And I would also add that banning people removes the temptation of a flashpoint - if posters are aggressing each other and end up banned, they can't then spill into other threads when they should be cooling off.
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So what ever happened to the transparency that era was founded upon?
- Thread starter Heromanz
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I'll admit I'm biased since I work here, but while I will be the first to admit we aren't perfect, I will also be the first to *motions almost anywhere else*
Can we at least make it so if you're banned you can still view the content? As someone who has been banned a few times, it sucks using incognito mode to read.
Because it hasn't happened to you doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Just look at some of the other posters who have mentioned something similar in this very thread. Certain topics being openly referred to as graveyard topics is a thing for a reason. I'm not even trying to justify bad behavior I just wish warnings were more prevalent to give people a chance to clean up their act before you condition them not to post. Warn them, edit the post, then if they continue hit them with the ban.
I can mention something that causes confusion as well. For example today in the thread about drugs and dui's the first couple pages are littered with bans for being hostile towards someone who jeopardized people's lives by driving while impaired. Yet if you go into a politics thread it's open season to be hostile towards people with differing opinions. Then you have that mod post in which a huge error was clearly committed but they were allowed to come back and change the statement and clarify some things, an opportunity that is not afforded to a poster who would have just been banned, end of story for posting a take as off center as that.
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This is a solid point around bad faith actors that I touched on in an earlier post (full):
Which is why there's an expectation of tact or consideration on people coming into a sensitive discussions they're not directly associated with or affected by. Doing so not only reduces the strain on the community in question, but also on moderators looking to discern the bad faith from the good alongside actually bettering the chance of that person receiving educational answers if they are genuinely interested.
I mean, it's true that a lot of people are catching bans because they were silly/toxic themselves and then turn sour on moderation because of it, but that doesn't really mean what boils down to "you mad" should be used to deflect legitimate concerns over moderation. There was a period in PC gaming era where there was much disgruntlement over how mods were handling epic/steam thread and it ended up with mass bans for anyone complaining to the point where even posting this gif got you banned:
Like i get that people don't want to deal with bad actors. I am totally on board with that.
But moderation is inherently reactive. I can't ban someone *before* they post (unless they sign up with [email protected], for instance). There is a level of bullshit that people have to accept because we literally cannot do anything about it before it is posted, and while, for example, someone that has several infractions for console warring may decide to enter an Etc thread and spout transphobic rhetoric, there's literally no way for us to know that was coming.
I know it doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, but we are sincerely trying to get these jackasses as quickly as we can. But that generally means they get off at least one post that's horrible in a sensitive topic.
Hecht Please answer my question.
I'm honestly not trying to be an arse. But legitimately would like to know.
And i say that as someone who's been banned a million times. So you know i know what i'm talking about. LOL.
It's very frustrating, especially as even when not using incognito mode. You have to constantly turn dark mode back on.
I'm honestly not trying to be an arse. But legitimately would like to know.
Hmm. I wouldn't necessarily agree with that.
Fuck yes. This please.
And i say that as someone who's been banned a million times. So you know i know what i'm talking about. LOL.
It's very frustrating, especially as even when not using incognito mode. You have to constantly turn dark mode back on.
That's what my post was saying though, almost 1:1 - but seems I may not have articulated it well enough.
Ahh.
I was asking. Usually how many are involved with both a ban, and a mod post. Please.
I don't see necessarily why the forum should accomodate someone who has been banned, personally. And I say that as someone who has seen the ban screen several times. It actually takes time to make changes like not locking the board to those who are currently banned, and, were I in that position, would I really want to devote an unpaid afternoon to writing and testing code to satiate those who are objectively being punished? Particularly when there are other, more pressing things about the board that could be changed (like, please, please, PLEASE make embedding youtube links automatically create a link above the embed so I don't have to refresh the page when I get "video unavailable on this site" errors or whatever youtube calls them).
it ended when we got a split in verified, mods, admins, normal users, etc users.
This does not sound unlike what I mentioned way back on the first page with a different subcommunity at the old place, but if the thread was turning into a boil of complaining about mod actions instead of the discussion it was meant to facilitate, that's prooooobably what the bans were for, no?
A ban will at minimum have two mods talking - it depends on the time of day. We have mods in non-US time zones but it all depends on availability. Unless it is strikingly obvious, there will be a discussion between at least two mods in determining the ban and the length. If it's something over two weeks, an admin will be involved.
As for modposts, that's generally an all-hands-on-deck situation unless it's something small like "ok stfu get this thread back on track."
It's cause for a lot of people Resetera is part of a daily routine, and when they're temporarily banned for, let's say, 1 day, 2 days, a week, etc that you still want them to actually view the content on the site without resorting to logging out or using incognito. It doesn't really change much to the site if banned people can view the content. This is probably the only forum I know that actively blocks banned accounts from viewing the website.
I legit skipped a heart beat. I thought I was posting in the wrong thread.
Verified members don't get any extra benefits. It's a status that exists solely for, say, if there is a topic on game development, you will have assurance that the poster who is verified as such will have some relevant experience to talk about it. If a verified member were to do something like call someone a slur, I'm happy to send them to the void.
I know of lots of sites that restrict access once you've been banned. You can't see the vast majority of Sonic Retro if you're a misfit, for example, only the parts of the board that are open to non-registered users.
It was turning into a boil of complaining about mod actions because mods were very poor to take feedback in the first place. Just go back to the last incident here, mods didn't react until it was explosive and a lot of people complained. Between then a lot of people got swept under the rug unfairly and with little transparency.
I see. That's... A bit depressing in my case. To say the least.
But thank you for taking to the time to respond.
Well. At least fix the dark mode always resetting (no pun intended. LOL) when logged out.
