Unban Satan!

The BBQ Pit
422

Or, you have an ambiguous and perceptually capricious system that needs clarification.

Many things were tried with Kirland, and all had less then specatcular results, yes? I would hardly call that a fair trial period.

Where did I say they have to be used? Or in what manner? I simply suggested another tool, as I think the range of options for the Moderators are exteremly limited, and results in unhappiness with the results from both sides. It is entirely possible that some members go straight to banning, and some be suspended, in fair accordance with their infractions. Certainly, it doesn’t follow that the impact of your warnings are lessened; if you make less arguments followed by more suspension/bannings, your warnings would have more impact, not less.

As for the contact with Moderators, Satan did what I and others did in a similar situation – contacted friends for the e-mail adresses with which to plead one’s case. The “system” if you will, has no such feature, which would be an e-mail saying “so you’ve been banned, if you want reinstatement send X to e-mail Y.” The opaqueness of the process seems to be the common complaint, judging from this thread – we’ve got posters here curious about the severity of Satan’s infractions vis a vis his punishment, other posters curious about the term of banning, if there’s a “parole board,” what constitutes a honest apology, and an honest reponse to an honest apology, and on and on.

The putative unfairness of the methodology, as it relates to Satan, is exactly what we’re discussing. If you check his LJ entry, you’ll see he mentions the hoops he had to jump through to send his letter to the appropriate people. (Yes I’m aware of the FAQ entry, but I contend it is insufficient when the moderator says “e-mail me back” and you don’t have the e-mail.)

If my experiences and Satan’s points are unconvincing, hey, I’ll throw in a thought experiment:

I content they are none, none, and none. No e-mail, no friends to complain to the administration, and certainly no threads like this one. Our current “parole process” requires flag-carriers of some kind or another, and we’re on queasy ground about to what extent (like linking to LJ in an appeal thread, opening an appeal thread) concerned parties can forward the debate.

I’d hardly call this a parole process! There is a judicial process analagous to this, in that it requires flag-carriers and popular will to return one to society. It ain’t called the “parole process” it’s called death-row clemency.

423

Gah. Can’t you just drop it? Everybody interprets “fair” differently. Chicago Reader owns the board. Their reps say what goes, fair or unfair. But I think that (almost) all of them try to be fair within their own interpretations of fairness.

424

Oh crap, now I am agreeing with Libertarian. :wink:

I think every agrument or minor variation has been made- at a certain point maybe shutting this one down might be a good idea (along with the Google thread which seems to have been or become an offshoot of this debate). Lest someone whine about “junior modding”, this is just IMHO and it is up to the Mods- completely.

425

Ha! Ha, I say! Fenris, I was waiting for some 14m3r to come up with that! I even checked before I posted. :wally
[ul][li]That is not a Straight Dope book[/li][li]At amazon.com, we clearly see the following: Know It All!: The Fun Stuff You Never Learned in School by Ed Zotti (Editor)[/ul][/li]Byt3 M3 (and then go on to read the latest Straight Dope column).

426

Ace of Swords, concerning your thought experiment:
When we ban someone, we typically send an e-mail explaining why, unless the offense is so obvious and flagrant that it’s not worth it (e.g. cross-posting spam on buying magnetic bracelets as your introduction to the MB) The bannee can reply to that e-mail to contact us.
If someone hasn’t read the FAQ, then they will probably just sign up with another name and ask “why was I banned?” At that time we will tell the user “read the FAQ, don’t sign up twice, e-mail addresses to contact an administrator are in the FAQ and on the straight dope front page.”
Finally, someone can always write to webmaster@straightdope.com (see notice at the bottom of this page), though I don’t recommend it for board business because it may take longer to get an answer that way.

427

Free FreakFreely!!!

428

A) Correctly 13373l), that’s “l3’/73 l/l3”

B) AAAhhh, but Lib asked “What sorts of books does Ed write?”, not “Did Ed write the Straight Dope books?”, so I win.

:stuck_out_tongue:

l=3l\lr15

429

Ace, I’m going to go with the staff on this one. The way it currently functions is fine. People have a chance to be unbanned, there’s no need for suspensions.

Hey, Winkie said he’d consider a new parole hearing date, didn’t he? That works for me! (My passion about this hasn’t been about the system itself, it’s been about Brian specifically. I think he was a huge and wonderful presence here and I have always felt the hole he left in his wake. I woulda been the one to put up this thread, except the last time he and I spoke, which was a few months after he left, he said he was ok with it. Things change. Now I just cross my fingers and hope things change for Winkie & Co. Winkie Winkie Winkie. )

And ** RT, ** thanks for doing some clarifying.

430

Well, that’s all I ask – an e-mail. I know I didn’t receive one for my suspension/banning, and when I finally emerged from the torturous process, I asked you about this exact subject in the “about the pit rules” thread – and at the time, you never mentioned that you typically send e-mail, and that I atypically didn’t receive one.

Is this a new directive, perhaps, or did I just draw the short straw?

FAQs. And knowing about the sock rule could well be a reason for a poster (let’s call him K.) to fear signing up a sock to appeal – now K. HAS commited an infraction, sock-posting, and to the technically minded, the merits of your initial banning are immaterial. Cavalierly saying that offenders will “just probably” be forced to commit a second offense to appeal the first one, is indicative of an absurd and Kafkaesque process.

