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Underground > Policy & Help >

A (controversial) idea for reopening the board

  
  

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ONLY NICE THINGS
22:35 / 24.11.03
A fair point. In fact, having thought about whether I am just cross with the persistent failure to understand Tom's position on trolling, presumably wilfully, I had already moved to edit my post.

However, I would ask you to follow suit by trying to spend at least half of your post discussing the issue rather than discussing me, Bio, however much more interesting to you I may be. It's good form. If you really want to talk about me, feel free to start a thread.

Now, to look at the facts on trolling. Incidences of trolling that have endangered the board (that is, trolling that does not fit the paradigm of "trolling that can easily be dealt with") are... well, the boy (whom I am not calling by name out of respect for his wish not to have his name on the board). That's it. Modzero got kicked for a bit, for going ballistic and spamming the board, but that was pretty easy to deal with. RRM/Laila/Chrome are essentially tolerated, with a slightly patronising forbearance and the occasional slap. Rage is again largely indulged during her occasional flameouts, which are either left or deleted if they are making a mess.

See what I mean? If you ask the question "wny is the board not open", the answer is "because of one person's sustained attack on Barbelith". I don't see any mechanisms put in place to deal with the possibility of the resumption of that attack - in fact, the removal of administrators and the increase in voting numbers needed for actions makes it easier to mount the same sort of attack - so that is the one concern about opening Barbelith again. And, as I say, if you think that we should all be sweetness and light to the one reason why Barbelith had to be closed, that's your choice, but it's a thesis that has already been proposed, tried out and rejected because it didn't work.

So, if we are discussing why Barbelith is closed or why it should be opened, we are discussing the boy, and I don't really see, for the reasons I gave above which you ignored completely in favour of talking about me, why we have to be extra-specially nice. Tryphena observed to me that we are never going to get past this one big scar on the mind of Barbelith unless we can discuss it freely, and after giving that a fair amount of thought I think she's probably right. A lot of approaches have been played out and are likely to lead to boredom, but we still have to be able to discuss the problem (for problem it is) with freedom.

Now, it occurs to me that the only obstacle to opening the board is the danger of a single-minded, near-psychotic assault on the board and individual members of the board by a disturbed individual or disturbed individuals - that is, something beyond simple trolling, which I think is a false trail here. As such, maybe we should be talking about how we can head that problem off at the pass and thus make the opening-up of Barbelith as easy and pleasant (and potentially as permanent) as possible.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
22:45 / 24.11.03
Sometimes I wonder if you, Tom, and Nick are sort of hoping that "Sexless" comes back and "assaults" the board in the way that religious fanatics yearn for the End Times.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:04 / 24.11.03
Yes, Matthew. That's exactly it. And you have managed to lose interest completely in the thread subject now and have decided instead to go for personalities. Is this as long as you can manage to maintain focus before descending to personal abuse at the moment? Now I am going to have to step off topic as well because...well, because Matthew has failed to let some other asshole have the last word.

Really, I'm serious about this. You appear to have built up some sort of triumvirate of me, Nick and Tom, despite the fact that we have very different views and that at least one of us was barely involved in the situation that led to the board being closed to new members, and has not posted on this thread, simply because we all dared in one way or another to suggest that your role-playing threads were other than the funniest thing ever and the saving of Barbelith. I had hoped you had got over that, but it seems on the current evidence that you have not, and have rolled up everyone who has remotely annoyed you into an undifferentiated mass.

Is it actually worth trying to talk to you at the moment? Will you listen to what I am saying, or are you already running a little script in your head which allows you to justify absurd and incorrect barracking like the above? It's slightly tiresome when you take this hectoring tone in the Spectacle, although often very amusing, but in the Policy it's just depressing.
 
 
w1rebaby
23:23 / 24.11.03
A couple of points:

1. Nobody ever joins pay boards, so asking for money is effectively the same as blocking members, but with more admin necessary to prepare for it. Nobody will ever join Barbelith for cash.

2. Barbelith does not have a problem with trolls. Barbelith has an occasional problem with troll singular, someone who I must admit is one of the more persistent I've seen - though not, I think the most persistent. If that is a problem and the collective will does not exist to create a more autocratic mod role, which apparently it doesn't (and that's not a criticism, it's just part of what people want) then there needs to be a stronger collective decision-making process. Deleting posts when four people agree, or however many it is, just doesn't cut it. Banning an IP address when four people agree is more like it. There needs to be a lot more power available to mods, collectively or independently, since clearly Tom can't do everything and there are only a limited number of people online at any one time.