My eye dude. Think of my eyes.
You would also expect that a verified member, by virtue of putting their job status out in the open, wouldn't be calling other people racial slurs or whatever. Unless their company is cool with that or something.
Plenty of people think their responses are eloquent when they're not. Also sometimes the mods assume bad faith when it isn't there- for various reasons, not all of which are bad.
I do think if someone has a generally good history, they should be given more benefit of the doubt, or they should be given a chance to explain their reasoning if they get banned, and then get it reduced/overturned.
I got banned a bunch of times, but never because of racism or bigotry, thank fuck. 99% of the time, it was warranted, I got too riled up about something stupid and got unreasonably hostile, that's totally fair and it did make me change my posting habits a little.
However, I think the moderation isn't always consistent - my most recent ban was for telling someone to "admit they care about entertainment more than human rights" in a Diablo 4 thread, when they said exactly that themselves (they said, from the top of my head, that Blizzard's support of China was shitty, but they're still gonna get D4 anyway, and provided a bunch of typical fallacies to justify it, like "boycotting doesn't work" and "I want to support the honest developers who worked on the game").
So I caught a ban for antagonizing an user, while in the Destra thread people were calling each other too dumb to understand the game without so much as a warning.
Tl;dr - while I generally think moderation here is fair, it would be nice to have a way to appeal or at least open some dialogue about specific cases.
We do this. It's not always obvious, but we do look into this.
I think it would help if mods issued more warnings before going straight for a ban, unless it's an extreme case of course. Help and guide people in the right direction, banning just kills the conversation and should be used as a last resort imo.
I've seen more and more people say they stay away from topics or are afraid to post their opinions because of the fear of bans, which is not a good thing, especially if they have no real intention to cause upset.
I'm sure it's not easy modding these things but it would be nice to see improvements made to make Era better for everyone.
I've seen more and more people say they stay away from topics or are afraid to post their opinions because of the fear of bans, which is not a good thing, especially if they have no real intention to cause upset.
I'm sure it's not easy modding these things but it would be nice to see improvements made to make Era better for everyone.
Being banned is a part of life. You accept it. There's a seething rage at first, then some imaginative "how am I going to get my revenge" then eventually "eh, fuck it, 2 more days, gonna go drink now".
Do the 5 stages of grief happen when you get banned?
Do the 5 stages of grief happen when you get banned?
I'm afraid to ask. But even for me ?
Depends how long my "off time" is.
Ah the good old "antagonizing an user" aka we need an excuse to ban you.
Regarding this one, it's really more about human nature than anything else. Gaming is a capitalist venture - there are games I want to play, and I will play them in the best (or only) way I can. It's the same argument as - damn near everything I buy probably has some shitty factor affecting its production. If you can boycott it, then great. But the majority of people aren't going to do that because it goes against human nature.
People love certain things, material or otherwise. People will find alternatives if they exist, but when it comes to specific experiences, there are no alternatives. If I want to play, say, Persona 5, it's not like I can go to a different publisher/developer and get the same experience.
It's a matter of shaming people for making capitalist decisions in a capitalist society. We would all love for the situation to be better, but individual actions like that are not the cause and shouldn't be treated as such.
Everyone has a history. Now if there is, say, a gap of a year since their last infraction, I'm happy to give them a pass of sorts, but density is a factor.
Yeah, absolutely, I get that. But it still feels like something that could be solved with a warning or a staff post, unless the thread is clearly devolving into seeing-red-foaming-at-the-mouth name calling.
Warnings are reserved for very small things. I'm not gonna warn someone for calling someone a n***er, for instance. Console warring? Ok. We all get heated and we all have favorite things.
I've always operated on one rule, and one rule only. Don't be a dick.
If someone doesn't like the game you like, then ok. That's fine. If someone is enjoying a game, you don't have to jump in and tell them how "wrong they are."
It really is that simple. That is literally the ultimate rule to follow here.
what
Someone that accrues ten infractions over 6 months will be looked at different than someone who does so over 6 years
Ehhh. The one post used against me for a previous infractions. Was just under a year old.
I'm 100% certain this is already accounted for, but the way it was phrased could be taken to not account for posting frequency in general. Like, the more someone posts in general, the more likely they're to accrue an infraction in general, it's just human nature. So someone that accrues ten infractions over 6 months but posted, like, 1000 times during that span had only 1% of their posts being problematic, where if someone had 10 infractions in 6 years but had only 20 posts in that span, then 50% of their posts are problematic.
But, again, I know that's accounted for (at least to a degree).
Oh damn. Does this means my warnings are all forgotten?
Time to go wild on a few threads...
Shy, I don't think you are a bad person, but it was never just the one post. If someone has one infraction each for:
- console warring
- antagonizing other members
- disingenuous arguments
- ignoring modposts
- thread derails
We are still going to escalate it. It doesn't matter if the person has a "pattern" in the sense that we would ban someone for a specific thing, so much that we would ban someone for frequently, generally, ignoring the rules. It's nothing personal, but eventually there is a breaking point.
Well yes the amount is taken into account as well. Like I said - density is part of it.
This doesn't mean I want to be banned, but even my ban history isn't really consistent. I am not 100% accurate on the actual ban lengths cause I don't keep track but I figure my trajectory has been: warning, 2 day suspension, 3 day suspension, 5 day suspension, 2 week suspension to a.... 3 day suspension? I'm going to assume there's different categories for what someone is actioned for? Like, I am 100% surprised no one has accused me of being a protected member at this point.
Again, not looking to be perma-baned, but ya know, even I find this odd.
Sorry, was intended as a joke in me 'hiding away' since I've accrued two somewhat recently.
makes a noteOh damn. Does this means my warnings are all forgotten?
Time to go wild on a few threads...
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