Yes indeed. In my case, three months and still waiting for a response from the above e-mail addresses. I’m not holding my breath on that one.

431

Damnit! I just hate that these “Ed Zotti/Bruce Banner might be Cecil Adams/Hulk” (or maybe the other way around?) go to 9 pages or more. Can’t you people just let it go? :wink:

Hell, I just wish someone would at least end this monster by walking down a desolate road with a haunting melody playing in the background. :stuck_out_tongue:

432

If someone knows about the sock rule, then they must have read the FAQ or else been here long enough to have an idea on how to contact a staff member.
In your case, I don’t know why you didn’t get an e-mail. But I think that someone with your length of time on the board has no excuse for not reading the FAQs.

433

E-mails, three it appears. On my end, I admit, I didn’t read the FAQs carefully, and certainly not with an eye towards my future suspension. Cheerfully admitted, again. What’s this got to with K.?

If K. was banned erroneously at ten posts for being a sock, he might just know enough about the sock rule to not try your suggested solution, hmm? Anyhow, we’re roaming far afield from the OP, so I’ll sum and end:

Consider that the banning and appeal process may be both overkill, in some cases, and flawed, in others.

-Ace

434

Actually, we’re not arguing “Does Ed = Cecil” since both Arnold and I know he doesn’t. ALL cool people know that.

We had a failure to communicate. Arnold was answering the broader question of what the irate poster probably meant, I was answering Lib’s question.

So we’re all on the same page.

435

Huh. And here I was hoping that someone would come back with “Mr McGee… don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” :slight_smile:

436

Just to weigh in before this gets locked: After (finally) reading all this, and reading the livejournal entries/comments, count me in with the sympathy camp. I don’t see how giving him another chance would be detrimental to the boards. He seems like a good guy who’s appalled at his actions, and his desire to come back comes from shame, guilt, and an appreciation for this place. He’s one of the few banned folks I’d like to see return.

437

Since Gaudere has solicted Doper feedback, here is mine. Fortunately, I think this thread and the situation involved are actually unusual as bannings go. I’d say 90% of the time, the reason for a banning is obvious, or an Admin will add a comment like “this is a returning troll. thread locked.” In the other 10%, where a banning is “controversial”, someone will inevitably start the “why was so-and-so banned” Pit thread at the time of the banning. If examples of bannable offenses are needed to satisfy anyone’s curiousity, they are usually right there on page one of the forum in question, or easily found by changing the settings to “show posts from last two days or last week”. Other posters will provide links, things will be argued back and forth, and the Pit thread fades away.

I think what happened here was a combination of things, such as the fact that Satan was a very prolific poster, and the banning happened two years ago. Many dopers weren’t even here at the time, or weren’t involved/didn’t pay attention at the time, so they naturally had questions. I’m sure we don’t want even ten people tying up the search engine with searches on “any post by Satan” “from any date”. :eek: While I understand and agree with your concerns about threads about people who can’t defend themselves, I think a better solution, in this case, would have been for one of the Mods/Admins to have come in on page 1 or 2 and say “Look, Dopers, X was banned for repeatedly violating board rules by posting insults in Great Debates.” If someone persisted, I would give say 2-3 examples (asshole, anal leakage, mother fucker) and that’s it. No need to rehash the whole mess.

And you should continue to remind people, early and often, that the best way to handle such questions is to email the Mods!

Basically, X was banned for Y and Z. If you have further questions, please email a mod. That way, no one can, (honestly anyway) accuse the Mods of unfairness.

438

Just one final point for me, and I’m done with this discussion.

It’s re the propriety of the link to Satan’s LiveJournal entry and the comment that it be linked to this thread.

If I should ever do anything to cause myself to be banned, I would accept the decision, albeit with a certain amount of in-private bitching about the unfairness of the decision. I would not attempt to return to the board unless I felt that I could plead my case to the banning authority (Admin. or Mod. recommending banning) and make a case for why I should be allowed to return.

However, if somebody opened a Pit thread discussing the cause of my banning, and I was advised of that thread’s existence, then I would feel that, banned or not, I deserved a say on how what I’d said in the post causing my banning had been misinterpreted. And in such a circumstance, I would e-mail a Mod. that I trusted to be fair, requesting that a couple of paragraphs be posted by him/her as quoting me to make clear what I’d intended to say and how it had been misinterpreted. That is in quite a different context from “he’s been banned; he doesn’t deserve to post, even by proxy” because it is simply stating my case on the cause of my banning. I’d assume that a fair-minded moderator would make an exception to the “no comments from the banned” rule, since fair play should allow for this sort of clarification. This would be the one case in which I would see a banned poster “deserving a say” – to set the record straight on the issue precipitating his banning from his own perspective (which, of course, nobody else can state). It is in that context that I saw Brian’s request to have a link posted to that LJ comment. I don’t know as the staff will agree with this perspective – but I do think it a valid one.

439

milroyj, you do know that this thread was not about why Satan was banned, but a call for forgiveness and reinstatement, yes? The rest was a natural offshoot, not the core issue.
and ** polycarp, **

**[SIZE=4]BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ** [/SIZE]

440

OK, I’m convinced.

I think Polycarp should be reinstated.

Tris

441

But ain’t he a sock? I swear I could have read that on his PJ (private journal? personal journal? poopie 'jamas?) somewhere.