I think this board is already far too tolerant of trolls and giving them even more rope is the last thing we need. SA trolled for over a decade here, I’m hoping we go in the opposite direction and don’t wait ten years before we ban the other racist, sexist obvious trolls here. If you’re an adult and can’t take you’re own break from the internet, you need therapy.
Happy Fucking New Year!
Cheers.
On topic: Suspensions used judiciously are a fine thing. But I see them useful in situations where a quality poster is drunk off their ass and posting in a way that suggests suicide by mod.
The search for the proper balance between allowing all parties to be heard and curtailing trolls is a never ending one. I’ve always believed that, when dealing with the application of censorship, it is better to err on the side of free speech.
The ultimate truth is that, “You can’t legislate morality.” No matter what kind of system is in place, there are always going to be problems if you have participants who have no desire to exercise a code of behavior that is not divisive and destructive .
A good team is made up of good players. A bad team isn’t. It’s on us, not “rule makers”. More rules or different rules aren’t going to change anything.
Sure, free and breezy short suspensions can be useful but I don’t see them as a replacement for things in your list and think having no record of them is ridiculous. A topic ban, to take one example, comes after a history of a noticeable pattern. If the mods have to give you a week long suspension every time a declawing thread comes up then a topic ban seems the wiser option.
On the other hand, there’s a poster or two who could use a daily 10pm-3am EST suspension. Could that be automated? Lol.
The OP isn’t proposing anything much different than what we do now. Each circumstance is different and we reserve the right to deal with it in the best way possible at the time. But we are not going to be giving our consequence free suspensions.
It’s happened. One of those things where we reserve the right to handle it the way a situation dictates. We have placed people in a short time out. It’s infrequently needed.
To the timeout issue, another message board I frequented had a special method for handling that. The poster was blocked from posting to the main board, but they had their own little forum where they could rant to their heart’s content. The timeout usually lasted 12 hours.
When the timeout was over, the special forum was simply deleted, and the poster returned to full posting status.
Most of the time, people came back apologetic and thankful that their ranting wouldn’t be seen by all and sundry. A very few came back madder than ever.
As I understand it, the staff here don’t have permissions to implement such changes, but a simple 12 hour suspension would accomplish much the same thing.
The more rules there are, the more there are opportunities to complain about the rules.
Currently it appears the Mods have some sort of group discussion before implementing serious measures such as suspensions. IMO unilateral insta-suspensions will surely result in loud complaints of suppression of speech, favoritism by certain Mods toward or against specific posters, etc. Hell, there’s more than enough of that already in the current system.
Maybe one of the Mods can confirm this, but my impression is that most suspensions don’t have that much of an effect anyway. That is, a large proportion of suspended posters, if not a majority, fail to modify their behavior and end up permanently banned.
Since S_A’s case was mentioned, he seems like one for whom such a suspension would be unlikely to be effective. IIRC, he had repeatedly stated that he supposedly didn’t care what anyone thought about his posting habits and that he was constantly being singled out solely for being on the “wrong” end of the political spectrum.
Thanks for the response. Consequence free was not to be consequence free in all cases. It was more a mechanism to allow mods to not worry about having a heavy hand on borderline cases or just in terms of general annoyance at the moment. That’s why I brought myself up. There are times I get persistent on a topic but not to the point a warning is justified. Yet my persistence can be perceived as detrimental. The increased speed of action due to less long term ramifications is what I was thinking as being of utility.
Sometimes you just get a bug up the butt and need 12-36 hours to crap it out away from the forums.
Again, thanks for the response.
I dunno, seems to me that when an adult comes to realize he has been “fatiguing” people, the onus is on him to change his behaviour, not suggest others change theirs.
I dunno, back in my day you wouldn’t bump a 3 day old thread with such lame snark. Gee whiz.
We already do this.
When someone is going off the rails with anger, posting wildly while drunk, getting themselves worked up and upset a mod will unilaterally suspend them for a few hours or overnight to break a bad cycle or diffuse the situation. These rarely result in warning or banning.
It is a useful tool when used judiciously. Too often and it will become background noise.
Huh, you’re right. I gather the slower pace of this forum led me to choose an action I would not typically perform.
In any case, I disagree with the assessment and stand by my comment.
So basically a Drunk Tank.
Octopus, the best form of discipline is that which is self-imposed. Responsible, mature adults do just that. Criticizing a process because it doesn’t MAKE you do what you already know you are supposed to do isn’t the right approach and will yield no satisfactory results.
Many people decry the fact that our society is far more undisciplined and lawless than it was in the mid twentieth century but, yet, we have far more laws and far more police officers than we had at that time.
Another case of “Let’s make another set of rules to apply to 0.01% of posters who choose to disregard the rules already in place.”
Shit. I’ve been exposed.
Yeah, that probably applies to me.
But we are talking about Dopers.
Regards,
Shodan