back then.

well, yeah, it would definitely be more interesting, hoos, but some people want there to be as few meta clusterfucks as possible.

but we're having them anyway! give the kids the condoms!

^ the pope

Just as long as it all goes in the Admin Log

we were having them before anyway, ffs. we'll have them anyway under any system. but this way a fairly large number of board users each register the decision, as opposed to jjusten or hi dere getting dog's abuse for perfectly legit bannings from a message board.

do you honestly believe i'm arguing against the proliferation of meta clusterfucks?

as your pope i think yes

forgive me your holiness for i have sinned ...

do you honestly believe i'm arguing against the proliferation of meta clusterfucks?

wait, are you arguing FOR them?

i will let my pope speak for me.

yes

claro que si

I love this argument that clearly the SB system continues to work completely perfectly, because we have clearly absolutely 0 clusterfucks any more, no problems, everyone comes back from their 30 days perfectly behaving themselves and no one ever gets SB'd multiple times because they have magically via ESP been completely reformed and come back as magically better people (not at all bitter or angry or even just repeating the same things.) Yes! This is completely the truuuuuuuuuuuuth. In a magical wonderland that has nothing to do with ILX as it is right now.

The inherent denial of this kind of conservatism - "everything is working perfectly, there is no reason to change it!" - is almost comical. Because this is seriously just classic right-wing authoritarianism "this is the way it is, it works just fine, and we have to follow it, and never change it, because this is the way the authority made it."

John Justen's "I don't have any problem at all, with this thing - that I am, by the way, totally exempt from ever facing - therefore we do not have to discuss it ever again" is just the very essence of totally blind conservatism, and to me, seems perhaps a sign that he is facing some kind of moderator fatigue if he blindly resists any change or discussion over moderation policy.

No, I am not completely "socially retarded" (nice ablism there) - I am certainly aware that people "H8" me. However, attempting to detangle the threads of those who H8 me for things I cannot change (I am a woman, I'm mentally ill, I might even be a bit autistic by Lamp's lofty standards) from those who H8 me for ridiculous things (because I like Aphex Twin a bit too much, before I think Madonna is better than the Beatles, because I think Slowdive are worse than Hitler) from those who H8 me for politically motivated opinions I foolishly believe should be covered by free speech (because I am not an atheist, because I believe all-male all-white canons are socially rather than aesthetically motivated, because I believe in crazy things like feminism and resisting rape culture and HAES and fat acceptance and neurodiversity and am suspicious of psychopharmaceuticals) - I'm sorry, but if you can manage to detangle the valid "can you not do this, please?" H8 from the yapping tools "OMG crazy cat lady masonic boom tin hats oh noes!" H8 that gets handed on casually on ILX then - mister, you're a better man than I. There is no way to please everyone on ILX. Save maybe for never, ever venturing an opinion, and what kind of messageboard would that create?

From the mere fact that the same people get banned again, and the same behaviour recurs again and the same threads get started again - it seems perfectly clear that it doesn't do what you think it does. And "it works just fine, we're not changing it" is simply not an adequate response when it does not work.

I'm not saying "get rid of suggest ban, bring back the permabanned posters, let's have anarchy" - I'm saying "this could be a better system which might actually be more effective at controlling destructive behaviour while keeping ILX interesting and vibrant, not a paranoid popularity contest."

You're right, you don't have to listen. After all, you can vote me off, but I can't vote you off, John Justen. But it is not an invalid conversation because you are "bored of it."

i mean - who really thinks that scrapping sb for flagging posts is going to result in fewer meta clusterfucks? Instead of "why was dude banned?" it'll be "why did that post get flagged?"

i'm pretty sure that flagging posts vs. suggest ban will likely have the same effect -- if someone feels attacked/targeted/disliked by being sb-ed, then having their posts flagged, and the community response to that will probably result in the same feelings. Like, "How come when I posted that I got flagged, but when another ilxor posted the same thing, that post didn't get flagged?"

well given that "why was dude banned?" has often been answered with "here look at this post right here", i'm not sure that really stands up. i mean, the nice thing about flagging posts is that, generally, the offense is pretty clearly spelt out, with words and letters and everything.

xp

i will let my pope speak for me.

― sarahel, Sunday, November 21, 2010 3:13 PM (5 minutes ago)

I really would like the answer straight from you.

obv it won't -- obv the idea that multiple sb victims like jagger/whiney/cankles etc would be 'reformed' by a post flagging system is absurd -- the sb system does that better because after your second sb you get threatened w/ being kicked off the board

yeah, gbx, but how often is that the end of the discussion/clusterfuck?

I love this argument that clearly the SB system continues to work completely perfectly, because we have clearly absolutely 0 clusterfucks any more, no problems,

the response to that is that those things always happened, under any system. you'll need more justification than that, because i'm pretty sure that there's been lass clusterfuckery since sb came in?

everyone comes back from their 30 days perfectly behaving themselves and no one ever gets SB'd multiple times because they have magically via ESP been completely reformed and come back as magically better people (not at all bitter or angry or even just repeating the same things.) Yes! This is completely the truuuuuuuuuuuuth. In a magical wonderland that has nothing to do with ILX as it is right now.

it's unfortunately not the truth, but tbh it's not up to the rest of us how anyone wants to behave on ilx. we do have the sb utton though, maybe people should take that into account? i dunno.

altho tbf i sb kate and every woman on the board because i hate women -- somehow i wish they would understand this better

i feel like everyone should have to enter demographic info, and then we could just across the board sb all users that based on demographic info that we find distasteful, because of how everyone sbs kate because she's a woman

WmC - I was previously banned for engaging in meta-clusterfuckery. I was making a joke based on my "reputation"

altho tbf i sb kate and every woman on the board because i hate women -- somehow i wish they would understand this better

― J0rdan S., Sunday, November 21, 2010 3:26 PM (1 second ago)

I would like to request a conversation of civility and earnestness, not snark.

those who H8 me for things I cannot change (I am a woman)

earnestness!

-Flagging a post means that a problem is dealt with, there and then, rather than up to 6 months later, which the current SB system allows

-Flagging a post tells the "culprit" that "it was this post here, where you called Poster X a hairy goatfucker which made 17 people flag you for bestiality" instead of them desperately thinking "what was it? was it that time I told Dan he had dangleberries? was it the time I picked Revolver over Sgt Pepper? was it the time I got a bit heated over Cameron/Clegg slash? Or something I've completely forgotten I even said?" You can pretend people know exactly what the problem was. They don't.

-Flagging a post not a poster means that the focus is on *behaviour* not on the individual. Because even me, crazy cat lady that everyone HAAAAAAAAATES, starts threads about Astronomy Picture of the Day or shit that lots of people enjoy. Almost every poster on this board is capable of *both* clusterfuckery *and* good fun threads with pithy posts. The SB system as it is makes no differentiation. It could, and it should.

god grant me the serenity ...

if you annoy 51 different ppl in any 'community', seems fair that those 51 ppl can have a break from you for a month or so

Hey, I've just given my first SB in this thread. I wish I had been able to just flag up "I find this post unacceptable" instead, but I don't have that option.

Now I'm going to go, because you are really getting on my damn fibroids, Jordan.

Hey, I've just given my first SB in this thread. I wish I had been able to just flag up "I find this post unacceptable" instead, but I don't have that option.

Now I'm going to go, because you are really getting on my damn fibroids, Jordan.

― Karen D. Tregaskin, Sunday, November 21, 2010 3:31 PM (1 second ago) Bookmark

flagged this post for bestiality

to accept the things i can't change ...

actually i should stop the snark -- i flagged the post because i hate you because you're a woman that resists rape culture

the courage to change the things i can ...

j0rdan srsly, yr gonna get tempbanned if you carry on thusly

Ok Kate as a vocal opponent of sb, please explain to me why you have given out over 30 of them, because that seems pretty counterintuitive to me.

and the wisdom to know the difference between the two

many xposts but i'm w/kate here

main difference is that ~flagging~ anonymously happens silently, and is only visible to the mods. they can then investigate the offending post, and decide from there if it merits further action. if ppl lol flag a post from an ilxor they personally dislike, it'll be pretty obvious to whatever moderators check it out. SBs can accumulate for reasons that have nothing do w/actually offensive behavior (by ilx community standards), and once they fire, they fire. but if a poster keeps getting innocuous posts flagged, they won't necessarily get the boot.

what's funny is that the anonymity of SBing is why it can be misused, but is also precisely why flagging is a good idea. if someone thinks a post is offensive for maybe personal reasons, they should be able to raise the alarm w/o starting a mod request thread saying "i think, personally, that this post is gross/racist/whatever" and inviting recrimination. or having to email a mod directly, etc.

I have tempbanned J0rdan

calling people by their real SBs when shit gets heated

Suggest Ban Permalink

if you annoy 51 different ppl in any 'community', seems fair that those 51 ppl can have a break from you for a month or so

― Ward Fowler, Sunday, November 21, 2010 3:31 PM (56 seconds ago) Bookmark

what if there are 500 people who don't want you banished? where is their vote?

xp - i was unclear on whether the flagging would be public or private

i think the mods should come up with a system that changes for each individual so that nobody ever gets banned, except for the things i want them to get banned for.

^^^ nail on the head

An ideal outcome right now would be several people flagging Jordan for "ad hominem" and a helpful mod comes along, yellow cards him saying "enough snark" and then threadbans him if he doesn't knock it off.

Wouldn't that produce a better immediate outcome than him just getting SB'd two weeks down the road when everyone's forgotten what this thread was even about?

amen

would like to register protest at jordan getting tempbanned for lowerin himself to the tone of the debate

those 500 people are all socks tho
xps

In the heat of passionate clusterfucks, won't people get even more defensive and then irate if they're all of a sudden notified that they're offending people? Maybe not, I'm just spitballing here.

would like to hear from my pope on this matter tbrr

x-post thank you WmC

dmac did you actually read what j0rdan was saying? come on man

j0rdan was being a dick in this thread

like, I <3 the guy usually but he's the only person who's ever driven me to SB out of rage - his handling of sensitive meta-debate is inflammatory at best

i read all the posts lj.

J0rdan: unless another mod unbans you, you're gone for 15 days. A polite request was made, you ignored it. then you made a rape joke to someone who's made it clear that she's a rape survivor. why shouldn't this be a permaban?

because a permaban would be way too harsh

An ideal outcome right now would be several people flagging Jordan for "ad hominem" and a helpful mod comes along, yellow cards him saying "enough snark" and then threadbans him if he doesn't knock it off.

I find your constant statements that the general posting public sbs you for being a woman far far more insulting and offensive than anything j0rdan said on this thread.

Hey, I've just given my first SB in this thread. I wish I had been able to just flag up "I find this post unacceptable" instead, but I don't have that option.

this time next week k8 is giving sb's for lols & loving it, gateway drugs are a whole thing man

xps wow

for real, from a purely "what is modding for" perspective, SBs don't make as much sense as flags. if the intent of modding is to keep things relatively civil (according to community standards, obv...derails are a part of ilx, but obv wouldn't be tolerated on loads of other boards), then letting the community police itself by anonymous tipline makes more sense than automatic jailtime given w/o evaluation. i know kate has maybe played up the "omg everyone hates me!" thing, but i guarantee she's holding SBs for no reason other than ppl think she's irritating, which is whack.

that being said: the hugest obstacle to all of this is, as it always is, actually implementing it. i can't program for shit, so unless stet or whoever thinks flags are a dece idea and feel like pursuing it, i think we're stuck with what we've got

An ideal outcome right now would be several people flagging Jordan for "ad hominem" and a helpful mod comes along, yellow cards him saying "enough snark" and then threadbans him if he doesn't knock it off.

Wouldn't that produce a better immediate outcome than him just getting SB'd two weeks down the road when everyone's forgotten what this thread was even about?

― Karen D. Tregaskin, Sunday, November 21, 2010 3:35 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

guys this is srsly the most reasonable thing itt, kate is otm

jordan's post was out of order, a threadban would definitely have been merited were it possible, but before it's painted as a rape joke lol fuck that guy, it was actually a direct response to two or three items KDT's list of all the reasons she might have been sb'd in the past, all of which were pretty damned facetious and in line with the tone of forced confusion that permeates this thread.

xp what jjj said.

from st4ckoverflow.com:

What if I see bad things happening?

