SHOULD THIS BOARD REVISE THE BANNING POLICY?

[The_Rorschach]

My opinion counts for jack shit, but I'll throw it out there anyway.

Making a pay-account basis will exclude new people from joining, yes, including possibly cool ones. -Now, for the record, I've never contributed dollar one to this site, regardless of the excuses I offer, so that might colour my argument some.

I wouldn't mind seeing a ban, but even ISP bans can be gotten around without too much trouble.

Someone mentioned an Ignore feature, and that is what I would go with if its an option. Might have to code the program yourself as I've never heard of it on a messageboard before, but if you could create an option that allows one to Ignore all posts by a specified user it would certainly clear up alot of the bullshit. Add in an default action when a quota of ignores is met on one user it results in a ban and you have a mod-friendly solution right there.

I can already think of a handful of problems with this, but this isn't an easy situation.

[Grazzt]

I suggest just deleting dumb posts.

[Grazzt]

Or as an alternative, just ignore those people you think are moronic.

[The_Rorschach]

Jazus, Grazzt is using the Rorschach as his userpict.

Bastard.

[Grazzt]

I would have gotten the Comedian but I couldn't find anything small enough. But Rorschach is great as well.

[theapportioner]

Having a quota may result in people banned because of political views, disliking Radiohead, or some other dumb reason.

Having the ignore option (without quota) could potentially be part of a premium "pay" service, if Rog wants to make some money. It keeps the boards from being elitist, while putting cash in Rog's vault and making those who pay happier.

What about having all would-be members requiring approval before getting their accounts registered and being allowed to post? The downside would mean more work for the moderators, though you have some control over who comes in, and newbies would know who their daddy is. They could have a 90 day probationary period -- a warning or two, and then they are outta here.

[Jebus]

I'm pretty sure making rules would do nothing except cause a larger workload for mods having to send out warnings to people. Newbs don't realize what they are saying is completely worthless and pointless which is how the crap gets posted in the first place. The newbs have been told hundreds of times why and how their posts are stupid and pointless and yet it continues to happen. I don't think posting the rules are going to make any difference. Otherwise they would have fixed themselves the first 100 times they were told what they were doing wrong.


Edit: The only way that the senseless posting will stop is taking out the few really bad ones, giving the lesser bad ones less to reply to. Picking the really bad ones is the hard part though. :/

[whoreable]

I think we need to hear from mew.

[VinceZeb]

This situation is very simple: This board isn't a democracy, its a dictatorship. Whoever runs and pays for it makes the rules. If people are being asshole just to be assholes, then whoever rules the roost proceeds with the proper action. That's pretty much it.

[Ninjavenom]

Aye, he's been rather silent on the issue. Proto as well.

[Anonymous]

Having the ignore option (without quota) could potentially be part of a premium "pay" service, if Rog wants to make some money. It keeps the boards from being elitist, while putting cash in Rog's vault and making those who pay happier.

Something like that sounds like a pretty good idea if it's possible

[Mockery]

There is an ignore hack for php boards that I can install, but I've contacted the author to see if there's a way to set it so only people who are part of a certain group (ie: a donating user or whatever) can use it, cuz I definitely like the idea of using it not only to make the board more enjoyable, but to raise money for the board itself.

Here's basically what the hack does:

This hack allows members to compile a list of users to ignore. Posts of the ignored users will be replaced by a message that the user is being ignored. There is a link that will show the post if the member chooses to read it.

This also removes the ignored user's post in the topic review when replying to the thread.

-RoG-

[Esuohlim]

Originally Posted by Mockery

Posts of the ignored users will be replaced by a message that the user is being ignored.

So that basically means that instead of completely removing the ignored user's post from the thread, the message they write will be replaced by something like "This user is ignored"?

Doesn't that defeat the purpose of ignoring?

[mew barios]

my thinking is.. i would say the situation really isn't so terrible. but i have to admit that i barely even skim over general anymore.

i don't really like the idea of me removing posts or banning or even.. being unpleasant to people simply upon the grace that they're irrtating lil suchnsuchs. i wasn't so brilliant when i first showed up on the boards way back in whenever. i didn't talk much though. o.o

tch. maybe there should be a limit imposed on the number of posts a new member can make. like. 5 a day max. and at least a week before they can make a new topic. lolz :/

if there's a clearer set of rules, i'll make sure they're enforced? i guess that's all there is to it for me. :o

[Les Waste]

I've been on a board that went through this exact same problem. People started getting banned for reasons like "being sarcastic" or saying bad things about the site the board was part of. Even though a lot of these people were ISP banned, they were still very bitter about being banned for really no good reason.

