I’m curious, and I’ve made a quick look but I don’t see anything that seems to address it.
I’ve been seeing some zombie threads that b/c ‘well, that’s an interesting idea’ I start reading. Then I get to some poster’s name that has BANNED under it. I think, “I’ve never even HEARD of this person!” and then I check the date. I’m learning to check now.
But I’m curious about why they’re banned. Their actions? Coming from some bad ISP addresses? I know there have been hacking problems. Is there some listing? A database?
There was some thread about “how many warnings” people have had and I guess I have none. I didn’t know that was a thing. (I’m non-confrontational and a de-escalator by nature.)
This is not some attacking the Mods sort of thing. I’m curious. I mostly lurk and enjoy.
Were they the first in the “ok, you cannot actually ask people to kill someone or try to buy and sell drugs over the internet” thing? Or just so abusive to others? Or made no sense?
People get banned all the time. Either for being jerks, breaking the rules, or being socks or spammers.
When you get a warning, it goes on your “official record”, located in the User CP (“Control Panel”). For shits and giggles, you might ask a mod to give you an official warning to see what it looks like (and have it removed). Not sure if they’d bite, but it’d give you an idea of what to look for if it ever does happen for real. I believe you also get a PM when it happens.
Might not want to ask a mod to do that. They can reverse warnings, but they don’t disappear once they’re issued. If a mod reverses a warning, it will still be on your profile, but it will just say “reversed.” I doubt you’ll get a mod to issue a fake warning just for lolz.
If I’m ever curious (and I sometimes take Board breaks of months or years, so I often show up late to the Banhammer party), I click on the banned poster’s profile and look at his/her last few posts. That usually gives me a good feel for how they flamed out.
I find that if it’s someone I know, “flamed out” is most often the best description.
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I had asked what if you get a warning in a thread but never return so how would you know you got a warning?
He then gave me a warning and reversed it. Yes it is still there. You also get a pop-up the next time you log in and when you click on that it takes you to the warning in your CP. Or something like that.
If you wanna, go ahead and call me a motherfucker or something. You’ll get warned, but I’ll start a thread asking that the warning be reversed because of the way it occurred. Unless I start binge watching something on Netflix.
This has been pretty well answered so far. As Munch basically said, it’s usually socks, spammers, and rule violations.
We don’t tend to ban based on ISP, but we do block certain ISPs and certain IP ranges. That prevents people from those ISPs and IP ranges from even signing up here, so they never get far enough to cause trouble and get themselves banned. When spam does get through, we usually wish it away to the cornfield, but once in a while a spammer will make a few innocent posts before posting their spam, which defeats some of the auto-banning algorithms on some forums that ban someone who posts links without posting non-link posts first. Sometimes these innocent posts are just copy and paste nonsense (something vague like “I really like your post” without mentioning anything specific about even what post it is referring to) but sometimes the spammers actually take the time to participate in threads. Sometimes those posts will be left in place, especially if other people have commented on it.
Sock posts are usually left in place if the sock has been around for a while, simply because it’s too much bother to root through all of their posts to delete the ones that don’t break threads. Posts from known troublemakers who come back as socks are usually deleted though, as are troll posts.
There is a list of everyone who has ever been banned and the reason for their bannnig, but that list is only available to mods and admins.
As was previously mentioned, if you really want to know why someone was banned, please contact a moderator via PM.
Most long-term posters who have been banned in the last, oh 8 or 10 years, have received a mod post in ATMB that, “USERNAME has been banned”, with evidence in the post. You can do a search on the username in the ATMB forum to find those threads.
Before that, you kind of need to do a search on “find all posts by USERNAME”, and go to the most recent threads and look around. There will be, in almost all cases, a post by a mod saying that the poster is banned, and why.
Banned posters who are not long-term are usually banned as a sock or a troll. The SDMB does not like to give them more public attention, and just disposes of them. Most mods will be happy to answer your pm or email as to why.
The vast majority are the latter. We may ban a dozen or more spammers a day, several socks and trolls a month, and usually fewer than a dozen long term posters a year. The latter are the only ones who get an official announcement.
