Thread: Improving the chance that a user put on CB will read the CB rules

This is a minor issue, but in rare cases it may have grave consequences.
It must be said that I do not know what message the PM, send to user who have been put on the CB, by the responsible administrator contains.

As it is now, the rules for the chopping block (e.g. "Never post a user's identifying information…") are posted within the sticky with the header "Chopping block submission form". A user who has been put on the CB may so not be aware of the CB rules, as it it is not obvious that he/she should open this thread when he/she is accused of something on the CB.



If the previous mentioned PM sent by the responsible administrator outlines these rules then we could think that there might not be a problem, however if the accused user responds to the CB thread before an administrator has taken responsibility for the thread, this mechanism falls through.

I did not realize that this could be a problem until very recently, when the scenario outlined above actually came true.

In conclusion I propose the following:
Either the sticky within the CB section should be renamed to "Chopping Block Rules and Submission Form", or a additional thread should be created with a title along the lines of "Chopping Block Rules".

Is this a necessary change? I would say yes, if it becoming reality means that only one invite tree potentially might be saved (as users might use the same username on several trackers, and all of us TI users are more or less intertwined in one big net across the private tracker world), then it is absolutely worth implementing, especially consider the minimal (right?) effort it would take to do so.

We could argue that making the rules a separate sticky still will not mean that the user will actually read them, and this is obviously true, but if they are, then at least the excuse of not having read them stands a bit weaker.

Chopping block rules:
http://www.torrent-invites.com/proce...tml#post660012

Reiterated again on the submission form:
http://www.torrent-invites.com/chopp...sion-form.html

The pm the accused receives from myself if I am dealing with the accusation:
You have been placed on the block accused of INSERT REASON HERE. Please respond in the chopping block thread acknowledging you have read the accusation and present your defence accordingly. Your response must be submitted within the next 48hrs or your account here will be banned.

CB Link Here.....

If you have any sensitive evidence that you wish to present (such as proofs etc) then, please pm it to me.
In the meantime - you are NOT permitted to participate in any give aways, including your own.

Thanks
TG

Taking into consideration ...

... that there might be people who actually have a life, 48 hours to answer are not enough, especially over weekends and holidays. With so many thousand users, there might also be the occasional blackout, hard disk crash, job travel, car accident ... Five days would seem to be better. At the end of the day, this is just a secondary instance to indirectly facilitate the download of software, not a matter of life or death that would stop the world from turning. Some issues may be more serious than others and some offenders may be "typical candidates" or "usual suspects", so any period can sometimes be too short or too long, that's in the nature of deadlines. Nevertheless, when browsing the threads, one notices banned users with thousands of reputation points as well as hundreds of iGivers and posts during years. One can only wonder what kind of "crime" somebody could possibly have committed in order not to deserve a second chance after such a level of contribution and participation. At the very least, people with such a track record should not be banned just because they could or did not respond to an accusation within 48 hours.

Not saying that is what happened, just stumbled over the "48 hours" deadline, so these are merely humble two cents concerning an admittedly minor side issue. ;)

Originally Posted by TankGirl

Chopping block rules:
http://www.torrent-invites.com/proce...tml#post660012

Reiterated again on the submission form:
http://www.torrent-invites.com/chopp...sion-form.html

The pm the accused receives from myself if I am dealing with the accusation:
You have been placed on the block accused of INSERT REASON HERE. Please respond in the chopping block thread acknowledging you have read the accusation and present your defence accordingly. Your response must be submitted within the next 48hrs or your account here will be banned.

CB Link Here.....

If you have any sensitive evidence that you wish to present (such as proofs etc) then, please pm it to me.
In the meantime - you are NOT permitted to participate in any give aways, including your own.

Thanks
TG

First of all, Tankgirl, my intention were not to step on any ones toes, and I sincerely hope that you were not offended. I have a great respect and admiration for all of you in the TI staff, and all the work that you done and continue to do, making TI and awesome community to be part of.

The reasoning why I made this suggestion was not that this is a change that I think must be made, rather that I saw something on the CB which were a severe violation of the CB rules, and I thought to myself why such a thing could have happened, and which measures could be taken to make sure to avoid such incidences in the future.

The weird thing is that when I navigate here ( http://www.torrent-invites.com/processed/ ), I can not see the CB rules thread, but I assume that is only visible for regular users when you have been put on the CB, right? Though when I follow the direct link I see it.

QuiPeccavit:
At the risk of actually sounding like I know what I am doing, and considering its a PM, its 48hrs from actually READING it, meaning that you have to have logged in on site. Granted there are and always will be exceptions to that time frame but generally speaking, 48hrs is more than adequate to answer the accusations when placed upon the block and even if a person fails to answer and they are banned they are usually given the chance to come into the #tihelp channel to explain.

Now I don't wish to sound condescending here but most, if not all of the senior staff that deal with the chopping block have been here for well over a year (2 in my case) and we are well aware of the fact that people do have lives of their own (scarily I have a life to) and so we are more than well versed in how to handle the block.

Duvaris:
No offence taken, non what so ever :)
Not sure what has happened there with that link to the rules, it is listed in the main rules page in the announcements. Looks like it got deleted and then unstuck - I will look into it and get back to you.

48 hours is plenty of time. Besides the PM, a logged in member on the chopping block has a persistent notice at the top of the forum telling them to come to the block. If they do not do so, they get banned with a message telling them to come to #TIHelp, where they can plead their case. Many a member has been unbanned that way.

Thank you for your concern, but I assure you that we know what we're doing here. We can't let cheaters and scammers have a week or so to concoct some elaborate story. Quick and speedy is the only way to handle these things.

In regards to the original suggestion, I'll give it some consideration. However, I think the sticky we have already accomplishes what you are suggesting. I don't see how adding MORE links will cause them to be any more likely to read it.

I personally inform the member that he needs to respond whether he has posted on the thread or not already in the event that I have any follow up questions I always stay in touch via PM so I really do not see where our current system will fail. If the member does not respond to a Chopping Block issue it is simply because they are avoiding the issue in my opinion