I appreciate your commentary, but your pairing of inquiry with digs at the moderation is not helpful.
I think in many cases it’s a difficult balance to strike. Ultimately we came to the conclusion that certain activity leaned more towards trolling than a value add. It’s a judgment call. If we determine that the contributions from others on particular topics are of similar nature, then sure, a topic ban is a tool that is available. But given the relative dearth of topic bans, I don’t think the risk is significant. Seriously, we have a log, and it’s short.
In the ~20 years the SDMB has been around, there have been less than ~10 topic bans. At most. We counted them up on the Giraffeboards and I can list them here if anyone wants to see them.
Frankly, I don’t see the point–most of the posters who’ve had topic bans ended up getting banned anyway or just disappeared–but it’s not even remotely been “abused”. At max, 1 topic restriction every two years (worst case) is proof that it’s not abused.
I’d be more curious why the poster judged by the mods to be flat out trolling was not just banned for trolling?
Regardless, I don’t see the point of the OP here. When the choice is topic ban or site ban which do you think the poster in question would prefer? Which would most affect his ability to post?
There is trolling and there is trolling, and the linked mod posts clearly state that his behaviour was “repeated trolling”.
Trolling is not simply a lack of playing nice, it is intentionally dishonest and aggravating behaviour aimed at getting reactions. If the mods all believe a poster is trolling why is that not grounds for a ban?
Yeah, I agree here. My first awareness of a topic ban was - and I may be wrong here - Reeder was banned from starting threads about how awful Bush 43 was, or perhaps about the Iraq war. Now, at the time, it was obvious to most people, most posters, and the mods that Reeder was generally right. But the constant harping was still annoying as hell. So he was ordered to knock it off, banned from the topic, and I believe he generally complied. And everyone was happier for it.
So there are people who only post about one topic and troll about that topic. There are people who post about multiple topics and troll on all of them. They should be banned.
There are others who post on multiple topics but only troll on one of them. They should, in my opinion, be banned on the one topic.
Thank goodness. The point had long passed where this board allowing him to indulge in his gleeful misogyny was making it complicit. He wants to air views like his in the way he did, there are plenty of outlets on the internet happy to indulge him. The SDMB shouldn’t be one.
Ooh! Topic ban history trivia. I wanna play. From memory, with no searching or anything.
Handy - No medical advice.
Libertarian/Liberal - Ontological proof of (G)od.
Reeder - Bush 43
Evil Captor - Bondage kinkiness
Collounsbury - December and his politics
lissener - starship troopers? Or was it the director of ST and Showgirls? Or am I confusing a suspension with a topic ban?
And now Shagnasty - his views and interactions with women.
That’s all I remember, and it’s been a long 17ish years, so I’m fuzzier than I once was. But those are my final answers.
I don’t think Liberal(tarian) ever got topic banned about the Ontological Proof of God, but I think we all wish he was, a little.
Reeder was like “One Bush 43 thread on the first page of the Pit at a time”
Collunsbury wasn’t (IIRC) topic banned.
Peter Morris has something related to The Amazing Randi–no discussing him, or no discussing the challenge, or…something.
DrDeth (maybe) has about three of them (No posting in the Game of Thrones “no book” thread, no bitching about using actor’s characters instead of their names, no nitpicking about what “impeachment” means)
JohnClay wasn’t allowed to talk about his wife any more.
And I’m not sure about lissener–if it was actually a topic ban. But even assuming it was,
If you’re concerned about moderator bias in general, I’m not sure why the distinction between topic bans and board bans is significant. If there’s a genuine danger that we’d give Bricker a topic ban for being a conservative, then isn’t it an equal risk that we’d just ban him outright?
Does any of this really matter? Shags found a loophole to keep talking his nonsense in the pit. Thank goodness for the inactive poster that bumped his thread just hours after his topic ban.
Given the current climate WRT misogyny, if an employee or CEO or whatever says or does something hateful towards women, it doesn’t matter if they are the most talented, effective person ever. They get the boot. And rightly so.
So I don’t buy into the concept of: “Let’s keep Shags on board and just ban him from this one topic because he adds so much “value” to this board in other ways.”
Our standards seem to be lower than what is the current norm.