There is no preventing people who want to troll. (Thankfully there are very few.) Either you let them do what they want, again, not something that seems acceptable, or you have procedures in place to prevent that by banning them. Individual autocratic mods are not desired so the community process needs to be powered up if there's concern about the effects of troll(s).

Personally I think that trollish actions are reacted to with overblown hysteria on this board, but that's just me.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:30 / 24.11.03
Ah, sweet reason, and back ontopic to boot. Basically, it seems to me that the sensible thing to do here would be to take a few preventative measures, they being essentially a T&C document that people are assumed to agree to abide by if they post here, and a beefing-up of mod powers specifically related to dealing with trolls. I don't see why we need autocratic and largely unaccountable moderators, as on ChristianBBS or portalofevil, but having the mechanisms in place might make life a bit easier in the medium term. Then we can open the board and hope we don't have to worry about either again.
 
 
Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!
23:34 / 24.11.03
I think the point is Haus, and I wasn't sure whether to put this here or in the #496 thread (where you agonise about being a tired [albeit insulting] childminder), but have frankly decided I don't care. Oh, and far from wanting to start a thread all about you I think you get more than enough attention as is. You are a magnet for attention, and seem to deflect attention from IMPORTANT ISSUES!!! by never failing to be anything less than condescending.

The point I have been missing by having to deflect all your other comments as to what relevance this may have is simple. As tiring as you find other peoples snidey remarks/comments and antics - for all your superior nature - you are criticising them while doing the VERY SAME THING. As tiring as being so worthy is for you, I don't see what entitles you to such a position. I mean, your very tone (and I seem to recall you damning Flux for being arrogant) is horribly haughty/high and mighty/important. It has a place, sure, but I don't feel this is it.

I am sorry if I am being a little harsh. But this seems to be the kind of reaction you are prone to cause. I understand that not everyone is as intimate with the knowledge of trolling as you are. But it seems like you actually know Tom/Nick etc... and these matters are very close to you. I'm sorry we don't all know the ins and outs of these matters - I for one didn't know the problem was so bad. You may well be an authority on the matter - and I'm sorry for not always knowing what's going on - but the way you going about making your point is bad. Bad form, yes? Do you see? I just consider it bad from to berate people for not fully understanding Tom's position on trolls (I know Tom so I know! Properly!) while you seem to lack some basic understanding of what you're actually saying and when it's suitable.


(or to re-iterate, I'm afraid my use of language isn't terribly creative, but it doesn't excuse you from being the way that you are being while criticising other people of doing the same things as only you seem to be blind to what you are actually doing although seeming rational you cannot help yourself from posting like you are sitting in a mighty throne and look down on us all for not understanding the problems that face the land of barbelith and it's benevloent ruler.)

I ackknowledge this post is full of assumption and/or specualation.

In plain terms: with regards to the "some asshole" always having the last word, thing. Isn't that asshole (always/generally/usually) you?
 
 
Spatula Clarke
23:47 / 24.11.03
I think the problem there, fridge, is one of board culture: people have got it into their heads that Barbelith is some kind of Internet Utopia, where anything and everyone goes. It is not and it never has been. Moderators weren't a feature of the place originally because there was precious little need for them - we actually once had a thread called "We moderate ourselves," in which we all patted each other on the back abiut how clever we were to be able to stop ourselves from calling each other names. What we didn't really notice was that, as a board of about 400 registered suits (roughly 300 of whom were back-ups, multi-user, 'characters', etc.) there was never going to be a need for moderators.

Boards are going to have to change the way they function as they grow in size. That's unavoidable. Now, personally what I think Barbelith needs is to accept that trolls will be booted. Just like on pretty much any other board you care to look at. That's change, and it's not just a change that's required because of one person, but a change that was always going to be inevitable sooner or later. Unfortunately, because of the previously mentioned misguided and misinformed notion of Barbelith as an anarchist safehaven, whenever action is taken to stop somebody from using the place as their own personal toilet, some members decide that it's tantamount to - yep - fascism and attack whatever measures have been resorted to. And that's when we get the hysteria, kept fed by both sides of the divide.

We need solid policy on this, one way or the other, or else we're going to keep having this discussion and it's going to keep descending into the frankly pathetic spectacle of hair-pulling that this thread is teetering on the brink of*. We've shied away from forming any kind of written-in-stone rules about imbecilic behaviour in the past, and I entirely understand why that's the case, but I honestly think it's time we put those worries aside and made a firm statement for once in the board's life.

*On which topic, Moderator hat: stick to the topic at hand and give the personal jibes a rest, please.
 