Please use our flagging system to let us know about it. Each comment has a small flag icon, and every post has a flag menu at the bottom. Take advantage of it! We actively moderate our community, but we need your help to do so. Anything that is getting consistently flagged by our community members will be investigated and followed up on. And of course you can always email us directly if you feel the matter is extremely urgent.

hold on, 30 sbs issued sounds like a lot to me - is that a lot? is there an average?

a threadban was possible; I gave a sitewide tempban instead

stet or whoever thinks flags are a dece idea and feel like pursuing it, i think we're stuck with what we've got

^^^ real talk

I mean as I said earlier, I'm guessing anybody on here could learn to code but they "don't have enough time" or w/e (as if the mods here don't have day jobs & lives & sometimes kids & plenty of other shit they could be doing...oh no am I kissing mods' asses by not being a knee-jerk infantile cockface to them? sry Lamp wld h8 to disappoint u) -- if you won't take the time to use yr god-given brain to design a new system & offer it up, then you don't have any complaint coming, is my opinion -- and I know everybody was v. keen to learn what my opinion was so now u have it

automatic jailtime given w/o evaluation

Again, this isn't how it works. Mods review every post when someone gets 51ed.

main difference is that ~flagging~ anonymously happens silently, and is only visible to the mods. they can then investigate the offending post, and decide from there if it merits further action. if ppl lol flag a post from an ilxor they personally dislike, it'll be pretty obvious to whatever moderators check it out. SBs can accumulate for reasons that have nothing do w/actually offensive behavior (by ilx community standards), and once they fire, they fire. but if a poster keeps getting innocuous posts flagged, they won't necessarily get the boot.

what's funny is that the anonymity of SBing is why it can be misused, but is also precisely why flagging is a good idea. if someone thinks a post is offensive for maybe personal reasons, they should be able to raise the alarm w/o starting a mod request thread saying "i think, personally, that this post is gross/racist/whatever" and inviting recrimination. or having to email a mod directly, etc.

Yes, exactly. The flagging is done silently, so the flagger doesn't have to survive the trial by rubbernecking on threads like this, but mods can see who it is doing it, to make sure it isn't being abused.

In the heat of a *passionate* clusterfuck, I think perhaps a temporary threadban until the clusterfuck dies down and the poster becomes calm again is a lot better than just hitting them with a random banhammer, maybe weeks later. Yes, that requires a judgement call on *who*, precisely is clusterfucking (or if someone is reacting to provocation, or whatever) but I'd much rather that, than the paranoia-inducing random banhammer. And you can also see what posts *don't* get you flags.

Like, believe it or not, some people on ILX find it quite hard to make political or personal statements. I have had people email me and say "thank you for saying that, I don't feel comfortable getting involved, but I'm glad you said something" - if *these* people are free of the fear of getting SB'd, you might hear their voices instead of just the usual people shouting the most frequently.

xp - why j0rdan shouldn't be permabanned -

It was a dickish way of putting it, but I think what K was accusing people of was potentially offensive, and to me, ridiculous -- because if people were banning for those reasons, the banned would be demographically different. J0rdan was pointing out the ridiculousness of these assertions, not making rape jokes.

but i mean, if a thread was started now calling WmC all sorts of names and demanding satisfaction for the fallen, would it follow that we need a new style of modding than what was used in this specific circumstance?

it seems that this entire thread is based on "people" not understanding why they are suggest banned.

it's a position that's either disingenuous or shockingly clueless.

either way.

I an also opposed to j0rdan being site wided but I am am posting from iPhone so I can't actually reverse it at the moment.

i'd say jordan feels at least as sore as anyone who's been sb'd, i wonder will he come back reformed.

yeah it's actually not hard to avoid the appearance of impropriety w/that word & I <3 J0rdan, like a lot, that is my dude, but having said that, ppl who deploy the word "rape" as if it weren't heavily loaded need to check themselves a little -- it's really not hard to say to oneself "let me treat that whole concept as if use of the term could really hurt someone's feelings, and let me try to avoid being that hurtful person"

^

people everywhere? or just y'know, jordan.

back to the number of sb's given: I'm a pretty regular poster and I think I've only sb-ed 3 people in the past year.

ok i'm being a dick now. self threadban, need to go bail out my country anyhoos. i'm with jjj all the way here

xp everybody

treat "rape" like you'd treat a racial epithet imo - if you haven't been raped, you can't actually fathom what the word feels like, so stfu with your "I didn't mean that"

imo

(04:42:27 PM) Jordan Sargent: this is my message
(04:46:56 PM) Jordan Sargent: i'm having hoos post this because wmc is addressing me directly, even tho he banned me sitewide for two weeks thus disallowing me from responding. i was being a dick, obviously, but kate's insistence that she's the victim of rampant ilx misogyny is insulting to me personally, as someone that has sb'd her for other reasons and doesn't hate women. i was being purposefully antagonistic cuz that's how i deal with things on the board that i think are utterly ridiculous, and i figured i would get banned from the thread, because i assume that's why thread bans exists. to ban people from one thread where they are being, for example, arguably needlessly antagonistic. but what do i know? as for knowing about kate's past history and personal life, i don't know her like that, so i saw no reason to act with excessive caution. my bad, on that front.

J0rdan was pointing out the ridiculousness of these assertions, not making rape jokes.

― sarahel, Sunday, November 21, 2010 3:45 PM (5 minutes ago)

It seemed to me that he was pointing out whatever he was pointing out BY making rape jokes.

xp -- ok, I'm converting your sitewide 15-day to a threadban

Yeah but I think also js might have been bristling a bit at the ops continual characterization of ilxors as the sort of people who would sb people for being women or opposing rape culture, which infuriates me.

Xposts obv. Thx wmc

i once made an unfortunate and regrettable post that incensed a particular ilxor, who joke-threatened me with an uzi (no harm no foul imo, we cool). he had every right to be pissed, and while i don't know if it earned me a SB, i'd hazard that if one was given it was less of a "this guys shouldn't post here ever again" and more a "this is the only option i have to officially register my feelings that that was 'not cool' and should be considered unacceptable behavior".

and w/r/t to implementation: presumably clicking suggest ban just rolls over a counter that's associated with a given user. i'm not a DB dude at all, but wouldn't a "flag" button just roll over a counter associated with a given post? honest q: how hard would it be to add another field? also, like SBs, you could set a threshold: post wouldn't come to the attention of the mods unless it got flagged by X number of ppl. that way, if kate stumbled into oh i don't know an autogoon thread and flagged the shit out of it, there wouldn't be repercussions for everyone involved because, most of the time, the only ppl IN THOSE THREADS are goons who don't care much if ppl make outlandish or off color jokes.

xp waaaay behind here

js might have been bristling a bit at the ops continual characterization of ilxors as the sort of people who would sb people for being women or opposing rape culture, which infuriates me

Yeah, it reads like a multiple ad hom to me, I do understand a lot of KDT's frustration but tarring dozens of people with a pretty unpleasant brush is not a good look either.

basically i agree with aeroflot in that modding is a thankless job and that the system mostly works as it is currently implemented. but since i ~don't~ know whether or not flagging has been considered by stet/keith/et al, and since i'm pretty sure it would ~work better~, i think it's worthwhile to discus

this doesn't have to be a referendum on SBs, instead maybe think of non-technical reasons why flagging would be inferior to SBing (since from the sounds of things they're about equally time-consuming from a modding and implementation perspective)

that is: kate began this thread as a discussion of an alternative system, we don't have to keep hobbyhorsing (i learned a word today!) the usual beefs w/SBs.

Flagging wdn't cover the range of posts that people find SB-worthy at the moment.

xpost

I think I sort of made hobbyhorsing up

(04:59:02 PM) Jordan Sargent: thank you, wmc

i know i'm thread banned for a reason so this is the last thing i'll say on the subject -- i didn't make a rape joke and i didn't bring up the word "rape" out of thin air -- kate directly implied in her post that she has been sb'd for being "against rape culture", which is what i was reacting against in the one post of mine that even included the word "rape"

i just don't want to carry the unperson scarlet letter of being a rape joker, that's all

(04:59:04 PM) Jordan Sargent: just post that

maybe it was already explained but can someone tell me why flagging won't be a ridiculous clusterfuck

ITT we all yell @ J0rdan and force BIG HOOS aka the steendriver to intermediary until he revolts against his cruel rider

maybe it was already explained but can someone tell me why flagging won't be a ridiculous clusterfuck

― questeon the answers (call all destroyer), Sunday, November 21, 2010 4:02 PM (45 seconds ago) Bookmark

i have already done this several times

like for real dude do yr homework

Ok Kate as a vocal opponent of sb, please explain to me why you have given out over 30 of them, because that seems pretty counterintuitive to me.

Only 30? Shit, I thought I had given out way more than that. Some must have expired. After one of my site bans, I started systematically giving them out completely randomly to everyone I could see. I went through a period of being really, really angry at the arbitrary nature of SB's - especially that supplicant "OMG, forgive me great mod for I have sinned, tell me how many SB's I have and I will say a hail mod" thread where it was revealed how the number of SB's people have accumulated has *nothing* to do with what they post. I did this with the misguided idea of proving that they were complete BS, since no one wanted to listen to any rational discussion of them. I gave them out indiscriminately, and at random in the hopes that someone on the "forgive me, father" thread might actually say "hang on, this isn't right!" and realise what a stupid popularity contest it was and show up how ridiculous and infantilising the whole thread was.

After that, I realised they functioned as a way of exercising/exorcising one's rage - rather than responding to a yapping tool, just to hit SB. This was what made me think of the "flag post" idea - because I thought that would actually be a better reaction. I don't want this person permanently removed from the site, I want them to, for example, stop making the rape jokes that I find really triggering. A flag saying "this post is unacceptable" would be a lot more functional in terms of *dealing* with stuff like that.

I don't want to have a clusterfuck over OMG feminists what the fuck is wrong with them. I don't want to have to explain, yet again, how "being triggered" is not the same as "getting offended." I just want that damn rape joke removed and the guy told why it's not cool to make rape jokes RIGHT THERE ON THE SPOT. Not have him come back 30 days later, even more bitter and angry at those damn OMG feminists getting him banned and making more rape jokes than ever before that I have to deal with, sitting in my office and crying at my desk.

So, you know, take something that isn't working, and change it into something that might work better. Because, clearly getting angry didn't work. I wanted to think of a more constructive way of dealing with the problem.

i have already done this several times

― BIG MUFFIN (gbx), Sunday, November 21, 2010 5:03 PM (40 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i think you explained how it puts power back in the hands of the mods which always goes well.

can't wait for the first "why are mods not taking action on the posts i flagged" imp thread

Rape jokes surely belong in the category of posts that mods shd take action on. There's a broad category of posts that people find aggravating - repetitive low-level rudeness or aggro-ness seems like a relatively uncontroversial example - that couldn't be dealt with by post flagging because mods wd have be looking at those flags all day. I don't say SB is a perfect system for dealing with that kind of annoyance but I wd argue it's more effective than a flag could be.

Not have him come back 30 days later, even more bitter and angry at those damn OMG feminists getting him banned and making more rape jokes than ever before that I have to deal with, sitting in my office and crying at my desk.

I'm with you on more of what you say than a lot of people but this is a bullshit mischaracterization of a guy who via an intermediary has already said "my bad" about this. If you are demanding perfection from human beings, then you will have to look a lot further afield than ILX. except for my posts obv, I am awesome

Just want to point out to everyone that KDT didn't say people were SBing her for being a woman. She said that under the SB system she DIDN'T KNOW whether people were SBing her for valid reasons or because they dislike her personally or because they're inherently misogynistic fucktards who like rape jokes.

I think the flagging system is a really good idea.

my understanding of how it works now:
users have a register of SBs. when they hit 51, the mods are alerted, and they review the person's catalogue of SB'd posts, and decide how to proceed. most ppl get banned in some way, at least. this ~can~ be clusterfucky because that 51st SB might have been a LOL, but it was enough to push them into the red. so, person gets banned, ppl get confused as to why that person is banned, clusterfucks follow.

flagging:
each post has a register of flags. when it hits, oh, i dunno, 20, the mods are alerted, and can see the post, in context, and decide what to do. if its innocuous (doesn't violate the unstated community standards), they can ignore it. if its out of line, but not egregious, they can yellow card/delete the post/tempban, w/e. if it's beyond the pale, then it will have likely generated a clusterfuck all on its own, anyway.

