I suggest that you should be able to click on the banned tag and find out what that poster got banned for.

It would serve two purposes 1. entertainment 2. If people knew what is a bannable offense they might avoid a ban themselves.

You can always ask here if you want to know, any mod can look up the reason. Regarding #2, it's as simple as not breaking the rules.

You dont see any benefit in what I am suggesting? I also think it would make the mods more even handed if they have to write why they chose to ban a poster for everyone to see.

I think it would be helpful, especially since different forums have different rules and unless you read the FAQ every time sometimes they can be hard to keep straight. For example, in SE saying "ban" as a joke gets you banned, saying "ban" in another forum is allowed as a joke (although not really funny anymore). The rules are not consistent across the entire site.

Correct, and that's a good thing that different forums have different rules. Just pay attention to which forum you're in.

Forum rules are like EULAs. Nobody reads them until it's too late.

Besides the fact that it's not just a matter of pushing a button and making the stock forum software do whatever you can think of:

We don't ban people for your entertainment, sorry. At least not most of the time.

Highly, highly unlikely IMO. TBH, that just sounds like justification for the real reason, which you already gave.

While ban reasons aren't top secret, I also don't think it's always appropriate to make them public. There are forums that make every ban public, which everyone knows (or could find out if they cared), and I think that's great. But if I give someone a ban for a day or two to cool off, how is making that public going to help the situation?

If people ask, some bans I will tell others the reason for, and some I won't - it's situation-dependent.

Actually, that's the very reason it wouldn't be helpful, as you wouldn't know where they had been banned. And even if you did, how would it help you track what was allowed in what forum? It seems like the forum rules would be a much more accurate and easy way to find out.

Yeah the more I think about the less sense it makes, especially since it isn't an option that can be turned on in the software. I probably wouldn't even come across posts like that often anyways, unless I knew a poster got banned and I went back to look for the reason. If a ban happens in a thread I am following the reason will normally be pretty obvious.

big surprise the mods come out to make sure their privileges remain extra exclusive. so ****ing typical

Thin blue line FTW!

Bobo I gave two reasons and meant them both. Forums need active posters and this site Bans a lot posters. Some of the best posters got themselves banned over the years and many times we users cannot find out why. I should have mentioned that I meant only permas and not temp bans.

Entertainment was a good reason?

I also explained why I disagree with your second reason. I don't think it would serve the purpose you think it will.

As for this forum banning a lot of posters, you're not the first person to suggest that, but I think there's a pretty wide gap between perception and reality there.

We have somewhere around 423,000 members. ~48,500 are banned, and the vast majority of those are spammers, scammers, or trolls with multiple accounts.

Usually when posters are high profile enough to be considered "some of the best posters", it's no secret why they were banned.

All that said, what changes would you suggest? I highly doubt there's any simple way to make it so that you could check why any given poster is banned.

And it's not like the stated reason is always a perfect description of why someone was banned. For that, you'd need to give everyone access to view notes left by mods, as well as the ability to read the minds of all the mods.

Which is just a little impractical.

Very true - the most controversial bans really require a more in-depth discussion if people want to understand what happened, and those often take place in this forum.

I have spent so much time going trough banned users' posts to find a clue as to why they were banned, knowing full well that the posts may have been deleted....

ya regular users should be able to click to view deleted posts too. ESPECIALLY the obscene ones.

Free Ed Furlong

why was furlong banned?

It would be quite interesting - also to know when they were banned.

It's sometimes rather sad, when looking at a historic thread (or way back in a long running thread [NOT, the 'rigged' thread, you'd expect it there]), to see just how many of the posters have been banned. They often seem perfectly normal people, making a sensible contribution to the site.

(This does not specifically apply to 2+2; It's something you see at a lot of sites.)


All in all, though, probably too much effort, for very little meaningful return.

Yes. I noticed that too. Do that many good posters eventually go bad? Are they still bad?

It is known as Eating Our Young, Killing Our Old

The low-tech solution would just be a locked thread in ATF where mods make a brief entry of name, date, sub-forum, reason for perma-ban.

Probably not worth the effort for temp bans.

I would like to know why some posters haven't been banned. Can we have this feature?

I remember when I first saw posts by █████ I was thinking "Wow what did this guy do getting Orwelled?"

YES!

I'm still here because I make the rest of you look better.