Thread: Banning Suggestions

Hi:

This is my first suggestion, so if it gets buried by the membership--well, at least I tried . My suggestion concerns the intersection between running afoul of site rules and trust. More to the point, I believe it would be helpful if a user's ban history were available on the public profile page. I know it is available during the actual ban period, but I don't believe it is available after the ban is lifted. My thought is that when inviters are gauging the trustworthiness of an invitee, one relevant data point would be whether said invitee was a good forum citizen here at T-I. I'm not saying that any chicanery should result in a scarlet letter disqualifying said user from future invites, just that it is a data point that I believe is relevant to the total mix of information that an inviter may want to consider when deciding who gets an invite. For example, I would be very interested in knowing that an invitee who had reached the mid-level or trusted giveaway sections had been banned for spamming, as that would give me some insight into the level of contribution (such as it may be) that the user had at T-I to get to those levels.

My second suggestion dovetails with suggestion number 1. And it may very well be moot since I don't know the answer to this. Does getting banned decrease a user's reputation? I would think that at least certain categories of bannings would merit a drop in reputation--malfeasance at a tracker, spamming, getting invites to give to friends are a few that occur to me as worth of a -rep hit. Those sorts of activities render a user less trustworthy in my opinion and their reputations should reflect that.



In sum, I believe that inviters should have as full a picture as possible of potential invitees, and I believe that my suggestions above would further that goal.

Also, to be clear and avoid potential retorts, of course I am referring to bannings that are tantamount to suspensions since obviously my suggestions are irrelevant to permabans.

Thanks for your consideration.

as i understand correctly, you don´t quite seem to know what happens with people have been warned. well, that´s no problem. i´ll be your "guinea pig". xD

IF you get a warning from the mods, it´s GOING to stay there, under the "infractions" tab. there are some points stuff that i really don´t understand yet, but i don´t think it´s got anything to do with REP points. OR DOES IT??

of course my warning was weak, meaning there are people who get warnings for being aggressive and abusing. i could imagine they get something worse, like cutting off some -REPs and limited access to certain threads (or NO-POSTING periods)

i personally have not seen anyone with a "spammer" tag in his/hers profile page. i think that´s because the line between spammers and posters is vague. and ordinary posters "may" on some days post like maniacs. xD

Rellik, you make some excellent suggestions. I like both ideas very much, although I fear the first idea would brand members with a scarlet letter, as you put it, and prevent said members from receiving invites. And since not all bans mean the member would be a problematic user, it feels unfair to mark them with that information. I'm on the fence with this.

Regarding the drop in reputation - I love this idea and it seems very fair to me. However, I wonder how it could be implemented. How many rep points would be taken? What sort of scale could be used? Also, since rep is given by individual users and not by the site, how do you decide whose rep should be removed?

It's a great idea but it's also a delicate issue and I'd love some thoughts on how to develop it.

Originally Posted by oo00oo

IF you get a warning from the mods, it´s GOING to stay there, under the "infractions" tab. there are some points stuff that i really don´t understand yet, but i don´t think it´s got anything to do with REP points. OR DOES IT??

of course my warning was weak, meaning there are people who get warnings for being aggressive and abusing. i could imagine they get something worse, like cutting off some -REPs and limited access to certain threads (or NO-POSTING periods)

i personally have not seen anyone with a "spammer" tag in his/hers profile page. i think that´s because the line between spammers and posters is vague. and ordinary posters "may" on some days post like maniacs. xD

See, this is part of my point. When I go to your user profile, I don't see an infractions tab. I will grant you that I am not the world's best internet user, but it is not obvious to me where said tab might be located and how I could see it. And it sounds like you yourself are somewhat unsure what your infraction means (if anything) in terms of some nebulous points system that may or may not have anything to do with rep. And moreover, I have no access to any of this information so I can't analyze it either.

When I'm talking about spammers, I mean those individuals who have been infracted or worse yet, banned for a time period for their spamming history. Of course everyone from time to time chimes in on the "five word story" thread or the count by pictures thread, and that is fine. Having put up several spammers on the chopping block myself, I am talking about those users who have put up posts of which 90%+ are spam. To trot out Justice Potter Stewart's famous line re: pornography, you'll know it when you see it.

In any event, thanks for contributing to the conversation.

Well m8 me like both the ideas...I was actually planning to post a suggestion like this which was like allowing everyone to see the rep point some has got including warning and -ve rep's...it will help new user to learn how to get rep. around as they say it's impossible to get rep here....

Well but awesome suggestion me in full support if that means anything..lol

Originally Posted by JustJenna

Regarding the drop in reputation - I love this idea and it seems very fair to me. However, I wonder how it could be implemented. How many rep points would be taken? What sort of scale could be used? Also, since rep is given by individual users and not by the site, how do you decide whose rep should be removed?

Well to tell you the truth I have seent his rep system here only...If you get a rep from user like JJ and other you are in heaven but if you get a -ve rep. then that' sit..ha ha

Originally Posted by Rellik

As for asking for REP as a condition to giving an invite, high-level or otherwise, I believe that is against site rules and I do not support it in any way.

Well I don't think it is allowed m8....