NB - this assumes that flagged posts wouldn't be publicly flagged, the only people that know whether or not something is flagged are the mods and the ppl that did the flaggin.

xps

yeah i think you explained how it puts power back in the hands of the mods which always goes well.

― questeon the answers (call all destroyer), Sunday, November 21, 2010 4:05 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

can't wait for the first "why are mods not taking action on the posts i flagged" imp thread

― questeon the answers (call all destroyer), Sunday, November 21, 2010 4:06 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

why are you being obtuse

I repeat: I DO NOT KNOW what I was SB'd for. If that makes me clueless, I'm clueless. Neither SB I've had came in the middle of a clusterfuck - in fact, one came while I was asleep. It could be for thinking Slowdive is worse than Hitler. I have no idea. I do know I have a reputation as "OMG, that girl that talks about feminism and rape culture all the time." I get a lot of shit for talking about gender issues.

Is it TOTALLY inconceivable, in the absence of other information, to think that perhaps I am getting SB's for that thing that I get huge of amounts of shit for? Like, is that *so* insultingly off the wall and insane?

Just want to point out to everyone that KDT didn't say people were SBing her for being a woman. She said that under the SB system she DIDN'T KNOW whether people were SBing her for valid reasons or because they dislike her personally or because they're inherently misogynistic fucktards who like rape jokes.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^THIS

P.S. to Jordan, hey, you know what? Making rape jokes is really really REALLY a GREAT way of proving what a non-misogynist you are, and how you totally don't hate me for being a feminist. I mean, seriously. That's up there with making N-word jokes to prove how *past* racism you are.

Anyway, GBX totally has down the spirit of what I was getting at.

yeah but again

code it yourself if that's what you want

you're smart enough & you're an arrogant asshole if you think somehow the mods have more time on their hands than you

do it or stfu imo

(that's not to K8 specifically but to everybody coming w/ideas they're not willing to implement/craft)

tbqfh i'm undecided on whether or not it's a "better system"

but one thing it will certainly not do is reduce clusterfucks

The unstated community standards have 3 or 4 very clearly agreed rules and a whole bunch of hotly disputed ones representing individuals' opinions I think.

yeah but again

code it yourself if that's what you want

you're smart enough & you're an arrogant asshole if you think somehow the mods have more time on their hands than you

do it or stfu imo

Actually, I did intend to also agree with people who've said 'might be a good idea, but it'd take work to code' - but now you're just being antagonistic for no reason. Also, I don't get why it's a bad idea to discuss it before attempting to code it.

but one thing it will certainly not do is reduce clusterfucks

it might not, but knowing is always better than guessing

I have to go out and do errands for a while

you're smart enough & you're an arrogant asshole if you think somehow the mods have more time on their hands than you

do it or stfu imo

― aerosmith: the acid house years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, November 21, 2010 4:12 PM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark

cool yr jets bro, jesus, i know full well that the mods do not have the time to do this. as i've said above, this thread isn't about trashing/whining the SB system, but rather elucidating an alternative that ~may not have been considered~ and might be appealing to the people that actually do all the work around here.

ie - stet et al

i believe that is what they call moving the goalposts

P.S. to Jordan, hey, you know what? Making rape jokes is really really REALLY a GREAT way of proving what a non-misogynist you are, and how you totally don't hate me for being a feminist. I mean, seriously. That's up there with making N-word jokes to prove how *past* racism you are.

See if I wasn't sure of the explosion it would cause I would happily threadban you for this willful and abusive accusation

also, i'm actually interested in people laying out specifically how clusterfucks would be BOUND to happen with a flagging system. i mean yeah obv we love a good cf around here, but i honestly think this system has the potential to preempt those that come up around people getting banned (THREAD OF MISSING ______), while allowing ppl to go bonkers over bottle openers all the live long day

Actually, I did intend to also agree with people who've said 'might be a good idea, but it'd take work to code' - but now you're just being antagonistic for no reason. Also, I don't get why it's a bad idea to discuss it before attempting to code it.

because telling other people who aren't paid for their work "code this" is a dick move in my opinion! they do what they do because they're members of the community who either 1) incidentally have skills that can help the community function more smoothly, or 2) have acquired such skills specifically to help said community. and in either case: people demanding actual labor from people who are volunteering their time & effort is a fucking bullshit look imo. if you are that aggravated, get a couple of programming manuals off Alibris @ 5.00 apiece and use the brain u obv have for two weeks and do something about it instead of demanding that unpaid volunteers satisfy yr own desires for a board you access for free.

again just imo. I know I express myself caustically but the sense of entitlement by people demanding changes is kinda repulsive to me.

yet no one told them to code sb in the first place

I did actually

sonofa

oh I heard it was Ian Curtis from beyond the grave

Moderation Discretion is already a lot like a flag system

no one is demanding anything! at least i'm not---i just think that kate's idea is a good one (and one i'd actually had myself after seeing it on another board), and if talking through it attracts the attention of someone who can and is willing to code it, then that's a good thing, right? no one's stamping their feet or feeling entitled to anything. so please don't call me repulsive, ffs.

well he WAS a nazi, so

and anybody who thinks something wasn't needed in light of our trolls & really unpleasant unending clusterfucks is full of shit imo but that's where it comes down to the usual divide here -- people who favor a wild west "if you can't handle being abused, 'man up'" environment vs. people who hate that kind of attitude with a burning passion. I count myself among the latter number. this dispute won't ever be resolved to the satisfaction of either party. wherefore, if you have a better idea, volunteer & implement it, or be quiet, imo

personally I haven't seen ILX add any new functions so I don't see any flag system would ever happening on grounds that it would require programming

can i just say it's completely ridiculous to expect people to code a feature without an agreement from the community to adopt it

people who favor a wild west "if you can't handle being abused, 'man up'" environment vs. people who hate that kind of attitude with a burning passion

That's a false dichotomy tho, eh? I wouldn't put myself in either camp but somewhere in the "civility is in the frequently biased eye of the beholder" position.

REALLY looking forward to reading this GREAT looking thread

That's a false dichotomy tho, eh? I wouldn't put myself in either camp but somewhere in the "civility is in the frequently biased eye of the beholder" position.

SB'd with the fury of 51 socks

Do you know what beef is?

I don't know what language the board is coded in. I used to be reasonably fluent in SQL but it's quite rusty right not. That said, the idea that any mods would let me anywhere near the source code is pretty laughable. I am, however, a programmer, and I currently have fuckloads of free time at work.

As far as I understand it, SB's are already attached to posts - it might be just a case of adapting the existing code. Instead of the "confirm SB" page, insert a value (for reason, if we go with that, from a drop-down box) to the record. I'm guessing the SB record already has ID of the banned, ID of the banner, and the ID of the message it was referred from - because when you SB someone, the link on that post goes read, but the others stay unread, which makes me think that the message ID is passed through. (if the message ID wasn't important, it would be a default link that would be the same for all messages by a user.)

It would actually require a change in behaviour (and changing "suggest ban" to "flag post" on each post) of the users and the mods, more than actual coding, I think. Which might be harder to change, but it would be a better paradigm to build.

can i just say it's completely ridiculous to expect people to code a feature without an agreement from the community to adopt it

Why not? That's how SB got coded in to start with. I certainly never agreed to it.

poll

what would actually be helpful is if the mods or admins actually came out and said a) if they are open to a new feature and b) if they have time to code it or to get another coder started.

so i'm just gonna sit here and hold my breath for that

yeah cuz I have some great ideas for other features!

Do you know what beef is?

beef is when I SB you
guaranteed to number 52

Beef is when yr mods aren't safe up in the street

beef is when your socks roll several log-ins deep

beef is not what kate said to mods
beef is when the an ilxor can't find lolz

the

wat

I repeat: I DO NOT KNOW what I was SB'd for. If that makes me clueless, I'm clueless. Neither SB I've had came in the middle of a clusterfuck - in fact, one came while I was asleep. It could be for thinking Slowdive is worse than Hitler. I have no idea. I do know I have a reputation as "OMG, that girl that talks about feminism and rape culture all the time." I get a lot of shit for talking about gender issues.

this is the problem with your flagging suggestion...i'd guess* that most ppl who SB you do so because they generally dislike the sort of prolix clusterfucks that your posting style tends to lead to, rather than because of any individual posts you make. you're being disingenuous by positing that a large number of posters will want someone banned because they disagree over the relative merits of shoegaze bands.

* i tend to dislike the sb system, and as said before would rather you hadn't been banned.

ie i haven't SBd u.

wat

― aerosmith: the acid house years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, November 21, 2010 4:33 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

"wat's beef," u mean

i sometimes SB people just coz i remember to at that moment, not because the specific post p'd me o

wat ttyler

lamb not beef people

Just add "disingenuous" to the long list of "clueless, socially retarded, etc." of things I'm supposed to be, because the SB system is so inherently flawed as to not tell people what they are being punished for.

The *point* is that not telling people what they are being punished for leads to random paranoia and confusion, not to any kind of behavioural change.

i SB-ed you when you made a completely unwarranted attack on me.

i sometimes SB people just coz i remember to at that moment, not because the specific post p'd me o

― rip whiney g weingarten 03/11 never forget (history mayne), Sunday, November 21, 2010 2:37 PM (6 minutes ago)

this might be the most informative post on this whole thread, i was actually wondering about this tbh

I would support letting K8 code an alternate system an then trying it out for a period of time, if that was proposed - I don't know if it'd be better but I doubt it'd be a disaster and it'd be a cool experiment.

anyone know where the source is kept? i seem to remember it being called "messageboard" or something, but that's not the easiest thing to search for on code.google.com

can i vote that masonic boom not be let anywhere near the code of this board - or any other poster who isn't a mod, come to that

i mean didn't jon williams effectively get barred from ilx for tinkering with the board code???

Just add "disingenuous" to the long list of "clueless, socially retarded, etc." of things I'm supposed to be, because the SB system is so inherently flawed as to not tell people what they are being punished for.

The *point* is that not telling people what they are being punished for leads to random paranoia and confusion, not to any kind of behavioural change.

― Karen D. Tregaskin, Sunday, 21 November 2010 22:39 (4 minutes ago)

the general problem - and the wilful mischaracterization of others that has annoyed ppl itt is a symptom - is that the time you spend reading/understanding other posts seems miniscule compared to the time spent expounding yr own opinions, and the interpretative charity you demand of others is seldom displayed in your own posts.

anyone know where the source is kept? i seem to remember it being called "messageboard" or something, but that's not the easiest thing to search for on code.google.com

it's been taken down iirc

ah ok. see, was operating under the impression that the "do it yr dang self" crowd was suggesting that since the code is freely available for people to read and tinker with. soooooooo if it isn't, you do what? draft up an entirely new forum? i mean i just wanted to look at it and see if it even made sense to a guy that took a single programming course like 8 years ago.

yeah funny how that crowd doesn't seem to understand how things actually work

actually, my mistake -- it looks like it's still up, but you have to have a password.

http://conversationboard.googlecode.com/svn/trunk

that being said, kate seems to have volunteered herself and i think she should be given enough of the code to get started

yeah funny how that crowd doesn't seem to understand how things actually work

― questeon the answers (call all destroyer), Sunday, November 21, 2010 4:52 PM (36 seconds ago) Bookmark

not sure if i'm sposed to feel zinged here or not

fuck threads

no dude i'm zinging underrated aerosmith

i am over my obtuseness of earlier

*IF* it is in SQL, if it's in a flavour of SQL I recognise, if I can still remember how to code. I haven't written anything except a SELECT or DELETE statement in 2 years at this point. That's a lot of ifs.

(Wait, is it IIF(condition,return1,return2) or is it IF condition THEN return1 ELSE return2; - I can't remember which is MS and which is MySQL any more etc. etc.)

x-posts

I mean, this is the problem "CODE THE DAMN THING YOURSELF IF YOU WANT TO COMPLAIN!!!" vs. actually, no one is allowed to see the source code. Which is a bit of a catch 22.

yeah funny how that crowd doesn't seem to understand how things actually work

yeah it would be sisyphus rolling a rock up a fucking hill to start a thread saying "can somebody email me, a regular long-time poster, the code so I can play with it and maybe draft an alternative to a system I loathe" - impossible to imagine that working out in any way

I have two choices: I can try to change that which is making it so uncomfortable, or I can leave. This thread is an attempt at the former.

