Many dopers have been banned that not all dopers believe should have been. Is there anyway to set up a forum that they might be restricted to?
Another board I use created something called “the play pen” where the banned go. My old board had a forum called “hell” for the very same reason.
It was the only place banned users could post.
Same forum software.
But, I’ll admit. Those forums normally get ugly.
What, you want a Total Dorks From Hell forum, so we can fling poo at them? Maybe a Posters Who Want To Kill The Rest Of Us forum, so we can taunt them and make them even more militant? Maybe I just don’t understand your question.
If someone’s not capable of following the rules, why would we want to go to all that trouble just to keep them around?
If someone can’t play nice here, why would we want to give them a forum in which to misbehave?
There are lots of Message Boards out there, and an inability to follow the rules on this one doesn’t mean that the poster is a “bad person”, it only means they didn’t fit in here. I’m sure there are other Boards where they will find more fun, more satisfaction, etc. Loss involves some grief and then moving on. Allowing them to hang around here after banning would just make the process of “moving on” harder for them, and for us.
The Mods in fact, have discussed the reverse approach. If someone can’t seem to grasp the rules in one forum, could we ban them from that one forum only. For instance, if someone just doesn’t get the personal insult rule in Great Debates, but does get it in the other non-Pit Forums, could we just ban them from Great Debates. We’ve decided this is potentially an option in the special case. The special case hasn’t come up yet.
Technical notes: It’s quite possible, though Admin-time-intensive, to set up categories of member that have specific permissions for reading and writing only in certain forums. (In fact, the Admin/Mod structure is very much a [pre-structured] case in point – they can edit and delete posts, which regular members cannot, and have access to the restricted Mod-only forums which members do not.)
In point of social-dynamics fact, though, observe what has been said in previous posts: members who cannot abide by the rules of the board, which are fairly lax, all things considered, are not going to function well in a restricted set of forums either. Even the Pit is not rule-less. And a consigned-to-perdition forum has been tried elsewhere, and generally does not work.
Besides, how long do you think it’d be before we saw something like this:
“This is a Pit thread, but since I’m no longer allowed in the Pit, I’m putting it here in MPSIMS…”
I’m thinking if you are kicked out of the Pit then you’ve (Richard Gere voice) “Got nowhere else to go!”
Has a long time contributor ever been banned based solely on what was posted outside of the Pit? If so, access to the Pit might be something to consider – especially if many Dopers had found that posters insights valuable.
Oh, absolutely. Continued insults in forums outside the Pit, for instance, despite repeated warnings.
But, again, we can understand forbidding access to one forum if a person has problems with that forum’s rules, topics, whatever. However, we don’t understand why a person who can’t behave in any forum except one that allows flaming and insults, why should we want such a person around?