Missin U <3 - lamentations for those felled by the SB

Unless I'm mistaken, he's riffing with Que re: the ILX paradise you go to after you've been suggest-banned.

D'oh! Obliviousness overtook me.

oh hey sorry i dropped out of the discussion for a while, but i was like selling stuff and making money (go economy go!)

just a couple of clarifications:

1 - i actually tempbanned ethan when i saw how fast his SB's were skyrocketing, but the damage was done and he kept getting SB votes from new people that came onto the threads
2 - tuomas accumulated a ton of his SB's for making a "funny" link to st0rmfr0nt, for the people that keep holding him up as an unbannable paragon of good behaviour.
3 - for the 50 bagazillionth time, Dom was banned, not SBed. again, i think this confusion comes from the fact that i mentioned the fact that due to multi-usernames he had also earned a SB after the fact, but he was banned by mod action.
4 - Bimble, on the other hand, was SBed due to someone (Matt DC I think) doing the math and realizing that he had topped the 51 mark. i think in the future this is the policy re:multiusernames if we catch it.

not really trying to make any points here, just committed to making sure that all the information is available to people on all sides of the issue

u know the multi-username thing is doubly complicated -- any number of SB's on one could overlap with those on another. i suppose the mods could cross-ref all the SB-ers names. did you?

yep

oh. well done!

wrt bimble most of them were on the active account in use when the most recent blow up occurred, so it was pretty easy to do

1 - i actually tempbanned ethan when i saw how fast his SB's were skyrocketing, but the damage was done and he kept getting SB votes from new people that came onto the threads

Are you saying you tried to circumvent the SB system by intervening because you thought the result of leaving it to act would be incorrect? (Serious question.)

Did cankles actually get SB-ed? I thought he was temp-banned by a mod.

he was temp banned a couple of diff times iirc, sb'd only once

1. i tried to intervene because i thought ethan was emotionally caught up in the moment (dom banning btw) and as a good mod, i was trying to cut down on the collateral damage. and yeah, mods are still going to be mods - i would temp anybody that was going on an image blitz, or behaving in any sort of way that was (and i know this might sound parental, i dont mean it that way) going to negatively impact themselves or others. we have temp banned plenty of other posters for similar reasons - bimble was temped before hitting the SB point as well. not saying i know more than ethan about the way he chooses to post obv, but it would be pretty shitty of me not to try to stave off a ban if i thought it could be avoided. I think it bears noting that seriously, mods are trying to make shit better on ilx, not worse. i would prefer that nobody got SBed. I'd prefer that everyone could manage to post in a way where nobody would SB them. this doesnt mean that SB isnt helpful or necessary, it means that in a perfect world, people would all find a way to work out their differences or whatever. GOOD LUCK USA! ILX!

2. yeah cankles got sbed.

xpost

going to significantly negatively impact themselves or others.

to clarify above

OK thanks jjjusten. I have absolutely no problem with that kind of modding. I think that's all we need, tbh. To me SB is a feature that aims to solve a problem that was never that serious, with a huge amount of collateral damage.

To clarify that, I have nothing but thanks and respect for the huge amount of time Keith has put into ILX, but SB does not solve the problem it was designed to solve (which I didn't perceive in the first place, fwiw). It has instead made things worse: no less clusterfucky or dramatic, less interesting, and a real cultural change for the worse. The wisdom of crowds is an unnecessary compromise when we already have the resources to maintain and police this site well (which mods did before, afaic). A few smart mods is 10x better.

And for what? I'm not a mod, and they tell us things are better from their p.o.v., but then I see things like jjjusten admitting that he tried to intervene before a SBing and I can't help thinking, shit, things were at least not significantly worse for them before this feature. With the help of threads like these, discussion now has reached the point where they've understandably circled the wagons and there is nothing doing, but c'mon. This sucks. I know Tuomas is a bore, but he's right. Sociopathic behaviour should be policed by mods as before, everyone else should enjoy life's rich tapestry.

(p.s. I think adding an anti-SB button would make things even worse. fishing for good or bad attention is the result, and it leads to the kind of cretinous/banal discussion that you get on digg.)