Well doesn't wanted to spam so highlighting it a bit...Cropped from the 9th reply.. ;)

Originally Posted by JustJenna

Rellik, you make some excellent suggestions. I like both ideas very much, although I fear the first idea would brand members with a scarlet letter, as you put it, and prevent said members from receiving invites. And since not all bans mean the member would be a problematic user, it feels unfair to mark them with that information. I'm on the fence with this.

Regarding the drop in reputation - I love this idea and it seems very fair to me. However, I wonder how it could be implemented. How many rep points would be taken? What sort of scale could be used? Also, since rep is given by individual users and not by the site, how do you decide whose rep should be removed?

It's a great idea but it's also a delicate issue and I'd love some thoughts on how to develop it.

Jenna, I'll take a run at this since it was my idea. I certainly understand the scarlet letter concern and I feel it could be addressed a few ways.

Approach one is that only certain bans would show up on the user's control panel. I am thinking bans for abusive behavior, spamming and activity related to malfeasance at a tracker. There may be other categories that I am not thinking of but those are the ones that come most readily to mind as being directly relevant to an inviter. Bans in other areas--for example, bans to users who work the intro area for mistakes in execution would not be made available, since (i) we don't want to disincentivize the generous site members who donate their time to evaluate new applicants and (ii) those infractions don't tell us much about a user's trustworthiness at a tracker IMO. There are probably other categories that belong in this second bucket as well.

Approach number 2 would involve keeping the ban records the way they are--visible during a suspension, not accessible after the suspension has been lifted (and on a side note--I have no idea how easy/difficult this would be to implement, but perhaps users experiencing less than a permaban could have their status read "suspended" or similar since that has less of a negative connotation than "banned"? Just a thought). Coupled with keeping the status quo as far as displaying ban history is concerned would be to implement reputation drops I will detail in approach 3 and make a user's reputation history totally transparent. Thus, a -rep for a spamming ban could be measured in the context of a user who otherwise had a spotless reputation on site (or, on the other hand, a user for whom the -rep hit was par for the course). This would better enable users to contextualize misbehavior in the overall mix of a user's history here and hopefully avoid the scarlet letter concern (other than in areas where it is warranted I supposed for a user with a unyielding string of dismal actions).

Approach 3 is to institute -rep consequences for certain infractions and, especially, bans. My thought is to use a chart approach similar to how insurance companies assess injury claims--$500 for a broken leg, $50,000 if you are in traction, $500,000 if you are paralyzed, etc. I made all those numbers up. But the idea would be a chart with a range of values for chicanery at the site. Maybe it would look something like this (and keep in mind that I am not sure of the universe of activities that draw infractions/bans).

Spamming infraction: -rep of 1 to 5 points
Ignoring site rules infraction: -rep of 1 to 5 points
Abusive behavior infraction: -rep of 2 to 10 points
Tracker rules infraction: -rep of 2 to 10 points
Spamming ban -rep of 5 to 20 points
Abuse ban: -rep of 10 to 20 points
Tracker malfeasance ban: -rep of 15 to 30 points

And so on. The moderator/admin disciplining the user would have the discretion to levy the -rep hit depending on the severity of the action within the particular class. And obviously I was just picking ranges above to kick off discussion in the area and am open to points/counterpoints.

So, approach 3 (even without approach 2 in tandem) will at least allow a user's reputation to better reflect his/her activities on site. I personally believe that instituting 2 and 3 together is the fairest and most useful system, but understand that Dave may prefer to limit idea 2 to certain user classes. In any event, that is my shot at getting the ball rolling as it were. Please chime in with other ideas/suggestions as well!

I think the third approach would be the best one. The scarlet letter concern is off the table and the user is potentially excluded from the higher Giveaway sections, until he earned his way back in.
Really love the idea, rellik!

i dont think you quite understand how scared/cautious these people are when giving +REP. so when they take 1 REP point away, you wont get it back anytime soon.

im sure, for you it wont be a big problem. you speak fluently english and your articulate but others aren´t that lucky. i try my best to add to the community but...

ofcourse there is another way to get REP. you could always ask for a REP in exchange for some top notch invites. seen it !

some people are really paranoid. when they could see that A DUDE has some "infractions" , they wont give him any REP, NO MATTER HOW GOOD/HELPFUL their post may have been. they (paranoid people) dont want to be associated with so called "dangerous" people, because some people may get the wrong idea......

Originally Posted by oo00oo

i dont think you quite understand how scared/cautious these people are when giving +REP. so when they take 1 REP point away, you wont get it back anytime soon.

im sure, for you it wont be a big problem. you speak fluently english and your articulate but others aren´t that lucky. i try my best to add to the community but...

ofcourse there is another way to get REP. you could always ask for a REP in exchange for some top notch invites. seen it !

some people are really paranoid. when they could see that A DUDE has some "infractions" , they wont give him any REP, NO MATTER HOW GOOD/HELPFUL their post may have been. they (paranoid people) dont want to be associated with so called "dangerous" people, because some people may get the wrong idea......

I don't think it's so hard to pick up 1 rep point--you just did for this post! And, if you take a look at my suggestions, option 3 would not reveal your infractions to the community (other than potentially VIPs and Exalteds depending on what Dave decides, and that is only if your infraction is one that would potentially qualify for a -rep in the first place). Thus, the community at large would not know about your infraction (much as I didn't know until you mentioned it here). So that concern would be alleviated.

As for asking for REP as a condition to giving an invite, high-level or otherwise, I believe that is against site rules and I do not support it in any way.