I did the latter for a while, not because I thought I was at risk of being SBed but because I didn't like using a forum that has a suggest ban link at the end of every post. It's overwhelmingly negative. It assumes that every post/poster is potentially bad and imo has tainted the whole site as a result.

I've slowly increased my usage of ilx in recent months because I really really like the site and the people (it's my favourite msg board of all time ffs) but this sb thing continues to bother me. It's heavy-handed lazy modding in response to a handful of destructive posters.

I know I just blew a lot of minds with that totally unimaginable suggestion tho so I'll allow some time for its revolutionary nature to sink in

yeah i'm just holding my breath waiting for our fearless leaders to sanction this, don't mind me

baffled by yr venom itt, aero.

btw I'm aware of the cockheadedness of complaining about a free service xp

i've only been posting for two years, but this thread sure seems to be covering the same exact ground as every other thread about sb's.

I'm pretty sure they're cool w/it

xpost to c.a.d.

again i must have missed all the angry demands that keith and stet get on this RIGHT NOW but i have trouble seeing people put time and effort into building a feature when there has been no official position on whether the feature might be adopted or not!

for christ's sakes the cart is way, way down the road and the horse is just standing here

if I am sexist are all my posts sexist or only the sexist ones

http://xec.xanga.com/abf88b2bc2230183988765/z19974.jpg

http://www2.expta.com/uploaded_images/CartBeforeHorse-738021.jpg

well, you could setup a locally hosted version of ilx on yr own computer and mess with the source and see if it seems viable, setup a sandbox for the mods, etc. i mean any work done would have to be on spec anyhow, requiring a consensus before working would be a foolish expectation.

SB'd sarahel for image-bombing

anyway, i'm just curious to SEE the source code. guessing it's several echelons above my paygrade, but w/e

yeah and consensus is the wrong word--maybe more like "yes, if you build this and demonstrate it we will consider adopting it"

and i believe all we've gotten is that wmc likes the idea and justen doesn't and those are the only two mods that talk now

xp - please ban me from this thread, i'm too tempted to post another dozen funny .jpgs of carts and horses.

'funny'

and maybe some of the people who use the board but don't get all excited for a Sunday night SB fight might have an opinion on enforcing ILX's "core values" too.

baffled by yr venom itt, aero.

I can't say I really understand it myself but it's like visceral - it's like - this seems to me a clear case of, there are unpaid volunteers providing you a service, if you don't like how the service works, guess what, the world's your oyster - it's like bitching about mainstream music - don't like what you hear, make your own & shut the fuck up - nobody's making you listen to shit - if your scene sucks, it's your fault - this is punk rock 101 imo

ok then

It's heavy-handed lazy modding in response to a handful of destructive posters.

I'm not sure I agree with this. It isnt "lazy" at all - the bans are NOT automatic, the mods still exercise some discretion on them and still have to action them, as has been stated several times upthread and in previous threads.

Just sayin'.

Punk rock, to me, means, if you don't like something, you own your scene, you have the right to try and change it for the better. You can go off and make your own little scene, or if you have time and effort already invested in something, you can try to change it from the inside.

Sometimes that means making suggestions if you don't have direct access to the means of production. Or if access to those means of production have been blocked for perfectly good reasons. (I certainly understand why the source code is private, after the actions of people like Graham and JW.)

But what it does NOT mean is that you do not have the right to ask to make something better, if you can think of a good idea that you think might have a reasonable shot at working. That to me is just bullshit "my country, love it or leave it" conservatism, and nothing to do with punk rock at all. That attitude really does get on my fibroid.

Now I gotta go to bed.

how would mods feel about a thread where we explained why we've just sb'd someone?

That to me is just bullshit "my country, love it or leave it" conservatism, and nothing to do with punk rock at all.

otm times a billion

how would mods feel about a thread where we explained why we've just sb'd someone?

maracas.jpg

It isnt "lazy" at all - the bans are NOT automatic, the mods still exercise some discretion on them and still have to action them, as has been stated several times upthread and in previous threads.

Curated crowdsourcing is still crowdsourcing. That's fine when it's gathering new ideas for a business venture or summat.

Again, it's the presence of the sb link on every single post that bothers me the most. It's not coupled with anything positive like karma or (hvn forfend) a 'like' button.

aerosmith's maybe over-extended himself on this point- iirc his point from these numerous threads is not 'my country, sign up or gtfo'. it's 'stop blithely assigning work to volunteers'.

there's not much of that going on itt imo.

but the notion of people designing their own site and that then being switched for ilx? madness, you know that, right? couple of you seem to think that's accepted at this stage.

It's kinda hypocritical double-bind to say "STOP MAKING DEMANDS OF VOLUNTEERS!!!" (who was demanding? I was suggesting.) and then turn around slap someone down for daring to suggest "hey, actually, I'm a programmer, I might be able to help you out."

if that's aimed at me, i specifically typed in english that the first thing you say hasn't happened itt. in english. specifically.

turn around slap someone down for daring to suggest "hey, actually, I'm a programmer, I might be able to help you out."

this happened?

Make up your mind. Is it "THIS IS PUNK ROCK, DO IT YOURSELF!" or is it "NO ONE IS DESIGNING THEIR OWN CODE THIS IS MADNESS" ?

i'm super confused but let me say again i completely support yr efforts if you actually want to write something for the site

I am srsly not trying to be willfully obtuse here but as a mod who deals w/ sbans, I am still completely baffled by how the sb system and this flagged post system are in any way functionally different.

but the notion of people designing their own site and that then being switched for ilx? madness, you know that, right? couple of you seem to think that's accepted at this stage.

*slaps Karen in the face*

― Goths in Home & Away in my lifetime (darraghmac), Sunday, 21 November 2010 18:28 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

that's actually what happened, i remember now.

as i understand it, instead of a tempban at 51 there will be some kind of amorphous mod action around 20

Make up your mind. Is it "THIS IS PUNK ROCK, DO IT YOURSELF!" or is it "NO ONE IS DESIGNING THEIR OWN CODE THIS IS MADNESS" ?

just to be extremely clear, it's the latter.

has any one individual post ever attracted 20 sbans?

betting not

Like I kind of think people just don't understand how it works or something. Nothing anybody has mentioned in this thread is any different as far as I understand it other than changing the name of the function and adding a drop down menu?

xps

if that's aimed at me, i specifically typed in english that the first thing you say hasn't happened itt. in english. specifically.

also reposting this, in anticipation of you again repeating that i said both things and calling me a hypocrite again.

xp stfu and go do it jj, it's what 5 people want

Change the name, call it 'u r dick' or something xp

^^^support this

jjj, as I understand it, the main difference is that dick-move-perpetrators are informed of the dickishness of their move immediately rather than find out weeks or months later that their posting life is considered a collection of dickmoves by 51 ilxors -- which I'm totally for. I think that a lot of ilxors who get flagged are going to say "fuck you, that's just me KEEPIN IT REAL," but at least everybody will know exactly what they're getting called out for

I get the impression part of what K8 is asking for is that a clicked on post will flag that as a SB and therefore she (or anyone) knows why they're being flagged.

The current system only allows you to SB a person once, which a flag-post system would change (as I assume we'd be allowed to flag multiple posts by the same person - I would certainly expect this).

I cant help wondering if some people reeeeallly may not find it fruitful to know why people are SBing them, imo. But thats just me.

fyi mods sarge has informed me he is still unable to post sitewide

I am srsly not trying to be willfully obtuse here but as a mod who deals w/ sbans, I am still completely baffled by how the sb system and this flagged post system are in any way functionally different.

I kinda thought I had explained that in the first post. But again, this time more slowly.

Suggest Ban is "confirm you want this USER removed from the site - at some point between now and 6 months"
Flag/Report Post is "I find this POST objectionable and would like moderator action on it - ASAP"

The former is directed entirely against an individual as a whole. The latter is directed against a specific action.
The former is "You are a bad person" the latter is "this thing you did, it is bad"
The former is disconnected in time and explanation from the actual action that caused it. The latter is causally connected, both at the time, and in specific explanation, to the action.
The former is "I, as a banner, do not have to justify this action in any way" the latter is "I have to specify why I want action taken"

Do you understand how these two things are different?

One is a blanket indictment of an entire person, without ever explaining why they are bad, just that they are bad, and they should go away.
The other is very specifically aimed at actions, with the idea of pointing out what behaviour is unacceptable, with the specific intent of changing that behaviour.

J0rdan, if you're reading this, try posting now

jjj, as I understand it, the main difference is that dick-move-perpetrators are informed of the dickishness of their move immediately rather than find out weeks or months later that their posting life is considered a collection of dickmoves by 51 ilxors -- which I'm totally for. I think that a lot of ilxors who get flagged are going to say "fuck you, that's just me KEEPIN IT REAL," but at least everybody will know exactly what they're getting called out for

― Unfrozen Caveman Board-Lawyer (WmC), Sunday, November 21, 2010 5:46 PM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark

props for this. extracting reason from all the clusterfuckery.

xp stfu and go do it jj, it's what 5 people want

― Goths in Home & Away in my lifetime (darraghmac), Sunday, 21 November 2010 23:42 (1 minute ago)

http://i.imgur.com/UnvzI.jpg

xxxxxp to kaen

some of us want the option of the user being removed from the whole site for 30 days, should we start a thread lobbying against that being removed?

again, taking you at face value that you don;t know how you could ever have been banned under sb, your argument is predicated on being suggest banned for nothing that you can think of except that at least 51 ilxors are total shitheads.

most of my sb's are of the "you need a break from the site" variety

To make it really short:

Suggest ban = users are two year olds
Flag/report post = users are adults

I had a bunch of stuff to say, but it's probably better that I stay out of these convos. Lemme just say that I'm glad I'm not a mod here, many of you are... needlessly difficult.

this all seems a bit complex

maybe we shd just say why we sb people, as and when, but oh no, that would be zing culture

does anyone read anymore

cad: k8 has stated several times over that she a) is a programmer (tho rusty) and b) would at least like to look at the source code. as would i, but mostly to see if i can even parse it.

as for how this would be substantially different than SBs: i've made what i thought was a pretty clear case, a few times. flagging posts attracts mod attn ~to that post~ and they can, as they do now, decide what to do about the infraction. modding is then directed towards something controversial ~as it happens~ vs someone suddenly getting disappeared because their posting history caught up with them. also, in a "rhetorical" sense, flagging a post is just saying "i don't think this is appropriate" vs saying "i think this person should no longer post on ilx"

xp thanking u, kate

most of my sb's are of the "you need a break from the site" variety

Actually my (very very few) have also been this. General "pull back, you need a break" pings, based on multiple posts of wtfery.

again, taking you at face value that you don;t know how you could ever have been banned under sb, your argument is predicated on being suggest banned for nothing that you can think of except that at least 51 ilxors are total shitheads.

No.

My argument is "if you do not KNOW why you have been SB'd, your imagination can run riot and you can think that it might be for A or for B or for CDEFGHIJKLMNOP"

If you want to read that as saying "OMG, she just accused everyone who SB'd her of being LMNOP!" that is an incorrect conclusion to draw from the statement that I made.

what about those of us who sb as a gesture of love

sure it's a dysfunctional way of expressing ourselves but who are you to judge us

in seriousness tho K8 people do tell you when they're exasperated with you? like how you could not know exactly which posting behaviors have resulted in sb's is a total mystery, since you are smart and can figure that out??

if you have ever been banned can you be considered an adult

cad: k8 has stated several times over that she a) is a programmer (tho rusty) and b) would at least like to look at the source code. as would i, but mostly to see if i can even parse it.

i know! why are you explaining this to me?

sometimes we just like to explain things to call all destroyer

Suggest ban = users are two year olds
Flag/report post = users are adults

― Karen D. Tregaskin

code in an age check, keep sb

can I just say that while I am often frustrated with and irritated by KDT/MB, the original post in this thread was reasonable, and it was carefully timed not to fall in the middle of any other metashit -- a good attempt to talk borad mechanics. And she still got four SBs for it. Doesn't that make it obvious that she's getting SB'd for existing, not for anything specific she did wrong in that post?

