And would it be followed by several dozen “Why are the jack-booted thugs muzzling our free speech?” threads?
Probably not. But what if it did?
I agree. The only troll I’ve seen that wanted attention was that fake quadriplegic.
And, really, what does a troll have to lose after being permanently banned?
If all they are doing is revisiting, and not starting up again, I really don’t give a fuck.
This board takes itself seriously and has people who fly off in a rage. We’re always going to be trolling targets.
In the long way-distant past (back when stegosaurus ruled the earth), we did have an obnox guy who came back as a sock to participate in the thread about his banning. That’s when we started the current policy,IIRC. No, we don’t really know what motivates trolls or gives them their jollies. We do know that feeding trolls just gets them worked up more and more and more, presumably to orgasm and beyond. We don’t know how to stop them, really, if what they enjoy is fucking with other people, but we do know how to encourage them. So our policy is based on the opposite of what encourages them, and we hope that helps stop them.
Even if the current policy doesn’t actually stop anyone, we have fairly good indication that other policies DO seem to encourage them. So, we’re stickin’ wif what we got until someone perfects a device that reverse the stream of pixel flow and electrocute 'em.
If I had poor enough impulse control or problems with authority sufficient to create a sock account, I would think that publicly visible discussion of myself might instigate me to respond with mischief.
In some cases, what we have is a lame form of ego-protection. Somebody says something dubious, gets their head handed to them, starts arguing for the sake of arguing and continues with provocative comments. The latter papers over their initially weak argumentation.
Look. Most arguments have a kernel of legitimacy inside. And tight arguments typically require effort to construct and have a misshapen, bolted together feel. Usually simple concepts are perfects adequate even when they’re wrong or problematic. So it’s not surprising that somebody of below or above average intelligence can get caught flat footed in a public forum. Following their PEG - or Perceived Emotional Gain - leads them to set aside the game that their failing at -fighting ignorance for example- and adopting another. It makes them feel better about themselves. [1] [2]
Then again, some enter this forum as trolls to begin with. I’m not discussing that varietal.
[1] PEG: apparently it comes from something called motivational theory. I came across it at ianzin’s website. Recommended pdf, which I’ve read half of: http://www.ianrowland.com/index.php?p=MindTwists
[2] The 2nd mission here is making wisecracks, another endeavor with uneven performance.
I’m surprised that no one has adressed the issue that when someone is banned, it’s like getting their pants pulled down by a parent and spanked in public.
It is humiliating and can be very emotionally painful - on some people much more so than others.
So people will react as harshly as they can. If they are technologically adept and think they are smarter than the people running the board, they will attempt to cause a big ruckus in order to make the board runners either throw up their hands in defeat or to give them a whole lot of Hell.
But some of them decide that membership here is valuable and that getting banned for breaking the rules is a silly thing to do when it is relatively easy to do whatever one wants and say pretty much whatever one wants to say without breaking any rules.
It seems to me a large proportion of the people who get banned do so because they can’t be bothered to read the long and winding rules.
I mean, really. Who has the time or energy to read through all the small print?
No one reads all the small print in just about any circumstances.
I think it would reduce the problem if you could find a way to create a shortform of the rules and explain more clearly when people first sign up about how to reading what you want people to know.
Surely you must understand the average person just can’t ever read all the rules you refer to and can easily get banned because they never realized there were some really minor kinds of things that this board considers terminal infractions and will ban people for without any chance for an explanation.
When someone is feeling angry about that and you combine that with a public spanking, they can easily retaliate in any number of Hellish ways.
I don’t necessarily approve of that. But I certainly understand it.
Don’t be a jerk.
ETA: that would not be aimed at you, just an answer to you!
Virtually no one gets banned just because they didn’t read the rules. If a newbie commits a rules violation, usually they are issued a mod note for a first offense and we explain the rule to them. If they persist in the same kind of violation they start to receive warnings. After multiple warnings comes a suspension. And if they come back after a suspension and continue to violate the rules, then they are banned.
Honestly, you usually have to work at it pretty hard to get banned from this board. You’re generally given multiple chances to learn and understand the rules. (This of course excludes spammers and those who seem intent on trolling from the beginning.)
A large majority of our posters have no problem following the rules (even those who have never read them) and never receive even a single warning. It’s those who insist on being jerks even after the rules have been explained to them repeatedly who end up getting banned.
Then learn not to be a dick.
Really, some people NEED to be publicly spanked, slapped in the face and/or shamed before they wake up to what they’re doing. I’ll admit it’s happened to me (not banning, verbal slap) more than once in my life and it caused me to change my behavior. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. That some people think they’re too ‘special’ to heed the wake up call doesn’t mean we stop doing it. It just means they need a harder smack in the mouth or they need to be removed from environments where they cannot behave themselves (ie, banning).
I’ve been here for more than a decade, and I don’t think I’ve read the rules once.
Too bad. You would’ve known then that all posts containing exactly seventeen words result in instant banning.
Thank God for contractions, huh?
Not cool to joke about labor pains.
When did the topic change to unions?
Wow! I’m really shocked you would make a post that is so blatantly untrue.
I know someone who didn’t know it was agin the rules to start two accounts with multiple names and they were banned with no warning and just a curt explanation.
No chance to explain. No warnings. Nothing.
Just banned.
I know this is true and I’m very disappointed that you would post something that is so untrue.
That’s not the kind of situation Colibri is talking about; he’s talking about now knowing the rules about things like insults. You don’t get multiple chances to break the rules if you’re misrepresenting yourself or deceiving people or just trolling (which Colibri mentioned). If a new poster newbie starts two accounts we often do take the time to explain that that’s not allowed and merge the accounts on the assumption that it’s an innocent mistake. If the person is acting like a jerk they may not get the benefit of the doubt in that case. I don’t know who your friend was, but he may have given us the impression he was in that group.
Don’t we have a rule against people being reasonable in ATMB?
“Ma, he’s making sense!”
We could be far worse – there are message boards not too far from here where people are mocked and ridiculed and piled upon on a regular basis. They have the internet version of stocks on the village green and people are pilloried all day long.
Policy has been formulated to try to keep people from feeling like we’re rubbing their nose in their bad behavior, under the circumstances we’re pretty freaking compassionate.
I am somewhat disappointed that you would not actually read the post to which you are responding. Are you aware of the meaning of the word “virtually”?
Beyond that, the sort of banning to which you refer is easily and frequently reversed. A simple e-mail to an Administrator noting that one had missed the rule against multiple usernames with a request that one’s posts be merged under one of those names and a promise to avoid further multiple accounts is generally sufficient to get a banishment reversed.
Of course, as noted, a poster who was behaving badly, to begin with, who then compounds his or her error by creating a sockpuppet is unlikely to receive a lot of sympathy from the staff, but we do consider all requests to restore posting privileges.
Here’s what you do to resolve this.
Provide us with your friend’s screen name. We’ll check why we banned, and, if we did it in haste, we’ll let them back in, and apologize(me, personally).