What happened was a large group of people who were banned were re-registering (I don't know who said it, but it really is easy to get around an ISP ban) and starting to purposefully make the forum suck. They would flood the forum with worthless topics so bad that you would need to look at page 8 of the forum to see the start of the legitimate threads.

And it's not like it was that bad. I was a mod on that board, and it wasn't that hard to prune out all the retarded threads, but it was inconvenient. And a mod wasn't always online, so people would come to the board, see several pages of bullshit threads, and leave. People stopped coming to the board, and that's without even mentioning that most of the threads that weren't flood threads where people who weren't banned complaining that the people who were banned shouldn't have been banned.

I agree with VinceZeb, and that's the position I took when this admin was banning everyone he didn't like. It's not a democracy, it really is a dictatorship. But that doesn't mean people are going to like it and decide to stay around. And if there's a mass exodus, the boards will suck more than they do before people started to get banned because the only person left would be Cap'n Crunch.

I think there should be more people banned, but I think the rules should be extremely well established. I think turning off post counts is a good idea, I think giving people warnings is a good idea, and I think banning people for 30 days is a good idea. As long as people don't get banned for "being annoying" or "being gay."

[FS]

Originally Posted by Esuohlim

So that basically means that instead of completely removing the ignored user's post from the thread, the message they write will be replaced by something like "This user is ignored"?

Doesn't that defeat the purpose of ignoring?

Without that, threads where people you're ignoring posted will stop making sense.

[Mockery]

exactly.

[Les Waste]

Yeah, but unless EVERYONE is ignoring that person it still won't make any sense. Someone else might not be ignoring the same person you are, and you'll be reading one half of the conversation.

Granted, if you're ignoring someone they probably didn't attribute anything to threads in the first place. But if someone replies to a post by a person you're ignoring it won't make any sense at all.

[Mockery]

Les, I don't have an ignore feature installed, yet I'm already ignoring you.

[Jixby Phillips]

What about a "Gay-up's" forum?

No seriously, Any kind of "Lame" forum or something... It could keep General Blabber clean(er) of bad topics, and it's not like anybody could really be mad over getting their topic moved, because it's not deleted, it's just in a different place. It might discourage people from being so useless.

[whoreable]

I like the 5 posts a day thing for new people. once they reach 100 posts they shoudl be able to start new threads. so it would take them about one month of posting before they could even start their shitty threads.

what would be even better than the normal ignore feature would be if the admin could auto ignore people for the whole board that would be an interesting alternative to banning.

EDIT: "gay ups" is a great idea.

[Anonymous]

An ignore feature that would completely erase the person from your view would be great. No-one worth reading would have annoying people unignored to begin with, so it wouldn't be confusing at all.

The only downside is that people new to the forums wouldn't get a good representation of the good posters, but it's not like they are now, either.

Probably the best solution would be the option to ignore/unignore in groups of paid, vets (1yr on this board), and unpaid.


Oh, and hello.

*I'm still gone until I get myself figured out, Mew just showed me the thread. It wasn't really the job, or lack thereof, that was the big problem behind my vacation.

[Les Waste]

Mockery, if you're ignoring me how did you know what I said in my last post?! HAHA, I WIN!! KING ME!! CHECK MATE!!

I'd like a Gay-ups forum. Those always seem to work well.

[Perfect Suspect]

I think General Blabber should be the Gay-Ups thread, it's good name has been ruined. Then make a new all purose chatter for only the veterans along with the other boards.

Oh and hello Chojin

[Jixby Phillips]

The advantage a Gay-Ups forum has over any one person just banning and deleting people based on their own judgements, is that other people also can't complain: like how Mr Fart got banned off the old board. I never shut up about that. This time if any admin didn't like a thread but somebody else here DID, they couldn't complain because there's still a place for them to read what normally would have been deleted.

If it made people think "Oh well I can post anything I want because they'll just move it to gay ups and nothing will happen to me " THEN you'd ban them.