That's the kind of bullshit that I think a flag post system instead of a SB system might help eliminate.

To make it really short:

Suggest ban = users are two year olds
Flag/report post = users are adults

to make it shorter = this sort of garbage is why people sb you

probably already been said in this very long thread, but i would guess that starting this thread will have earned you 5< SBs, because it's annoying and cluster-fucky

xp

ha

as a child I posted pictures of men stretching their anuses out, as all children did, in the 90s

flagging posts attracts mod attn ~to that post~ and they can, as they do now, decide what to do about the infraction. modding is then directed towards something controversial ~as it happens~ vs someone suddenly getting disappeared because their posting history caught up with them. also, in a "rhetorical" sense, flagging a post is just saying "i don't think this is appropriate" vs saying "i think this person should no longer post on ilx"

ok

why not both?

also- do sb's draw mod attention to a post or not?

"only I am an adult! people who disagree with me are children! it is a great mystery why I get SB'd!" like seriously? I'm one of the few posters whose "fuck you, the patriarchy" radar is as sensitive as yours, but that post warrants a huge FUCK YOU from me

and again: flagging, like SBs, would have a threshold (i said 20, arbitrarily). not a threshold for ~action~, but for ~notification~. like if somebody went and flagged an entire thread for lolz, it wouldn't necessarily be brought to the attn of mods. if someone made an egregious post in a highly trafficked thread, then it seems likely that lots of like-minded ilxors would say "hey that's not cool." i generally do NOT SB because i like having some of our more controversial posters, and i don't want them to get 86d because i registered my disapproval of ONE POST. however, it would be nice to be able to call attn to it (i'm more inclined to post a response, but still) and maybe have that lead to a yellow card or temp ban or w/e.

cuz if i'm not mistaken (mods?), temp bans are usually the result of attn drawn to specific posts, whereas the review process for SBs is only twigged when they hit the threshold

why are you guys making this about kate, it's a little weird

sorry, cad! i misread this:

this happened?

― questeon the answers (call all destroyer), Sunday, November 21, 2010 5:32 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark

i thought you meant "kate never offered to help" when you actually meant "no one slapped anyone down"

my b

i'm actually replyin to everyone that's called me names itt, gbx, tbf. i even posted to some who didn't

and, just so we didn't miss it:

can I just say that while I am often frustrated with and irritated by KDT/MB, the original post in this thread was reasonable, and it was carefully timed not to fall in the middle of any other metashit -- a good attempt to talk borad mechanics. And she still got four SBs for it. Doesn't that make it obvious that she's getting SB'd for existing, not for anything specific she did wrong in that post?

That's the kind of bullshit that I think a flag post system instead of a SB system might help eliminate.

― Unfrozen Caveman Board-Lawyer (WmC), Sunday, November 21, 2010 6:00 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

why are you guys making this about kate, it's a little weird

I was actually going to use Bimble as my SB example fwiw.

to make it shorter = this sort of garbage is why people sb you

yeah, pretty unhelpful there

cuz if i'm not mistaken (mods?), temp bans are usually the result of attn drawn to specific posts, whereas the review process for SBs is only twigged when they hit the threshold

yeah, that's pretty much right

btw the discourse of banscussion wrings our hands for us and causes undue and unproportionate and unnecessary stress for its participants - kate has a right to express her sentiments and I have no problem with her doing so (indeed I agree with most of them) but this thread is just too long and it draws too much negative energy to ILX - I cannot think of a way to remedy this without restricting freedom of speech except personal restraint though

thread shd have really been a discussion between kate, wmc and jjj maybe? get abbott involved too? idk

agh was hoping this would stay on point and not become an attack thread.

i like having some of our more controversial posters, and i don't want them to get 86d because i registered my disapproval of ONE POST

tryin to think if i've ever sb'd someone for 'just one post'. i may have, it'd want to have been a bad one. i doubt it's the normal sb behaviour of most posters.

thread shd have really been a discussion between kate, wmc and jjj maybe? get abbott involved too? idk

― pro EVOO sucker (acoleuthic)

?????

xps

i've already been called repulsive on this thread, but i'm not sweating it. this doesn't HAVE to be a clusterfuck thread, ppl, we're just all doing our little part to ensure that it is

what you mean there is an email, son

am pulling my horns in, if they've been out. still tryin to get an answer to several points i've put to you on yr flag theory. cool with everyone here, but not to the extent where mt posts are just flat misrepresented as attacking k8.

btw max always <3 but fuck u for suggesting that "fix it or stop insisting that someone else fix it for you" somehow compares to "my country love it or leave it" - you don't get to whine about me calling democrats assholes anymore in light of that dude

I do think it'd speak well of us as a board if we were able to say why we were SBing someone/ flagging a post without playing it for lols. That's not to say I'm certain that we do could do it, just that I think it'd be a good thing.

anyway i'd like to think that i've been level-headed up in here, sorry if i havent. i'm just a little bummed that a genuinely interesting alternative to the suggest ban that still gives the community some input (and, in theory, lifts some of the burden of mod shoulders to keenly police all threads) is being lol'd outta town because oh no another sb thread and because kate happened to be the one that started it

xp ha was wondering when politics would come up

like to begin with, this is a message board, not a country

this is the sort of distinction you'd generally be quick to draw

like i said- a thread where we went in and posted who we've just sb'd and why.

that would sort one of the main bones of contention.

and it would let mods decide if it would stand as legit or not.

evan you've been p clear and reasonable imo now answer my q's you jerk

every sb requires an explanation of more than 30 characters and goes in an accessible log haha

reinstate hi dere ffs

btw max always <3 but fuck u for suggesting that "fix it or stop insisting that someone else fix it for you" somehow compares to "my country love it or leave it" - you don't get to whine about me calling democrats assholes anymore in light of that dude

― aerosmith: the acid house years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, November 21, 2010 7:08 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

k whatever mang

and, before i get aerozung, i'd like to reiterate that i'm not demanding anything from our staff of volunteers. i was just sorta hoping we could have a reasonable discussion NOT about why SBs are so bad and hated, but how flags might actually serve the needs of our lil messageboard, maybe think through whether or not they could work. but since i am not a programmer, i probably shouldn't think aloud about stuff like that until i finish reading that book on ruby i bought a few years ago and never finished

xp sorry dmac, what was the q again? srs

i forget :(

1) Ad hominem attacks
2) Bullying
3) Racism
4) Sexism/Misogyny
5) Homophobia
6) Hate Speech (other)

there are very, very few occasions when these don't get picked up

ppl get suggest-banned not for these things but becuz they rub ppl up the wrong way

i got SB'd and i couldn't give a shit which posts it was 'for' or who SB'd me

the idea that a poster would change his or her posting style based on the advice generated by a complicated drop-down menu system is... unconvincing

I also don't think it's controversial to say that some people might genuinely not get that they're making the board worse at a given moment! I'm sure anyone who posts moderately frequently and doesn't have the wisdom of a nabsico does it sometimes. Like, I enjoy darragh as a poster hugely but I wish he'd not argue with K8 all the time!

can I just say that while I am often frustrated with and irritated by KDT/MB, the original post in this thread was reasonable, and it was carefully timed not to fall in the middle of any other metashit -- a good attempt to talk borad mechanics. And she still got four SBs for it. Doesn't that make it obvious that she's getting SB'd for existing, not for anything specific she did wrong in that post?

Wow, OK, yeah, that really strongly makes the point.

I give up. I seriously give up.

I make a point, as reasonably and eloquently as I know how.

When asked to clarify, I repeat it again, more simply.

When someone misunderstands what I have said, I put it into different, more clear terms.

When that fails, I get a bit cranky (it is midnight here, and I can't sleep because I'm in too much pain) and I make - what I think - is an obvious joke about treating people like two year olds, and the thread goes berserk.

It's become obvious that there truly is no way that I can make myself acceptable to this community. So any attempts at behavioural reform are pointless. You are right. It's not you, it's me.

seems to me that, ~implementation aside~, the qs about flagging are

1) how are they even different?
2) would any supposed differences be beneficial to ilx?
2a) that is, would it mean less "wtf just happened to canks?" or "THREAD OF MISSING GR8080" shoutfests or w/e?
2b) would ppl be less at risk of getting banned because they are irritating?
2c) would mods have to put up with LESS whining?

pretty sure i answered 1 already. and i think the answers to 2a-c are all yes.

every sb requires an explanation of more than 30 characters and goes in an accessible log haha

if every sb required a 10,000 word defense of each clicking sb hand, there would still be huge clusterfuck threads of people whining that it's unjust that somebody they liked got banned

it's exactly like me complaining that communists don't get elected to higher office, except that in this case I'm on the other side

Again, it's the presence of the sb link on every single post that bothers me the most. It's not coupled with anything positive like karma or (hvn forfend) a 'like' button.

― Friday: vuvuzela club meeting (Autumn Almanac), Sunday, 21 November 2010 23:28 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I think it would be fairly straight-forward to modify a stylesheet so that the SB link wasn't shown, and wouldn't require a programmer or very much mod effort.

fuck flagged posts, people should just be more ready to criticize & receive criticism on their posts and board presence imo. don't think this is a structural thing & more just, why use code to bypass simple effective human interaction? everyone anonymously drawing mod attention to conflagratory posts seriously sounds like hell to me. if someone's offended you just confront them about it either on board in the thread or off board through email, & if u really think it merits being deleted just start a thread on mrf for it. if you're really mystified as to why you've gotten sb'd just ask for ppl to give some more constructive advice

New idea, what about developing a magic algorithm to automatically detect rabid bullshit infighting posts in sensible threads and fucking delete them wholesale.

2c) would mods have to put up with LESS whining?

i've been here for too many years and i can guarantee there will never be less whining, whatever system is in place

2a) that is, would it mean less "wtf just happened to canks?" or "THREAD OF MISSING GR8080" shoutfests or w/e?

who cares?

can I just say that while I am often frustrated with and irritated by KDT/MB, the original post in this thread was reasonable, and it was carefully timed not to fall in the middle of any other metashit -- a good attempt to talk borad mechanics. And she still got four SBs for it.

no - she got sb'd for saying shit like

Suggest ban = users are two year olds
Flag/report post = users are adults

― Karen D. Tregaskin

which is unacceptable ad-hom I'm-right-you're-wrong-no-matter-what bullshit on which she should be called out no matter how mad she is

No, actually in this instance she got SB-ed for the first post and a copule of them were pretty soon after it was posted.

Turned out that was a "joke" though eh.
xp

"copule", eh.

"Wow, she called everyone who disagreed with her a two-year-old and people clicked the SB button? What assholes!"

KDT, thanks for trying. gbx, thanks for trying. everybody who tried to keep it snark-free, thanks for trying.

FTR I'm pretty much w WmC on this.

No, actually in this instance she got SB-ed for the first post and a copule of them were pretty soon after it was posted.

yeah I will agree that this is bullshit btw, SB'ing someone for the first post in a thread is assholism and should result in autoban

mods get on this right now or I want my money back

$10 heading to yr paypal acct right now.

fuck flagged posts, people should just be more ready to criticize & receive criticism on their posts and board presence imo. don't think this is a structural thing & more just, why use code to bypass simple effective human interaction? everyone anonymously drawing mod attention to conflagratory posts seriously sounds like hell to me. if someone's offended you just confront them about it either on board in the thread or off board through email, & if u really think it merits being deleted just start a thread on mrf for it. if you're really mystified as to why you've gotten sb'd just ask for ppl to give some more constructive advice

― samosa gibreel, Monday, 22 November 2010 00:18 (3 minutes ago)

^^^

Pash maybe those SBs were of the "oh ffs not this bullshit YET AGAIN OH FUCK NO" variety, but what would I know nb i have not sbed anyone on this thred.

I think it would be fairly straight-forward to modify a stylesheet so that the SB link wasn't shown, and wouldn't require a programmer or very much mod effort.

hmm the SB button is a span with a class of "bookmark", not v well named but it does seem to be unique. To this page at least.

Maybe, Trayce, I dunno.

Maybe we need a "stfu, we've done this" yellowcard button.

(I am speaking generally here not about this thread in partic)

"Wow, she called everyone who disagreed with her a two-year-old and people clicked the SB button? What assholes!"

