"What to do if you've been banned" sticky - Discussion thread

[kipin]

Sick burn cit.

[Leaky Eye]

Why is there noone on this site that has a clue about human interface or user experience?

You get people to do what you want by making it easier for them to do that. Addressing something like this by policy decree has no chance of working (also this policy was obviously written by someone who has never experienced banning as a user and is therefore impossible to follow).

Possible ideas to make things easy for users. Have a form for question entry on the banned page. Or have a forum for question entry they can use, like say ATF...

Of course nobody here really cares about the banned's user experience, at the same time there is rampant banning ensuring a lot of users get to experience it.

[kipin]

Leaky Eye,

Shhhhhhhh, you might incite a riot with all of those revolutionary ideas.

[Mr. Clean]

Originally Posted by istewart

Well what is the purpose a temporary ban? To teach a lesson? The rate of recidivism of people who get tempbanned for legitimately "ban-worthy" stuff is probably near 100%, so I don't think it exactly works. It just seems like it's more to exercise the big swinging mod dicks.

stewie,

although your recidivism rate is at least 100%, perhaps more, this is not true of everyone.

[atakdog]

FWIW, something I've noticed in my two weeks here: I have never seen an internet forum, dedicated to any subject, that exhibited anything near the prevalence of banning and thread deletion that this one does. I wonder: is this because poker mavens are far more likely to misbehave than those interested in every other subject that I regularly look into, or, hmm, do you think it exemplifies a moderating culture that encourages heavy-handedness?

[kipin]

The latter.

[Spechel EDD]

Originally Posted by Hot Carlo

stewie,

although your recidivism rate is at least 100%, perhaps more, this is not true of everyone.

how are you not a super admin yet? seriously.

[citanul]

Originally Posted by atakdog

FWIW, something I've noticed in my two weeks here: I have never seen an internet forum, dedicated to any subject, that exhibited anything near the prevalence of banning and thread deletion that this one does. I wonder: is this because poker mavens are far more likely to misbehave than those interested in every other subject that I regularly look into, or, hmm, do you think it exemplifies a moderating culture that encourages heavy-handedness?

on the other forums you have read or posted on previously, do they allow users to post pornography? if not, what do they do if the users post pornography?

[RoundGuy]

Originally Posted by kipin

RoundGuy,

At the rate you suck up to the policies here I expect you to be modded any day now.

You know kipin, I used to consider you a respected poster that I enjoyed reading. But lately I've noticed you're a complete douchebag.

Either you've changed recently, or I had you confused with someone intelligent.

[RoundGuy]

Originally Posted by istewart

lol @ being a real *******. You spend too much time in the bitch forums if you think that's the case.

Nah. I'm 44-years old, and have been an active member of online forums since the old CompuServe days.

I'm quite certain I know an ******* when I see one.

[Mr. Clean]

Originally Posted by atakdog

FWIW, something I've noticed in my two weeks here: I have never seen an internet forum, dedicated to any subject, that exhibited anything near the prevalence of banning and thread deletion that this one does. I wonder: is this because poker mavens are far more likely to misbehave than those interested in every other subject that I regularly look into, or, hmm, do you think it exemplifies a moderating culture that encourages heavy-handedness?

Originally Posted by kipin

The latter.

Something that neither of you has mentioned, that is probably more of a factor than either of these:

This forum, unlike most others, has a sub-forum that seemed specifically dedicated (until recently, at least) to encouraging banned users and their supporters to bitch and moan on their behalf and trash the moderators of the site. We also have, for whatever reason, at least one forum that has been created with the apparent purpose of glorifying childish behavior, out of which has arisen a subculture of people who think it's clever to spell everything wrong, post sexually-oriented pictures of children and animals, and then get all self-righteous when a moderator imposes even the slightest limits on their pointless and vulgar little games.

So, in other words, the reason so many people seem to get banned on this site is because we have ATF and BBV. The bad behavior AND the heavy moderation arise because someone decided it would be a good idea to allow, or even encourage users to act like retards.

