Suspension of User

The user in question was doing stuff like going back and liking EVERY POST from the person who asked him to cease interacting with them after the request was made.

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So he was being a dick and gaming the system. He wasnā€™t replying them. Seems like dickish edgecase. I assume he was given an opportunity to stop after being told it was unacceptable before he was banned but he kept on doing it?

Iā€™m not being argumentative for its own sake here (really). Iā€™m just wanting us to be enough better than the old site that we have a code of conduct or rules that we point to when people are about to get banned so it is all 100% clear.

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Iā€™m not sober enough to contribute meaningfully.

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In fact, because he did that sock puppet stunt, I would actually argue for the double ban I got at That Other Place. Doing what you did to get banned, while banned, deserves a harsher ban, but itā€™s the only thing that warrants this.

So he got slapped with five days. Big deal. He can come back Thursday. No harm, no foul, no need to do anything except take his lumps.

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From my point of view, youā€™re no angel in that thread with him either and trying to get the guy you were arguing with banned even further doesnā€™t make you look like a better person here either.

If it helps, I think youā€™re all dweebs.

But in the best way.

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Iā€™d like it if we can all take s breather from the drama while we have a time out.

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If someone requested an end to all contact and the other individual persisted (yes, even liking posts), then yes, I think itā€™s a problem requiring intervention from the mods. Given that this happened to multiple people, as @tinoesroho noted, across multiple sites, it should be addressed.

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Well, Iā€™m specifically talking about the BBS and how I (and others) have asked the user in question to stop all contact, but he continued to do so. I had to get a moderator involved in order to get him to stop. It was clearly harassing actions, which is indeed verboten by the rules there. I know heā€™s done similar things here as well (the passive-aggressive liking of posts for a user that asked for an end to contact). You might not consider that harassing, but we certainly felt harassed in these cases.

Rules are pointless if people feel unsafe.

Iā€™m not sure what you want me to say here, though, that my and others feeling of safety should be secondary to rules? Iā€™m not going to say that, because thatā€™s why we have moderators who can make decisions based on whatā€™s happening. If someone plays by the letter of the law, but is still making others feel harassed, should that be allowed to continue?

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Rules are also pointless if we just make them up on the fly. Thatā€™s my point.

Iā€™m not sure that ā€œlikingā€ someoneā€™s posts qualifies as harassment.

Iā€™m definitely not sure that if someone is mean to me on twitter and I tell them here not to bug me here or on twitter and they continued on twitter, it would deserve a ban here either.

Because it is all about the feels.

If they follow the letter of the law and are still somehow violating things, we should fix the law, not just make up new law on the fly. Decisions should be codified. Thatā€™s the whole point of written rules and codes of conduct.

Thatā€™s my opinion. Iā€™m clearly in the minority and it just gives me an icky feeling about how moderation may be done in the future here.

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I donā€™t know how to make it any clearer here. So I guess thatā€™s it.

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The way to make it clearer is to have all of this above codified in rules that we can all refer to and know ahead of time.

Also, behavior on another site has no bearing here, regardless of shared membership. It isnā€™t on us to police behavior elsewhere. If we are going to do so, I guess we should codify that as well.

I donā€™t want a core set of vague rules followed by the legal precedent of potentially years of mod decisions being what ā€œthe rulesā€ are here. I just want a clear set of rules. If people game them, we improve the rules.

Also, if the policy is now ā€œIll behavior between users here on another web site will get a ban here,ā€ Iā€™d like you and the other mods to explicitly and openly say thatā€™s now the policy. Iā€™ve interacted with members here on twitter, for example. If they donā€™t like that interaction, could I, potentially, be banned from this site because twitter doesnā€™t do anything about interactions?

But they didnā€™t follow the letter of the law. Nothing was on-the-fly.

Anti-harassment, good-behaviour codes have been around at least as long as Usenet. There have been different degrees of them and different degrees of enforcement, but itā€™s nothing new.

You keep acting like this is unprecedented, undocumented, and without prior warning, and like itā€™s a major punishment. Instead, temp bans for the purposes of cooling off are nothing new, the behaviour in question is documented from several sources, there was prior warning, and the ban in question is nearly half over already.

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I was on Usenet in the 80s. You know it didnā€™t have bans, right?

I disagree that behavior on another site has any bearing on this site. If he got banned only for behavior here, then we shouldnā€™t be discussing other sites. If his behavior elsewhere was a core issue, then I disagree it has bearing here.


Since the reasoning provided for this ban included activity here on this site, flags, and private complaints, I think itā€™s safe to say that what you phrased above is not the policy that the mods were working under.

Iā€™d also think that it would not be untoward for a moderator to look at the full scope of a situation, including outside actions, in making a decision.

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I thought this was clear. Isnā€™t harassing behavior clearly against the rules? And donā€™t the rules have to be interpreted by moderators to have meaning. By all means, you should ask for clarification on specific actions, but at the end of the day, someone has to decide and act. And yes, ā€œfeelingsā€ matter here. Because we are human beings and have them.

This was not decided on behavior there, but here. I was just pointing out a pattern of behavior across both sites, which are a lot more interconnected than say here and twitter.

I would say that ā€œdonā€™t harass other usersā€ seems straightforward to me.

Again, it was what happened here that caused the ban.

He was. I brought up the other site, because he was doing the same thing. He got short time outs for the same behavior on both places.

Again, Iā€™m really not sure what you want me to say here. Do you want me to say that his ability to post here should trump others being harassed? I donā€™t believe that. He is often a smart and interesting person, but heā€™s also had some questionable behavior that has caused discord and some feeling unsafe. I donā€™t know why you donā€™t think that matters or that itā€™s not addressed in the rules.

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So was I, and my experience was different. The software may not have supported it, but Iā€™ve seen people kicked out of forums for being disruptive ā€“ sometimes by people totally ignoring everything they posted. Iā€™ve also seen peopleā€™s posts mysteriously stop working without any errors reported, even though supposedly that wasnā€™t possible. Bozo filters have been around for a while.

You know, this could turn into a constructive conversation about moderation if you stopped attacking and discrediting everyone elseā€™s experiences and knowledge.

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As an aside, youā€™re not describing actual usenet here, which had no way to ban people or stop posts, really. Maybe you mean private forums of that era.

This is the second time youā€™ve decided to make this personal and start describing my behavior and commenting on it. Iā€™m not interested in that game and you making this personal and about me.

Please quit talking to me.

You skipped over this part.

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