Did this board used to start a thread to say “so and so has been banned”? Am I imagining that? If y’all are still doing that, I can’t find the location.
I’ve noticed a couple of posters with recent activity popping up with “banned” added to their names, and I’m wondering why, and I looked for the thread to find out. Not a huge deal, just curious.
Curious about that myself…
Those threads were posted in ATMB.
Yes, the mods used to do that.
No, they don’t seem to have been doing it recently.
I believe it was mostly done for long time or controversial posters, not for the flash-in-the-pan 2-day trolls we seem overrun with these days. Those folks seemed/seem now to just get a mod comment in whichever thread held their final straw.
Totally off topic, but that reminded me of something that’s been bugging me about this new software (and it could just be the theme I’m using). We don’t have any kind of post count or join date readily available like we used to. We can go to their profile (which seems to take an oddly long time to load). There’s times where I’m replying to a post and notice that I don’t recognize the name at all. Some of that, I’m sure, is just the different layout. For whatever reason I tended not to notice names, so maybe I’m just seeing them more often now, or maybe there’s suddenly a lot of new people or changed names, I don’t know. In any case, it was always nice to be able to glance right at the post and see ‘6,987 posts’ or ‘Joined Oct 2016’. It was always helpful for me to know if I’m talking to someone that’s been here for a while or joined this morning.
(And your post reminded me of that because I feel like I’ve seen a lot of people get banned in the last few days that are posting a lot, but they’re names I don’t know)
There’s one poster in particular whose name begins with “poo” that I noticed was recently banned, so I came here to ATMB to see if there was a thread announcing it. All I found was this thread. The mods may just not have gotten time to make the announcement yet—they’re a bit short-staffed at the moment.
Good point.
I hope they start doing that again. I’ve seen two cases where all that i saw was a bunch of other posters calling someone nasty names, and then the target of the name calling was banned. And I’m curious what they did to attract all that ire.
Well, we could turn this thread into “News About… (and Gloating Over) Another Jerk Getting Banned”.
I was so glad to see “begins with poo” banned so quickly after his going Full On Asshole. Appreciate the mods giving up a chunk of their weekend to deal with that.
The mods say that if a poster is banned with no announcement, then send them a PM, as the poster was likely a sock, which they don’t like to announce publicly. One of the banned posters was a sock. The other, idk, maybe the mods just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
As @digs notes, said individual went into a profanity-filled meltdown in a couple of Pit threads last night, which is what I suspect led to the banning (or at least was the straw that broke the camel’s back).
The problem with not announcing a banning if the bannee was a sock is that every time, someone asks about it, and the mods have to say to send them a PM. Then everybody knows the bannee was a sock. They may as well just announce the banning, since the end result is the same.
Pool was one of the ones I was thinking of earlier. I feel like if he was a regular poster I would have been familiar with that posting style. I was sure I knew the name, just didn’t associate him with that behavior, so maybe he was new? I see now that he’s been here for 18 years with 5000+ posts.
Also, I see now that clicking on a username pops up a box with the join date, so that’s nice.
Assuming you’re on a PC not a phone or tablet …
Click the avatar for the poster (i.e. the purple-pink square with the L at the upper left of this post for me). The pop-out (for you) says you joined Jun 15th of 1999. It also gives the poster’s location, motto/status, and current activity. Then click away from the pop-out to dismiss it and return to the thread you’re reading.
You’re right it doesn’t have the post count. For that you need to click the bigger avatar inside the pop-out. That will take you to their profile page where you can see the count. You can Ctrl-click or Shift-click the big avatar to open it in a different tab or window so you don’t lose your place in the thread.
Even just a single (non-sticky), locked thread that they can update with a very quick entry of the username and the reason. And, the date, then we can go back through ATMB and see if a thread was started about it.
Also, I’m sure they won’t change their minds, but I can’t be the only one that wants to know who the sock belonged to (and in what thread they got made).
That info might be too useful to the sock.
Yes, we post announcements for most long-term posters who have been banned for multiple rule violations, such as insults. We will continue to do so. We do not post threads for spammers, trolls, or socks.
Trolling and socking are potentially instaban offenses, that is, one strike and you’re out. The recent bannings in question have been for trolling and socking. Since Discourse, unlike vBulletin, allows other posters to see the ban reason, it’s not really necessary to post an announcement in such cases. Anyone who wants more detailed information can PM or email a mod. Anyone who disagrees with the banning can dispute it in ATMB.
In the case of pool, he also had 5 recent warnings since February, mostly for being a jerk. In view of his trolling outburst in the Pit, we decided to go straight to a ban. (While we tolerate a certain degree of trolling in the Pit, even there it’s possible to go over the line. One of pool’s previous warnings was for being too much of a jerk even for the Pit.)
Cool. How can i do that?
Just click on their avatar. It will say “This poster is suspended” and give the reason.
Discourse does not have a category of “banned.” Instead we have to suspend posters permanently, which is why it says “Suspended”. We then need to enter a title of “BANNED” to the profile.
People who were banned before the switch I believe continue to show that title.
The couple I’ve seen recently don’t have a reason listed that I see.
For example, I don’t see anything on RealityCheck71 beyond “This user is suspended.” While s/he was a pretty new poster, they made a number of seemingly-reasonable contributions to the QZ, and I apparently missed whatever nastiness led to the quick ban.
For that matter, at least on the theme I’m using [ETA: Sam’s simple, on desktop], pool’s page just says “This user is suspended” without a reason given; absent the present thread, I would not know why.
When I look at pool, it just says suspended, no reason that I see.
I know, it’s just my curiosity. Luckily, my crappy short term memory means I’ll forget about it 10 minutes later.