The SB feature always reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons where they all shock each other. The fact that only a handful of posters have gotten SB-ed shows that that worst case scenario isn't happening.

"A few smart mods are 10x better than us retards", I meant.

u ppl u horrible ppl *shakes fist in impotent rage*

I'm not a mod, and they tell us things are better from their p.o.v., but then I see things like jjjusten admitting that he tried to intervene before a SBing and I can't help thinking, shit, things were at least not significantly worse for them before this feature.

That's a bad example to make that assumption off of, considering that the sequence of critical events that happened (Dom getting banned, Ethan going on a rampage, John or another mod temp-banning Ethan) all would have occurred without the suggest-ban feature turned on.

all would have occurred without the suggest-ban feature turned on.

_exactly_. the problem it solves is one we already had licked.

not licking ethan or dom btw

I agree that a "suggest ban" feature is not very useful when a poster is going on a highly-visible rampage across all of the boards that requires immediate moderator attention.

hey HI DERE can u email me my sb total?

(Where it is helpful is that it allows the posting community to define what "acceptable posting" is without the mods. You're clicking on that link presumably because someone has said or done something that makes you wish they weren't posting anymore; that may be as specific as making offensive and/or intensely annoying comments about you or something you find important or as trivial as someone liking a band you hate. From what we've seen, the vast majority people using the system are not doing so frivolously, and the people who have been banned by it were doing things that make it understandable that 51 people would want them to stop.)

_exactly_. the problem it solves is one we already had licked.
banning someone who's on a rampage in the middle of borad drama isn't the problem SB solves. (although that said there have been periods when virtually any ban for any thing would have resulted in a hail of mod-aimed invective, and SB does help with that, even in what you'd think are clear-cut cases like imagebombs). xp

ok, that ethan thing was kind of a red herring and i regret mentioning it since you're focussing on it rather than the rest of my post.

my point was: a few mods did a better job of dealing with the behaviour we don't want, without getting rid of the stuff we do. as people (rightly imo) say, this is not a democracy. the posting community's idea of what is acceptable, at least in the average, is going to lead to an uninteresting site, almost by definition. if you do not already know what your idea of "acceptable behaviour" and you need the help of SB clicks to guide your hand then you should not become a benevolent dictator.

That a few mods were doing a better job sure wasn't the feeling I got from modreq in the pre-SB days. There were always threads like "BAN X", so some people were falling through the cracks unbanned, and there were often complaints about the justifications for banning people who were banned. SB helps with both of those problems.

As for uninteresting: people aren't SBing based on what people *say*, only *how* they say it -- ppl are getting SBd for acting like dicks. If that leads to a site where people don't act like dicks, then I don't have a problem with it. I know some ppl do, and that they want ILX to be almost a grown-up 4chan home for dicks and the thick-skinned only, but nobody who is responsible for this site shares that view, so it's going to be fought against.

but then I see things like jjjusten admitting that he tried to intervene before a SBing and I can't help thinking, shit, things were at least not significantly worse for them before this feature.

kind of bending my words here, im being pretty clear that i did what i would have done with or without SB in place - instead of an SB, we would have had a mod request clusterfuck with people demanding that e get temp-banned or whatever. also, your use of the word "admitting" connotes that i am getting my actions dragged out into the light somehow or fessing up to something, which im not. i just havent bothered to mention the specific related on board before. again, im just making all of the facts available because if people want to talk about this, its helpful if there arent any gray areas that can be misinterpreted.

xposts

As for uninteresting: people aren't SBing based on what people *say*, only *how* they say it

How do you know this?

(And I don't mean interesting in the "may you live in interesting times" sense.)

xp, yeah, sorry, that sentence got editted then pasted back in an old version which made it seem more like i had tricked you into admitting something terribly revealing.

but in that case surely there would not have been a mod request clusterfuck?

also, to reiterate, i can wholesale guarantee (speaking for myself) that there would be more perma-bans in effect right now than there are, and that is largely due to the SB system. maybe part of the problem is that i dont want to see mods as "benevolent dictators" - this vision of mods is what led to most of the "mods are nazis!" screamfests in the past, not terribly interested in going back to that.