 
Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!
23:53 / 24.11.03
I agree with Randy. Lets just try and encourage good manners. It's only the internet, for heavens sake.

However, personally I quite like being able to go off topic, and don't find it to be entirely detrimental to the topic at hand, except where personal insults ar... oh.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:56 / 24.11.03
A post entirely about me, in a thread about opening the board. Back offtopic. This is a step up from pictures of vaguely penile objects to represent this magic triumvirate that appears to have popped up, but it's not exactly helpful, and I'm not sure what profit there is in continuing it. If you want to avoid me being rude, maybe not psoting several paragraphs of insults aimed at me would be a good way to start, eh?

Tom's position on trolls was laid out *in this thread*. It was that the board was closed to new registrations not because of trolling in general, but because of one person subjecting the board and members of it to sustained attack. This is not I know Tom so I know! Properly!. It is I have read the thread I am contributing to. At the risk of sounding condescending, if you had read the thread rather than simply scanning it for reasons to be upset with me, you would have picked that up.

Likewise, if you had read this thread you might have noticed that Nick had not participated in it. So, it seems you are also constructing a magic triumvirate based on rather skimpy evidence, especially as you have admitted that you have no idea how well we know each other, and failed to notice that I was referring not to some deep conversation in the snug of the Oxford and Cambridge in which Tom laid out his policy on trolling, but to posts earlier in this very thread. If you feel you are being criticised for not reading a thread in the Policy before bowling in with a lengthy and offtopic personal attack, there's not much I can do to help you.

The funny part is that after all the shit we went through as a board and as people in the run-up to the board closing, what is making me think of giving up on the thing now is a group of perfectly nice fellows with slightly thin skins and the security of numbers.
 
 
Tom Coates
00:00 / 25.11.03
Matthew - at the moment you seem to be distinctly disenchanted with the board. I can't say that i'm entirely unsurprised by that - I'm pretty pissed off with some of it as well. On the other hand, if there's one thing I need to be gospel on this place it's our policy towards our unwelcome visitor. It's simple and basic - people on the board are unable to ignore him, his actions on the board are incredibly distructive and he may very well return (he has done so dozens of time before). Therefore he must be kept off the board and any systems we build or maintain have to be able to deal with that. His recurrent interest is vaguely pathological and also rather pathetic, but there you go. I'm not going to ease up on this opinion, because I have more than enough evidence for it. And I'm not really prepared to discuss it every six months or so just because some other person or group of people doesn't believe that he's as much of a problem as I know he is. And if you don't believe that, well - bugger you - all I can say is that I'm right and I don't think you know what you're talking about. Everything else is negotiable. This much isn't.

To Haus I would say - AGAIN - that while I appreciate your sentiments, it is true that your rhetoric does occasionally backfire and that your tone of voice (which I know, having met you, is easy to misconstrue in written characters) doesn't always come across in the way that I think you would wish. One thing I want to make clear is that I'm not comfortable with my posts on the board being treated as some kind of scripture to be referenced, with my meaning puzzled over or re-employed to back up one or other kind of arguments, and that - while I'm not sure it's obviously bad practice - I'm also not sure that calling our unwelcome visitor names is particularly helpful. If you could tone down the rhetoric and try to produce more arguments that aspire to persuade rather than win, I would appreciate it. Although I regularly stray off this advice myself, I still think it's a noble aspiration for an educated man.

At which point, I will restate my position on this stuff (given that some of this stuff strays over into those areas that I basically end up having responsibility for whether i like it or not):

Basically we have to balance the danger to the community in opening up to new members with the danger to the community in becoming stale. The biggest danger to the community in my opinion is in the complete upheaval that a prolonged troll attack could cause. This community simple can't handle that kind of stuff effectively. So we open the doors and we wait to see what happens. If it gets difficult we'll shut them again. And then - later - hopefully we'll be able to open them again. If the community starves of new blood and turns in on itself because of that, then that's depressing and wrong and a shame - but it's not the fault of the people who look after it, it's the fault of the person who keeps demonstrating his need and desire to attack it. It's not a simple situation - it's NEVER a simple situation - but we'll work through it.
 
 
Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!
00:08 / 25.11.03
Haus: Ehhh, I was hoping to avoid this. I'm not sure how! But anyway... I really do feel you deflect people off-topic by, yes, insulting them. So it feels a little unfair when you keep going on about "staying on topic". Although honestly, that isn't one of my chief concerns. Simply: if you want to avoid people going off topic because they feel the need to insult you; don't use that condescending tone with them!

