If someone gets banned they lose their user name and must pay another fee to participate in the board. If they don’t learn their lesson and repeat the behavior that got them banned, they get banned again. Either they will learn their lesson, go away, or give the Chicago Reader a great deal of repeat business fees! Would not that be a superior solution to spending endless hours trying to figure out who the socks are, ban them only to have them pop up again and again. It would also greatly reduce fragmented threads that must be split and restarted after socks are eliminated. In other words focus on the posts rather than the individuals. Banning people especially those who pay again just for being socks (meaning that they haven’t committed further offenses) only motivates them to keep returning in retaliation. It is a policy of escalation that might conceivably, eventually even lead some nut case into taking action beyond cyberspace. My approach involves forgiveness (at a price) either someone learns their lesson or they compensate The Reader quite well for their dullness.
You have 30 days of free usage as a guest. So, Chicago Reader wouldn’t make any more money if our friendly neighburhood sock rejoined under a different id every month
Kicking this over to About This Message Board.
- SkipMagic
The approach suggested above would be less useful with repeat guests granted. I would imagine that most who were banned having been previous members would want the ability to keep track of their post counts et. The essence of the suggestion is that it shifts the emphasis from people to ideas which are in this case posts that violate the board rules. Everyone can have redemption, but there is a price to be paid in terms of loss of username, post count, and of course money which would probably also mean no special incentive rates.
My guess is that it would cut down on the most stubborn, repeat offender socks who seem to have an almost pathological obsession with returning to this board. As with most things in life ten percent of people be they socks, criminals, bad drivers, or sales persons are often responsible for a large percentage of events.
I’m afraid you mistake the idea here.
The subscription fee is not meant to be punitive. Subscription fees keep us in bandwidth and hamster chow and hopefully give our corporate parent the feeling that they’re not just throwing their money down a rathole by allowing us to continue.
We do hope that people will support the board, not only with their subscription fees but also with the sense of being a member of a community, a place to play, to write, to think, to be silly, to hang with other people, among other things.
When we remove someone from that community, it’s not done to generate fees but to jettison a poster who is disruptive to the community, or who degrades or destroys the message board experience for others.
We don’t want money from these people, we want them to find some place else to play . . . hopefully, some place where they’ll be happier and we’ll be happier, too.
That’s what we as staffers owe our members; the right to as good an experience as we can provide them. Plucking the occasional stalk of stinkweed from the Straight Dope garden is our job, so everyone else can smell the flowers and walk on the grass and organize softball tournaments and stuff.
your humble TubaDiva
There’s been a member who was banned and joined up again, paying several times over. o_O
Anyway, philosophically I think this would end up amounting to “pay to be a jerk!” and as much as the Reader deserves money for putting us up, I’d hate to see what the place would turn into under that system. I don’t think we want to be subjected to that sort of thing just for money.
I add that we have, upon occasion, allowed banned members “another chance.” The person has apologized for their bad actions, with what seems to be honesty and sincerity, and promised not to repeat. And so we have, upon occasion, permitted the quality of mercy to be not strained, and re-admitted the person. So far as I am aware, in every such instance, the person was back to their old misbehaviors within a matter of days or weeks.
Banning is usually not the result of a one-time offense. (The exceptions include obvious trolls and spammers: when a person registers and their first post is a link to their site selling anti-gravity machines, we do ban on the basis of the one-time offense.) We’re generally talking about repeated mis-behaviours and several warnings. That pattern of (mis)behavior is pretty much habitual with the person, and allowing a return, even after sincere repentence, just doesn’t seem to overcome the habits.
Flaming is only allowed in the Pit.
Using a real flamethrower, however is never allowed! :rolleyes:
What?? Well, dang it! And I’ve broken the seal on the wrapping. Think I can take it back for a refund?
Must have been speaking from experience there.