I thought she was saying the sb feature assumes users are 2yos and a more detailed feature would be giving people more credit, but hey I'm happy to be wrong.

2a) posters wouldn't "suddenly" disappear after their 51st SB. granted, many (if not most!) of all SB'd users probably had it coming, but it's usually the apparently random timing of SBs that irk some ppl. like i get it that user X has a history of dickishness, but the final infraction has occasionally been relatively innocuous.
2b) pretty sure this has been made as clear as possible, sadly. kate has picked up 4 suggest BANS for starting a wholly innocuous thread, and they are now part of her total ban count. why? because ppl are dickbags, that's why. full stop. if this thread had been FLAGGED by four users, it likely would not have come to moderator attn, because 4 seems like a pretty low threshold. moreover, if it had hit whatever arbitrary threshold you'd like, any sane moderator like WmC would come along and go "wait, this is not at all controversial, IGNORE"
2c) flags are anonymous, and only trigger action when a threshold is reached. posters don't know their posts have been flagged until a mod says "dude, ppl are not pleased with this post you made, and i agree, u r a douche". that might be the end of it! or maybe they get banned, i dunno. point is, flags reduce whining because there's no longer a mandatory sentencing attached to behavior that may, or may not, have been truly inflammatory.

xp AA that's precisely how i read what she said, too.

$10 heading to yr paypal acct right now.

did I really only give 10 bones during pledge drive? fuck me, I'm an asshole, everybody sb me immediately

can I just say that while I am often frustrated with and irritated by KDT/MB, the original post in this thread was reasonable, and it was carefully timed not to fall in the middle of any other metashit -- a good attempt to talk borad mechanics. And she still got four SBs for it. Doesn't that make it obvious that she's getting SB'd for existing, not for anything specific she did wrong in that post?

That's the kind of bullshit that I think a flag post system instead of a SB system might help eliminate.

― Unfrozen Caveman Board-Lawyer (WmC), Sunday, November 21, 2010 7:00 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

Okay I typed this up and didn't post it, but if K-dogg is gettin sb'd for this shit then I need to speak up... because when they came for the jews, i did not speak up~

I know the SB conversation has been had a million zillion times, but it seems to me that it's still worth asking, y'know, why every other messageboard in the world goes with a post flagging system and why you can't find any other place that allows literally anyone to anonymously suggest a ban for any user they please, for any reason they please. I would think that the answer is super obvious - it's just not a good moderating solution, and in fact it's a really weird and bad one. On another board I post on - much bigger than this one - you just report individual posts and have to give a reason with your report. Mods review the reports and make moderating decisions about trouble posts and hand out a probation, ban, or permaban based on the seriousness of the offense and on the poster's history. Using the report function frivolously has consequences, again either a probation or ban depending on the poster's history. This is the best way to moderate a big message board, because you're addressing problems as they spring up instead of treating any user who crosses a magical threshold to a weird This Is Your Life tribunal. And because you need a reason to report someone - a reason besides "I don't like this poster" - the function maintains its integrity and doesn't become a passive-aggressive tool for creating board drama. The current system leads to some comical and occasionally merciful results and I wouldn't even say I'm an advocate of change, but there are a million empirically better ways of moderating a message board. I think ultimately anything that leans more towards an automated system than mod discretion (like the auto-escalating temp bans) is A Bad Idea.

tldr - This unique system the ilx coders came up with is bad and dumb. KDT getting a host of sb's for starting a thread in good faith and making reasonable points just shows how retarded this shit is.

I'm not opposed to the idea of a Flag Post function IF Keith and Stet are open to have it coded. That said, making it anonymous is a TERRIBLE idea as there's never any way of knowing whether or not the flagging is coming from a person with an ulterior motive for wanting to get someone banned. But I've got a feeling that this systems only seems simpler, the devil is in the details and it could well end up causing as many clusterfucks and perceived injustices as the current system.

A much simpler solution would be for mods to remove any and all SBs that aren't for obvious egregious posts. Or just throw the whole SB system in the bin and go back to moderator discretion, maybe with more use of yellow cards. But then people would complain about centralisation of power. It's no-win whatever happens.

Aerosmith - this is ridiculous, you can't actually see what the SBs are for. And yes, Autumn Almanac is correctly interpreting her there from what I can see.

kinda think requiring people to justify in words flags/SBs might be a bit much. we're trying to make LESS work for mods, not more. that is: rely initially on how much attn a post attracts (# of flags), which then automates a mod notification. at that point, i'm willing to trust that the mods can determine if flags were made in bad faith or not.

2b) would ppl be less at risk of getting banned because they are irritating?

Even if they're a minority, if there are people who are getting SBs without knowing why, there should be a way for them to find out? Even if a majority already get why and don't care/can't change, it'd still be a good thing.

and u couldn't ditch anonymity, that's ridiculous. either a post is offensive per community standards (which, flawed tho ilx is, i think it's OK to apply a 'know it if i see it' policy), or someone's just peeved at someone like kate having the temerity to start a thread about something.

I think a few people have mentioned that they fully intend to ban people and not flag posts.

Taking the opposite view of KDT on that isn't that unreasonable a position - irl I tend to dislike people based on their behaviour. I may or may not challenge them on something or try to change that behaviour (flag) but for the most part if I find someone to be an unpleasant dick I'd try not to be around them any more (sb) - like you might stop someone saying racist shit at work if everyone tells them to quit it but ultimately you're still stuck working with a racist. So you try to get the person removed (sb) - or remove yourself if the system won't let you and can't bear to be around them (I am off the Internet-maracas.jps)

A much simpler solution would be for mods to remove any and all SBs that aren't for obvious egregious posts. Or just throw the whole SB system in the bin and go back to moderator discretion, maybe with more use of yellow cards. But then people would complain about centralisation of power. It's no-win whatever happens.

This is otm -- I for one am 100% comfortable with god-mods even though I feel confident that both HI DERE & jjjusten would have banned me at some point for my egregious assholism on politics threads.

I actually share some of Princess TamTam(wish I knew who that was)'s concerns in re: cliqueishness but I don't think that's actually how SB has played out on ilx, which mitigates the problem. It's like: if you're not an aggressively active poster, you don't have a prayer of surviving the onslaught of an ad-hoc coordinated crew's worth of on-board abuse. SB gives those posters, largely ones we couldn't name because they're quieter, a weapon against bullies. That's why I like the SB.

the people who sb'd kate upon first post when there was nothing else yet posted were being dicks and that was unfair, but do you think the majority of any 51 sb's are similarly groundless? like d'uh probably not

fwiw i have decent coding xp - cld def w/ fuck with source code just for autoreplace alone - but then yall can live in the world that i create & then jaundy can either learn to program or gtfo i guess.

http://www.mattbrandenburg.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Asinine-America-HATERS-GONNA-HATE1.jpg

also this thread is the perfect encapsulation of why lol bans are amazing

i have sb'd over a dozen ppl itt

er, that is, i think some posters would not be comfortable calling bullshit on other posters behavior if they knew it wasn't anonymous. now, anonymity IS bad when yr vote is just to get someone off the island. if it's just to say "hey mods look at this" then who cares who flagged what.

Lamp I know you hate me but you bring the lols and for that I give you the gift of suggest ban

just to add some detail of what I know about the current site - afaik it was developed with java EE. I was part of task force POXY FULE back in the day, so I had some exposure to the dev process. no one really wanted java EE, because it's not a scripting language anybody can pick up quickly, but it's what keith knew and fuck if he didn't man up and rewrite the whole goddamn site while a bunch of us armchair script hacks wrung our hands and debated php vs perl vs fubar.

Or just throw the whole SB system in the bin and go back to moderator discretion, maybe with more use of yellow cards. But then people would complain about centralisation of power. It's no-win whatever happens.

Honestly, they should just bring the hammer down on the whiners. This shit doesn't get to be up for discussion on a lot of other messageboards... I know that's sort of counter to the democratic ideal of ilx or whatever (lol) but trust me, I know from experience that boards with a more fascist approach are much more harmonious and life is simpler and more pleasurable for everyone.

SB gives those posters, largely ones we couldn't name because they're quieter, a weapon against bullies. That's why I like the SB.

― aerosmith: the acid house years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, November 21, 2010 6:33 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

dude this is precisely what anonymous flagging would do, too! AND it would stop bullies from SBing ppl just for lolz. like the Main Thing you're doing is making a button that says "ATTN MODS!" instead of one that says "HOPE U NEVER POST HERE AGAIN"

the people who sb'd kate upon first post when there was nothing else yet posted were being dicks and that was unfair, but do you think the majority of any 51 sb's are similarly groundless? like d'uh probably not

Tuomas's SBing proved that even a small minority of SBs on stupid grounds is not acceptable.

Honestly, they should just bring the hammer down on the whiners. This shit doesn't get to be up for discussion on a lot of other messageboards... I know that's sort of counter to the democratic ideal of ilx or whatever (lol) but trust me, I know from experience that boards with a more fascist approach are much more harmonious and life is simpler and more pleasurable for everyone.

it's decided then -- I am the sole site mod and will make the calls

glad we had this thread, show me how to lock it & we'll be on our way

then again the last time I was involved was in 2006 and for all I know keith rewrote the entire thing in assembly in 2008

xp

the Main Thing you're doing is making a button that says "ATTN MODS!" instead of one that says "HOPE U NEVER POST HERE AGAIN"

Can't we have both? And the moon on a stick?

SB gives those posters, largely ones we couldn't name because they're quieter, a weapon against bullies.

except it's more than that, it's a loose cannon that can be turned on anyone, and effectively wielded by a pretty small minority of posters. how many of those SBed coulds justly be accused of bullying?

i'm all for 100% mod power fwiw.

also Tuomas was SB'd for ruining at least 51 threads by openly refusing to stop derailing them & making them "This Is The Thread Where Tuomas Gets To Keep Asking The Same Question Until He Feel Satisfied," not for Just Being Tuomas

i should just give up

srsly the level of intentional point-missing and snarky bad faith is pretty unimpressive

except it's more than that, it's a loose cannon that can be turned on anyone, and effectively wielded by a pretty small minority of posters.

This is 100% the actual real problem with SB and I do not disagree with anybody whose concern is this. I just don't believe about 75% of the people who complain on principle when it sounds for all the world like they mean "oh no my friend who was being a total dick to everybody got banned".

Tuomas's SBing proved that even a small minority of SBs on stupid grounds is not acceptable.

― Friday: vuvuzela club meeting (Autumn Almanac), Monday, November 22, 2010 12:38 AM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark

huh? who made you the fuckin' king of deciding which SBs really 'count'

he got 51 votes and was cast off the island

the system works

dude this is precisely what anonymous flagging would do, too! AND it would stop bullies from SBing ppl just for lolz. like the Main Thing you're doing is making a button that says "ATTN MODS!" instead of one that says "HOPE U NEVER POST HERE AGAIN"

But considering SB doesnt automatically ban anyone as it is, isnt it doing that already?

A much simpler solution would be for mods to remove any and all SBs that aren't for obvious egregious posts.

yeah, I mentioned my discomfort with this in my first post upthread. I don't want to be in the position of judging this SB worthy and that one unworthy

huh? who made you the fuckin' king of deciding which SBs really 'count'

he got 51 votes and was cast off the island

the system works

― rip whiney g weingarten 03/11 never forget (history mayne), Monday, November 22, 2010 12:41 AM (36 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

IRL lol over post/un here

no, it isn't. xp to trayce

But considering SB doesnt automatically ban anyone as it is, isnt it doing that already?

― And this one time, on Bandcamp... (Trayce), Monday, 22 November 2010 00:41 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^ this - dunno how many times mods need to state that 51 and out *isn't* automatic.

This is 100% the actual real problem with SB and I do not disagree with anybody whose concern is this. I just don't believe about 75% of the people who complain on principle when it sounds for all the world like they mean "oh no my friend who was being a total dick to everybody got banned".