[Conspire]

[StevieG]

Originally Posted by atakdog

FWIW, something I've noticed in my two weeks here: I have never seen an internet forum, dedicated to any subject, that exhibited anything near the prevalence of banning and thread deletion that this one does. I wonder: is this because poker mavens are far more likely to misbehave than those interested in every other subject that I regularly look into, or, hmm, do you think it exemplifies a moderating culture that encourages heavy-handedness?

atakdog,

The tolerance is fairly high. And the various forums all find their own level of tolerance pretty well. With the high amount of traffic, users quickly learn what is and is not acceptable.

In your two weeks, you've been active posting in several forums. You must have noticed the difference between, say, News, Views, and Gossip, and Home Poker.

That moderators are active in enforcing those bounds is a good thing.

Moreover, it is a virtuous cycle. Ban a problem user, or delete a few problem threads, and you prevent other problems before they start.

[kipin]

Hot Carlo,

So now that we have those institutions (BBV4L, and a place for users to voice their concerns about what the moderators of this site are doing as a representative for twoplustwo publishing - About the Forums) in place (AND CUSTOMERS USING THEM), what is your plan to rectify the situation?

BBV4L may be seen as a trash hole, but I don't see the reason why it can't co-exist on a forum with 50+ sub-forums. Since when has diversity in any culture been a bad thing? If people don't want to see the "lolzlzolzzlo" type posts, don't go into BBV4L. There are plenty of other forums one can frequent with more intelligent discourse.

Let's face it, the future of this business is *not* in book publishing. The future is in selling advertisements on this site. The poker boom is over, less and less people care about poker. The recession is in full swing which means casual players have less discretionary money to spend on "leisure goods". Guess what that means, less people playing poker, less book sales. Not to mention the number of quality competitors to twoplustwo publishings books has risen dramatically.

Just look at the success of sites like cardrunners which post new information to help players out almost daily.

The more and more the admins/mods try to curtail whatever culture has been established here, the more and more you will see people vanishing from the forum. At some point, a tipping point will be reached and you will see an exodus to other sources. But **** it, what do I know? I'm just a crazy libertarian free market economist with "weird" ideas after all. It's really too bad Sniper doesn't post his analysis of forum activity, I think one would see a marked decrease in user activity since the forum upgrade. FWIW, I don't think the upgrade was a bad thing, just a catalyst for many people to leave for a couple reasons.

1. It's great the moderator's have new tools to easily track the history of banned posters and then go after them on some sort of personal conquest and continue to ban all of their new accounts. I mean, why keep your customers around, we all know the producer is always right.

2. People hate change. How many posts have we seen in ATF from some veteran poster who has no idea how to perform the same tasks they were able to perform easily. But more importantly, how many posts have we *not* seen from frustrated users just giving up and ceasing to post.

The success of any business is the ability to see, plan, and act for the long term. Is twoplustwo doing that to the best of its ability? Just because you are the industry "leader" now, doesn't mean a better product isn't just around the corner trying to chip into your market share.

The one thing I do find somewhat strange about all this recent drama is the seemingly non-reaction by any of the admins. Why are they not involved in any of this debate? Perhaps they reserve that for the mod forum.

I think I've said about all I'm willing to say regarding this matter.

[Mr. Clean]

kipin,

your speculation about the 2p2 business model is pretty irrelevant here, and i never said get rid of ATF or BBV. i am explaining why things are the way they are. what makes this site unique from many others, in my opinion, are the two things i already stated -

1. allowing widespread harassment and abuse of moderators as well as unproductive public outcry over fairly unremarkable bans

2. catering to the under-14 crowd w/ BBV

these two factors combine to create the ****storm that is ATF / BBV etc. that's one of the ways this site's ownership has decided to drive traffic. (or, more accurately, that's how this site's willingness to respond to perceived demand in somewhat unorthodox ways has shaped the nature of traffic on 2p2).

i don't think anything necessarily needs to be done about it. i think the admins are happy with the way things are going and the business appears to be thriving. as a mod, i personally like the site better when juvenile trolls are not allowed to stir up controversy over total BS that would never have been allowed on most sites in the first place. so i appreciate that recent change in ATF. other than that, i expect we will keep on keepin on.