I read the thread, and I understood Tom's policy on trolls. I was just making reference to your frustration of people not "getting it" like you "get it".

Sorry, anyway.

And a radical "new board" theory: Split it in two (forums-wise, at least). One part, compartmentalised, rules and mods. You post here and you know what yer in for... Other part, no "rules" merely guidelines? I'm only thinking as I type, mind you...
 
 
bio k9
00:09 / 25.11.03
Lets all give it a rest for tonight, ok?
 
 
Spatula Clarke
00:11 / 25.11.03
I also think we're missing a very important point when we complain about the board suffering from a lack of new blood, and that is that - as olulabelle's Head Count thread proved - we have a significant number of people who are members of the board, who visit it regularly, yet who never post. Maybe we could use some of the energy that we waste having these recurrent arguments to instead try and figure out a way of making the place more welcoming to them, to use some of the resources that we currently have at our disposal instead of worrying about finding fresh reserves.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
00:12 / 25.11.03
Hmm. I think it's possibly unwise to reopen the board in the expectation that everything will be hunky-dory. Hopefully it will be, but I honestly believe that some countermeasures in the event of the absence of either hunky or dory would be a very good idea, even if it is only a T&Cs document that could be referred to head off the aforementioned hand-wringing.

I take your point about tone - sorry. I will try to spend more time with the shrews. For future reference, however, I feel I should point out that I was by no means using your words as scripture - only suggesting that a policy on our troll situation (which in the case identified as the only reason why Barbelith was closed in the first place *is* gospel) had been outlined by you early on in this thread and was being ignored in favour of personality clashes.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
11:43 / 25.11.03
Tom, I understand what Andrew has done, it's not like that. I realize the kind of trouble he's put you through. My position is that I think we may collectively be too paranoid about him. Maybe I'm just being a very naive optimist, I don't know. Even if the guy shows up again, I think that we can still find a way to deal with him that doesn't mean shutting the place off. Maybe you're right, and I don't know what I'm talking about. But I think it's important for the dialectic on this board to have a skeptical viewpoints on this matter given some airtime. I really resent that this little jerk has so much power over every policy decision that we make.

I'm probably not as disenchanted with Barbelith as I may seem in some policy threads - I'm not about to run away and give up on the place. I think that we can make this place better than it is right now, and indeed better than it was in better times. I try to be optimistic about this. Letting some new people join is a good first step - hopefully the new folks will start speaking up and the dynamic will shift a bit. Even if we just had five or six new members who posted frequently, that could change things quite a bit. Have you ever noticed how you can be in a group of four people for a while, and a person leaves or another one enters, the character of the group can change completely? It's like that, I think.

Also, if no new trolling goes down over the course of the month or so after this registration week, maybe we can be slightly more confident about leaving the door open longer the next time.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
12:48 / 25.11.03
I want to stamp my feet a bit about this

I think we may collectively be too paranoid about him

and this

I really resent that this little jerk has so much power over every policy decision that we make

Sometimes I feel like we've set up a competition between the little jerk and us and that he's winning because we're always thinking about him and talking about him. Because we're always doing it the board just winds up to a crescendo of me, me, me. It's like we have a victim culture in place, always tailoring our words around him. Where's our collective coping facility? I have no problem with deleting him but I don't get why we need to talk about it all the bloody time. Just fucking get rid of him when he turns up... hell he hasn't popped his head up over the last few weeks as far as I'm aware and we're still talking about him now.
 
 
w1rebaby
13:48 / 25.11.03
Big thumbs up to that.
 
 
Tom Coates
14:14 / 25.11.03
Well yes, that's agreed. I'd be quite comfortable never talking about him again to be honest. Delighted, actually. But Haus is right when he says you're being a bit naive (about our unwelcome visitor and any other trolls on the board). Deleting user names doesn't work. Deleting the posts doesn't work. And the board - whatever we might wish - DOES NOT FUNCTION when it's under that kind of invasion, probably precisely because you're all quite used to it being a problem so infrequently.

So I want to make myself clear again - I'm not overplaying this issue, it is a big deal (not because people COULDN'T deal with it themselves but because they just DON'T deal with it themselves and because it rips the place to pieces as a result). So we have other mechanisms in place (including shutting the board down to new registrations) which I will not hesitate to use again if it seems necessary. I'd rather not talk about him at all, obviously, because as far as I'm concerned it IS a done-deal and discussion of the situation with regard to our unwelcome visitor is ALSO a done-deal. I'm really sorry to people who feel otherwise, but there you go.
 