xpost: we know that because we can see what posts people get sbanned for, and as incredulous as people seem to be about this, it is abundantly clear, particularly when a few choice posts lead to the majority of the ban votes.

xxpost

Because I see the posts people click SB on, and there's hardly ever anything innocuous or even controversial-but-said-genuinely. It's nearly always either being creepy, or abusive, or just blanket hollering and not engaging, or any of the other things that when you see people doing you think "they're being a dick, there". Challops or just honestly pushing your case doesn't get SBd (see Crut upthread)

jjjusten, you would have permabanned people who have been SBed, but you didn't because they got SBed?

xp I SB-ed someone for challops ... only one of two people I've pushed the button on.

but in that case surely there would not have been a mod request clusterfuck?

oh come on, pretty sure you've been posting to ilx long enough to remember the good old days!

and it isnt just to avoid clusterfucks either - although i would venture to say that the tone of ILX is generally better when opposing groups of posters aren't engaged in rageful back and forths about who should or shouldn't be banned. also, i think most posters would prefer not to have to watch people make the case for what a scumbag they are in a public forum.

xpost: no, i would have made the judgement call to permaban some people who arent currently permabanned.

it didn't take, or it didn't last. xp

xpost: no, i would have made the judgement call to permaban some people who arent currently permabanned.

Probably missing something, but i don't understand what difference SB made in those cases then? Morbs notwithstanding (he is presumably not who you're talking about here) none of the SBed posters who've returned have moderated their behaviour as a result of the SBing (LJ has grown up, troo, but that would hopefully have happened anyway) and claiming that the sociopaths have become nicer because of the new moderation technique seems like wishful thinking a la "war in Iraq made Libya disarm".

i dunno gabbneb's been a lot improved since his suggest bannings--it's almost like the dude isn't even here

what is gabbneb's current status? i have lost track?

upper upper middle class, i think

yeah i love gabbneb now

^______^

not speaking for jj here, but if someone's pissing you off as a mod, and you think "would drop the hammer here" but they've only got 3 SBs, it definitely gives you pause. Dom lasted for a good while because his account didn't accrue SBs due to a bug, so he just got temped again and again. When we found the bug and discovered he was already well past 50, that changed.

I don't think sociopaths will all necessarily change because of SB, but they'll have to try if they want to stay in an SB world. and I think of those that have, SB has played a part in it. It's much harder to justify continuing to act shit when a chunk of posters have voted for you to go than it is when you can just shrug off a ban as the result of a nazi mod you disagree with and nothing you need to take into consideration.

yeah but then you can blame it on a secret clique acting on a policy/tool that you're ignorant of...

In fairness, only one person has done that.

That makes a lot of sence, thanks stet.

I guess my disagreement then is not whether SB makes moderation better target a certain kind of asshole (you and jj have convinced me that it does), but whether you should be targetting those low level assholes in the first place. But that's not something I can argue with. You want the site you want, and you have the server.

xp: on the other hand, one could feel oppressed by the whims of what one feels is a thin-skinned minority of anonymous lurkers. I'd be interested to know whether most of the SBs are from active posters or from people who rarely post/lurkers. ... Not to revisit a subject I know has been discussed at length in previous threads like this. I'm just curious to know the numbers.

i think we should be able to ban people who annoy us and thus SB is a good feature, and i say that as someone who is nearing the big 4-0

and as a few others have pointed out, the idea that there are thousands of regular posters on ilx is insane. i'd be shocked if we were even above like 120

i don't have those numbers, but I usually recognise the majority of names of people giving out SBs. It's not being done by a silent choir, I'm sure of that.

I don't think it's whims, either. But as for thin-skinned -- you can either have a board that only the thick skinned can bear to be on, or you can have one with both thin and thick-skinned posters, at the cost of the aggressive having to rein in their more extreme impulses. I don't see that as a huge cost. The things that have been implicitly asked of those already SBd aren't totally onerous.

ILX has veered about on a spectrum from cuddlestein to prison yard in its time, but the advantage of SB is the equilibrium it is finding now comes directly from the posters themselves and not via mod opinion, for the first time. xp

It's way more than 120 dude - I'd say we were probably knocking around the 250-350 mark at least. (xpost)