― aerosmith: the acid house years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, November 21, 2010 6:40 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

how is that relevant

350 "new" answers. My god.

relevant in creating a straw man you can repeatedly dismiss

i mean dude, if you LIKE suggest bans because they empower quiet ilxors with a means of arousing mod action (make your own dirty joke here), but also think they can be misused by bullies ~as they have on this very thread~, then you'd think you might be open to a system that preserves the former and literally eliminates the latter.

huh? who made you the fuckin' king of deciding which SBs really 'count'

Precisely the sort of aggression I was hoping to avoid itt

350 "new" answers. My god.

yeah mods should really just code a bot to write these threads once a month tbh, save everyone typing all that shit every time.

can someone summarise the intelligent arguments itt, especially re: flag post system

am most in favour of the gibreel/nakhchivan 'voice yr discontent' system which WmC has used on me to great effect recently, but maybe a flag post system would work - anyway please can we cut thru the terrible energy-sapping noise and summarise

i have louis

so sad that i have to go to bed and miss all the fun.

so sadder than i mean that.

yeah mods should really just code a bot to write these threads once a month tbh, save everyone typing all that shit every time.

best suggestion of the day

am most in favour of the gibreel/nakhchivan 'voice yr discontent' system which WmC has used on me to great effect recently,

initially confused but mostly lol

i mean dude, if you LIKE suggest bans because they empower quiet ilxors with a means of arousing mod action (make your own dirty joke here), but also think they can be misused by bullies ~as they have on this very thread~, then you'd think you might be open to a system that preserves the former and literally eliminates the latter.

I am 100% open to such a system. I am also 100% opposed to anybody demanding that anyone code this for them, or float ideas they're not willing to pitch in on themselves. People have volunteered their time to help keep this board's New Answers page from degenerating into 100 threads about Nicky Wire in a banana suit; I'm grateful for that. Anybody, and I do mean anybody, who has a problem with it, can buy themselves a couple of O'Reilly manuals and figure the shit out in their spare time, which is almost surely the exact class of time in which the mods are doing their work, i.e., time they don't really have.

I know from experience that boards with a more fascist approach are much more harmonious and life is simpler and more pleasurable for everyone.

― Onigaga (Princess TamTam), Sunday, 21 November 2010 19:36 (39 seconds ago) Bookmark

all other boards are depressing and horrible in my experience though

Or just throw the whole SB system in the bin and go back to moderator discretion, maybe with more use of yellow cards. But then people would complain about centralisation of power

agree on both sentences

I am also 100% opposed to anybody demanding that anyone code this for them, or float ideas they're not willing to pitch in on themselves.

this has literally not happened once in this thread.

this has literally not happened once in this thread.

lol except in its inaugural post you mean

the Main Thing you're doing is making a button that says "ATTN MODS!" instead of one that says "HOPE U NEVER POST HERE AGAIN"

Can't we have both? And the moon on a stick?

― Lindsey Lohan is the new Extreme Noise Terror (onimo), Sunday, 21 November 2010 19:39 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

there is already a forum where you can draw mod attention to things, why do ppl feel the need to do this anonymously

and the one person who offered any meaningful time/effort (mine doesn't count, really), has been driven off because ppl thought she called them toddlers (she didn't)

Survey monkey?

I am also 100% opposed to anybody demanding that anyone code this for them,

I agree with this btw. But all this thread started out as was a suggestion of a system that would work better than SB. There's not a dang thing wrong with having that discussion, even if nothing comes of it.

*goes back to read initial post VERY carefully*

I don't see the sbs Kate got for this thread as any sort of bullying or indictment of the sb system actually. As I mentioned on another thread, I (as user not in official mod dude capacity) am pretty sick of k8 refusing to take any stock of her behavior in favor of constantly talking about how evil ilxors are sbing her for no valid reason. I also suspect that some of those sbs were based on pure frustration about another sb thread getting started, and would have gotten levied against anyone starting this thread.

ppl thought she called them toddlers (she didn't)

actually yes she did

all other boards are depressing and horrible in my experience though

― samosa gibreel, Monday, 22 November 2010 00:49 (3 minutes ago)

otm

evan, where did you summarise? direct link plz :)

I suggest that the SB system be replaced by a Report/Flag Post system,

this is the extent of kate's demands in the first post.

OK fine I admit it. I SB'd Kate during this thread (tho not for the original post) and did so for the exact reasons JJusten just said.

my name is darraghmac and i don't think there are any major problems with the moderation of ilx.

there i said it. waiting to be called out for 'always arguing with poster x' again now.

xp actually yes she did

Okay, aero, I don't see the words "I suggest x" and think "that's a demand," but maybe I'm naive.

To make it really short:

Suggest ban = users are two year olds
Flag/report post = users are adults

― Karen D. Tregaskin, Sunday, November 21, 2010 5:54 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

put on yr reading glasses, old man

suggest ban = (assumes) users are two year olds
flag/report post = (assumes) users are adults

not that people doing some suggest banning are toddlers, but that such a system assumes that all users are toddlers. not saying i agree with her, but she wasn't calling ppl out for being children

ah - I do see how the effort of typing the extra eight characters must have been too much to bear

how about the post immediately prior:

Do you understand how these two things are different?

One is a blanket indictment of an entire person, without ever explaining why they are bad, just that they are bad, and they should go away.
The other is very specifically aimed at actions, with the idea of pointing out what behaviour is unacceptable, with the specific intent of changing that behaviour.

― Karen D. Tregaskin, Sunday, November 21, 2010 5:49 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

like snark about not typing eight characters, or w/e you'd like to justify yr misreading, but the fact is str8 up that y'all completely misunderstood what she said there, and i'm willing to level the charge that it's because you didn't really care enough because lol kate is annoying

xp areo - dude let it go, she's not saying ppl who voice support for sb system = two year olds & it's p obvious

dude I actually like k8 & wish death on all k8 haters, so eat a dick! that was how I read what she wrote & I know she's plenty capable of making herself clear, you're the one who seems to think she needs help elucidating herself

gbx for sitewide mod

ok but how u read what she wrote was wrong & its time to move on dawg

ah - I do see how the effort of typing the extra eight characters must have been too much to bear

Kate's fault you didn't understand her post but everyone else did? k

...and you were wrong, aero. also not sure what that little bit of ad hom was at the end (i'm being...what? condescending? because i agree with her?)

i misread that, tbh. my bad.

it's far from the first or last misreading itt, on the other hand. but apologies for my part, seeing as it's the only one worth making a huge deal over.

As a former moderator, I think the largest problem with the current system is that we didn't follow up and tell people why they were banned. That would have removed the paranoia portion of the process KDT mentioned in her first post.

I think the low level annoyance "I hate this person and would like to see them gone" reaction would increase with this proposed system, based on how people use suggest ban to express their vendettas with each other. This because I have no faith in a largely annoying segment of the population's ability to ignore each other or to let shit go.

i don't really care about SBs but i'd support the system floated by kate, which seems to focus them somewhat

gbx otm throughout esp re: the majority of posters in this thread being dicks, and i'll just call out darraghmac for being unnecessarily dense on top of it in lieu of scrolling up to SB

there is already a forum where you can draw mod attention to things, why do ppl feel the need to do this anonymously

this was covered in one or maybe all of the clusterfucks previous - quieter posters or posters who don't particularly want to be put at risk of being bullied wouldn't feel particularly comfortable with this

i do think a lot of clusterfucks and misery could've been avoided if SBs hadn't been implemented in the first place, they did seem like a way for mods to pussy out of cracking down on chronic low-level dickishness. there'd be complaints about mod power but the thing is that if you're a mod you then say "YES. AND?" and move on - you get to set the rules.

fair enuf samosa & gbx & autumn - standing by how "sb = users are two-year-olds" can fairly be read as "sb = users are two-year-olds" on a fast-moving thread

in re: whether k8 is demanding that a bunch of people, for free, do a lot of work to make her & a few vociferous objectors happy, here's the conclusion of her initial post:

I suggest that the SB system be replaced by a Report/Flag Post system, whereby 1) censure is attached to specific behaviour, not just the person in general and 2) a reason must be provided to establish *why* moderation is being asked for (and prevent abuse). This can be in the form of a drop-down list containing the things ILX condemns, for example:
1) Ad hominem attacks
2) Bullying
3) Racism
4) Sexism/Misogyny
5) Homophobia
6) Hate Speech (other)

Note what reasons are not given: this system is *not* for things one finds annoying but not mod-worthy ("you are an idiot" or "I disagree with you" or "OMG, shut UP with the derail/meta/hobbyhorse") - it is for specific behaviour that ILX will not tolerate.

If a post is flagged, it goes into a moderation queue. (I would suggest some kind of prioritisation if a post rapidly accumulates many flags, to require immediate attention and forestall meta clusterfucks.) It stays there until it is dealt with, instead of hanging around for months afterwards like SBs. A moderator can decide on the appropriate response - for example, on-thread warning, yellow carding, threadban, temp ban, etc. - and this response happens within a reasonable amount of time so that the offense and its punishment are causally correlated.

The other component would be a way of letting the "culprit" know what they are actually being punished for. I don't know if this is something that could - or even should be done automatically (for instance, a page where you can see your flag count a la your post count, I fear would be treated like a statscock by some people. This is not the intention.) However, the idea that someone or something can privately tell you "you got 17 flags for racism on X thread, knock it off" might actually be instructive.

Yes, it would mean more work for mods, though it would give more weight to mod decisions, if they are backed up by flags rather than seeming arbitrary or personal. But it would also mean that "oops, I didn't even know that was happening" is never an excuse, either for mods or for controversial posters.

"I suggest the SB system be replaced" & ff. is a lovely say of saying "someone do this, please" and really, fuck that, I don't love everything about how the board functions but the mods are working their asses off for free and in return they mainly get the same crap every other message board on the internet gets: a bunch of people insisting that their every whim be catered to. code this, code that. it's kinda gross, imo.

i'll just call out darraghmac for being unnecessarily dense on top of it in lieu of scrolling up to SB

i, uh, i appreciate it.

what level of dense is necessary in your opinion, i'll aspire to better in future

Yeah let me go ahead and tell you as a mod how awesomely that works out all the time. Xpost to lex

there'd be complaints about mod power but the thing is that if you're a mod you then say "YES. AND?" and move on - you get to set the rules.

worked brilliantly for hi dere.

this was covered in one or maybe all of the clusterfucks previous - quieter posters or posters who don't particularly want to be put at risk of being bullied wouldn't feel particularly comfortable with this

are quiet posters getting sbanned though?

also bummed aero didn't get my black star ref tbh

FWIW I read it as "if you SB ppl u are a child", also.

I feel like the gold standard for any candidate to replace SB has to be 'what would it have done about Dom' - if the answer is "he'd still be here" then I'm not interested in it.

Serious q. is there anybody who has any actually-not-clear understanding about how & why any individual poster, including themselves, got sb'd?

also bummed aero didn't get my black star ref tbh

lol ok look I've been drinking, I'll re-scan the thread and give you a rhyming & rhyming big-up in a minute

feel sorry for all the quiet posters that can't email the mods, genuinely confused as to how large a segment this is, can we get marketing on this?

im sayin

I think the low level annoyance "I hate this person and would like to see them gone" reaction would increase with this proposed system, based on how people use suggest ban to express their vendettas with each other. This because I have no faith in a largely annoying segment of the population's ability to ignore each other or to let shit go.

it would increase, no doubt. but it'd be easier to parse out lol bans from genuine grievance.

can't find black star ref unless it was "reading glasses" :(

one of my questions to you earlier gbx was, could both not co-exist? what're you tryin to achieve with the flagging? but you've typed a lot of that out already tbf, thread moving quickly.

Serious q. is there anybody who has any actually-not-clear understanding about how & why any individual poster, including themselves, got sb'd?

i haven't been suggest-banned often, but when i have, it's around the time i've been snide or a jackass. so i'm not surprised to have seen it happen.

BEEF IS NOT WHAT JAY SAID TO NAS
BEEF IS WHEN WORKING N- CANT FIND JOBS

oops guess it's just a mos def track, my b

dmac---they could coexist, but it'd be sorta redundant.

lj's second (third?) sb was a surprise for sure, other than that even the ones i wouldn't have wished for were in no ways surprosing or murky imo

why redundant

i) hey mod look at this and decide
ii) hey mod if 50 other people feel like i do please ban this user for 30 days

lol ok look I've been drinking, I'll re-scan the thread and give you a rhyming & rhyming big-up in a minute

― aerosmith: the acid house years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, November 21, 2010 7:12 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

see, the only reason i've managed to stay with this thread is because i live in lol mn and am drinking 3.2 k*ll*ans

ok lol @ autoreplace there, what the heck

drinking whiskey, i dont even know why i'm here. think i'm taking all aerosmith's flak tbh

worked brilliantly for hi dere.

― Goths in Home & Away in my lifetime (darraghmac), Sunday, November 21, 2010 8:10 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

I love HI DERE, but I always felt his willingness to engage with the plebes on this stuff was his achilles heel... obviously he felt he was doing a good thing wrt mod transparency, but the people he dealt with were mostly animals who took a mile when given an inch. Let everyone have IMP so they can let off steam and feel like they're being heard, but you don't really need to actually talk to them imo.

only redundant in that if a given poster is getting flagged all the g-d time, then the mods can just ban 'em. no one gets voted off the island.

i haven't been suggest-banned often, but when i have, it's around the time i've been snide or a jackass. so i'm not surprised to have seen it happen.

im almost +ve i sb'd you once in the 'how many sbs do i have?' thread bcuz your total was low + i think i had a 'good zinger' about you now have x+1 sbs instead of x or w/e

so i mean i hope that taught u a lesson

lol it did

just sb'd you.

no offense

(actually, just kidding)

xxxp to ptt hoooo boy

only redundant in that if a given poster is getting flagged all the g-d time, then the mods can just ban 'em. no one gets voted off the island.

― BIG MUFFIN (gbx),

mods cant make that call themselves?

sb, for me, works only if mods are making the calls on what's acceptable/banworthy completely independently of sb totals. sb used as a register of complaint of the kind of mid/low level annoyance/nuisance/disruption that can make a poster who never posts anything banworthy in one post a real PITA

What is the purpose of the suggest ban system? I am asking this now, in a lull, in the hopes that we can reasonably and non-specifically address a potential alternative.

-Is it to attempt to punish or reform the behaviour of out of control or problem posters?
-Is it to lighten the workload of the mods, and eliminate the need for "Ban Poster X" campaigns?
-Is it to create a general air of paranoia, fear and suspicion, dissuade posters from expressing views they fear may be unpopular, and drive the creation of new screen names and socks to express opinions?

so imo sb is for none of those things

princess tam tam even tho upthread I advocated greater restraint on the part of non-mod ppl other than kate posting itt, you are proposing bad bad things

well, maybe the first one tbf, tho 'out of control' isn't quite right

need a mod & kate only board, lj?

see, the only reason i've managed to stay with this thread is because i live in lol mn and am drinking 3.2 k*ll*ans

lol high five

tam tam is only a princess in the sense that he likes his new tiara and his suggestions are terrible

princess tam tam even tho upthread I advocated greater restraint on the part of non-mod ppl other than kate posting itt, you are proposing bad bad things

― pro EVOO sucker (acoleuthic), Sunday, November 21, 2010 8:27 PM (53 seconds ago) Bookmark

What do you mean?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVmhZW1dDis

suggest beef

Gbx for a small fee I will call you every Saturday afternoon and tell you to go to the gddmn liquor store.

I mean 3.2 k*ll*ans u poor bastard

i did, it just, uh, didn't last.

a bitter harvest

loool

What do you mean?

― Onigaga (Princess TamTam), Monday, 22 November 2010 01:28 (6 minutes ago)

yr proposals advocate out and out authoritarianism, no right of reply, and the sort of unfeeling moderation for which ILX is seldom if ever known

1) Ad hominem attacks
2) Bullying
3) Racism
4) Sexism/Misogyny
5) Homophobia
6) Hate Speech (other)

the mods already take care of all these pretty effectively imo.

Note what reasons are not given: this system is *not* for things one finds annoying but not mod-worthy

i don't agree with it, but my understanding is that this is exactly what SB is supposed to capture: low level dickishness.

― caek, Sunday, 21 November 2010 14:03 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

if the mods find it useful/reassuring to have the silent support of SBs before they make a moderation decision they would have hesitated to make on their own, then i'm all for keeping it. and when they make that decision, they can tell the problem poster why.

but 51 = 30 days, 102 = 60 days automated bans seem to be treated like a force of nature by the mods simply because keith wrote the code that way. and in practice they've resulted in a mixture of absurd and uncool popularity contest bans that make ilx a worse place, and perfectly sensible bans/timeouts for bad faith dickishness the mods could have done themselves. just get rid of the autoban, keep the "suggest ban" button as an "fyi this post annoyed me" if the mods fine it useful, and the system is fine.

― caek, Sunday, 21 November 2010 14:19 (Yesterday)

i agree with all this 100% hope it's not too dense in someone else's words

yr proposals advocate out and out authoritarianism, no right of reply, and the sort of unfeeling moderation for which ILX is seldom if ever known

dude, your situation would be massively IMPROVED if all that came to pass

except "automated bans" just isn't true, as has been stated here and on every other SB thread. Bans are not automatic.

xp

that is very fair xxpost

Why so, WmC? I know the mods are trying to help me so I got a lotta time for yr many decisions, but I think a right of reply and an informed consensus is very important as well (albeit more so in politics than on ILX).

except "automated bans" just isn't true, as has been stated here and on every other SB thread. Bans are not automatic.

Trayce said this too and it's sound. So maybe just call 'suggest ban' something less inciteful or make the link harder to get at or something.

Or put love hearts around it maybe.

"right of reply" is the 50x before 51 imo lj

well they've spoken and I'm listening

hey gbx - while I disagree that the flagging system will solve much of anything, I want to sincerely give you props for being civil and keeping it positive on this thread.

If all ban decisions had been taken out of the hands of SB'ers, you probably wouldn't have gotten your third month off.

On the other hand the first month off might have been permanent, so I dunno.

In other words, it was mostly a joke.

(to LJ)

lj's third ban was when? i think his second one was worse tbh.

have only had 2 SBs

'only' haha

~foreshadowing~

lol

:(

and thx sarahel, tho i'm on my third k*ll*ans so things might get a little crazy around here

i was fond of my tribute thread though. some of my finest creative work on ilx.

why are you googleproofing the beer name?

it does it automatically!!!

ok, I could have sworn you've had three! xp to lj

i still dont get the argument gbx is making, but that's because i'm unnecessarily dense obvs, but dude's f'real cool itt.

lj asked for his total lately and it was quite high again and radcge ensued so that might explain it

have had a couple of selfbans for academic reasons + a tombot tempban when shit was gettin heated

what's ur banné take on sb system. feel ur somewhat of a strange case tbh, reform was textbook imo after #1

Beer name is the same as the name of an ilx user who needed his POWERWORD irl name googleproofed for work-related reasons.

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

tell him his beer sucks

um...well I was still offending ilxors in their droves until recently! so reform wasn't textbook, was still goin' ape online @ ppl, ultranagl - let them register their disapproval and I will try 2 amend, peace god

could you googleproof my POWERWORD irl name for work-related reasons? The "l" stands for Loko, thanks.

you've had a few episodes lately tbf, but so you know i didnt sb you when you radged me out that time about gf tomfoolery <3 do uc

K8 if you're still reading this thread:

Maybe I'm the only one who feels that you taking a break from ILX via SB or whatever is akin to an alcoholic taking a enforced break from alcohol via rehab or whatever (i.e. a good idea).

But I guess I just can't understand why you keep coming back to the thing that clearly makes you miserable and angry.

yr proposals advocate out and out authoritarianism, no right of reply, and the sort of unfeeling moderation for which ILX is seldom if ever known

― pro EVOO sucker (acoleuthic), Sunday, November 21, 2010 8:41 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

Glib response: why is any of that bad? Honestly, there's a lot of smart and articulate people on here, and I kinda feel like it works against yall sometimes... when an undeniable dickhead like Whiney is given a break from the site, all these otherwise-intelligent people get their hackles up and start writing crazy screeds about the rise of fascism and when is d4n p3rry gonna come for my uncool niece... it has a virus-like effect on the rest of the site and makes people feel like it's okay to sass mods and whine constantly instead of having fruitful, constructive non-meta discussions. Let Whiney make a personal appeal if he wants to, why does there need to be a 2000 post thread about it? Idk if I should out myself like this, but as a former banned user I found it ridiculous when people would give the mods a hard time for any of my perfectly justifiable bannings (tho that happened less as they became more frequent, Lmao)... i mean its nice when people have your back and all, but so much noise gets made over the mods doing their job the same as any of us would... just imho...

oh, ok, that's who I thought you were.

this'll be a good thread to refer to the poster who once wrote "it'd be nice btw if every fucking visible mod didn't post from the same slumber party" -- lot of good civil disagreement up in this thing

between mods, i mean

yeah but ur still in the same room wearing pyjamas how can we trust you

O_o uh oh I am wearing pajamas tho is the thing

ok no, bad images now
xp!

I support a system in which people can respond to Karen D. Tregaskin posts and let her know without any ambiguity that they are suggest banning/post flagging her because she is being unnecessarily aggressive and not because she is a woman who "resists rape culture"

are you Lok'd?

not since last december

I am clean atm

To answer some of the stuff that's been asked:

1. We're totally up for help on the coding, absolutely. It's not public for the taking any longer because we've had posters ambling through it in the past looking for loopholes to exploit. (I'm not talking about security by obscurity here, just areas that if we let hostile eyes loose on will make our lives unnecessarily hard.)
2. That said, it is not simple code. It's a big, big piece of Java. Even things that seem like they would be simple if you were writing straight SQL to the database aren't necessarily, because they'll have to go through one of tbe eight memory caches first, in a thread-safe way. If you've done one programming class a while back, it's going to be a stretch. It's really not tinker-friendly.

3. We looked at a "like" function for posts a good while back -- I was thinking about an auto-excelsior thread -- but scrapped because I saw how it worked on Metafilter -- eg, it turned everyone into favourites-whores, and drove quality of discussion right down.

4. Flag "posts" vs flag "users": ultimately, this comes down to what was a problem for ILX and what wasn't. ILX has, I think, always been pretty good with problem posts. Other users will speak up pretty quickly about them, and it's where self-policing works better than it doesn't. You can wither posters here with nothing more than a well-placed "UH". This means it's often not the friendliest place for a total newcomer, but on the other hand, it kinda keeps the quality up higher than I see it on a ton of boards of similar size.

What wasn't working pre-SB was when you got beyond that post-level issues and had to ban someone. If it was done by mod fiat, there was almost inevitably a cluster fuck of that poster's friends going "this is total shit, this guy is a MVP and amazingly funny unban now". It was making the boards really polarised, and moderate/quieter posts were obviously being driven away because they weren't internet hardman enough to raise their voices. (It's not true either that we should just have had "tougher" mods who could hand out bans with impunity: we had some very tough mods, but their bans would generally be seen as one-sided and without justification.)

SB changed all that. I think it struck some of the people who were SB'd early on that actually it wasn't just one mod with a grudge that had shut them down, but there was a real majority who wanted them to stop behaving like they were. It has definitely changed some posters' styles. That said, there are totally things about it that need to work better. People need to get warnings when they're getting close. They need feedback after a ban to explain what happened. It shouldn't (and doesn't btw) happen automatically; mods should review the SBs.

On a wider point, SBs were automatic at first because when they were introduced there were hardly any mods, certainly few willing to take the huge load of grief dishing out a high-profile ban would get them. I don't want ILX to be 4chan, but the idea that the site should be able to get along with a minimum of mod intervention is the right one, I think. Adding post flagging changes that to there being an expectation of lots of mods always watching and ready to step in. To my eyes, it actually changes a lot -- it makes ILX less a self-policing community with mods to step in where required to a much more actively curated community, with mods watching every post.

SB changed all that. I think it struck some of the people who were SB'd early on that actually it wasn't just one mod with a grudge that had shut them down, but there was a real majority who wanted them to stop behaving like they were. It has definitely changed some posters' styles.

This is worth repeating in bold.

That said, there are totally things about it that need to work better. People need to get warnings when they're getting close. They need feedback after a ban to explain what happened.

fix these two things and this argument is over imo

People need to get warnings when they're getting close.

honestly, this would probably accomplish much of what a flagging system does, inasmuch as you wouldn't need threads for requesting bannage totals. give an auto yellow card or something, and if anyone's completely, utterly shocked to discover they're riding so high, they can ask a mod to explain what it is they've been SBd for.

xp ha, yup