 
Lurid Archive
16:18 / 25.11.03
And the board - whatever we might wish - DOES NOT FUNCTION when it's under that kind of invasion

I don't want to underplay the hassle caused to you Tom, but I think the reason it doesn't function is that you are the only person able to deal with it. The only way to deal with a troll is to ban them. Instead, whenever we get a troll, you have to take time off work/life or whatever in order to deal with the problem. You aren't here 24 hrs and so resent having to deal with trolls in ways which inconvenience you (this is apart from the personal threats, but an important part I think).

The reason we have a hard time dealing with trolls, or this troll, is because we are unwilling to put any real mechanisms in place to deal with them and him. Shutting the board down is a going overboard, IMO. Much as fridge said above.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
17:55 / 25.11.03
I'd just like to applaud Randy and Lurid in this thread as voices of reason, I'd prefer an argument six months down the line about moderators working in secret against board members without any proof of that rather than another one of 'Is Barbelith dying'? I think Tom needs to extend the administrator powers again so we don't have to rely on him to kick trolls off and then we have to trust that administrators are working for the good of the community. In the end, Modzero couldn't actually prove anything he complained about, which led to the farcical situation of assuming that he must have been right and that Barbelith was at fault for not providing the means for him to prove he was right.

With the greatest respect to Tom and Cal, I think if Toms a bit frustrated with the way the board goes sometimes it's because real life gets in his and Cal's way when it comes to making changes to the board.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:31 / 25.11.03
So what do we all agree on? We agree, I think, that openign the board is a good idea. We largely agree that the major disincentive to Barbelith being open is the possibily of disturbed people launching attacks on the board and members of the board. We all agree that it would be a good idea to take whatever steps do not interfere with the running of the board or the precepts of the board to prevent this.

However, I would like to cough politely to Flowers, and point out that another series of j'accuse threads about moderators acting against trolling is going to be quite as boring as "is Barbelith dying". So maybe we should try to avoid that by having some agreement on what a reasonable action is, and what powers moderators should have. Is it reasonable to give some or all moderators some powers to suspend activity by suits that are actively trolling the board pending Tom looking at them, say with the consent of 1 other moderator, as an emergency stopgap? Would that be a good start, and if so can we agree not to start the aforementioned j'accuse threads about it without some sort of coherent evidence that it was being abused? Examples of moderators abusing their power are very thin on the ground, and I'd like to have that reflected in any decisions going forward. Since any moderator action can be examined and identified in the board records, there shoudl be a reasonably high level of accountability on this one, even excepting the probity of the moderators themselves.

Having said which, I *would* like to ask if my suggested moderation of the more fractious parts of my post to Bio K9 last night, made before I was aware of any response, was vetoed or has simply not gone through, and if it was vetoed who vetoed it and why.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
20:33 / 25.11.03
Can you IP ban someone from your server, tom? that'd stop him looking.
 
 
grant
20:38 / 25.11.03
OK, so what ARE the actual mechanisms used to ban an IP address?

What's the engineering behind that?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:38 / 25.11.03
Just to clarify, that was not a criticism of Flowers' position, but rather an endorsement of it.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
21:19 / 25.11.03
I vetoed the request because one of the alterations you'd made had already been quoted in its original form by bio. I meant to PM you afterwards to let you know why it hadn't gone through, but forgot all about it.
 
 
Perfect Tommy
00:39 / 26.11.03
I think Tom needs to extend the administrator powers again so we don't have to rely on him to kick trolls off and then we have to trust that administrators are working for the good of the community.

We really only have two Primary Shitstorms, which are in direct opposition: (1) the "Powermad Cliques of Moderators" theme, and (2) One Disturbed Ur-Troll. Now, 'normal' trolling, even when it involves 50 tantrum threads and 400-line abstracts, can be handled by the standard, non-fascistic methods of mocking or ignoring the poster; it's the single Ur-Troll who is a real problem.

I avoid paying attention to shitstorms, but I seem to recall that the Ur-Troll is easily spotted by those in the know, to the extent that one can point out specific characteristics of a post as indicating Ur-Trollish origin. An online community is equal parts computer software and social software, so the social engineering solution I'd suggest is to hand moderators a gun: significant power to ban, but used only to ban the Ur-Troll in question. A poster throwing tantrums, spamming, and using racial slurs that would curl Hitler's toes is best dealt with by giving hir free rein to prove hirself an idiot; we have a single wackjob who cannot be dealt with by those methods, and must be shot on sight.

My hope is that having this limited circumstance (actually, a unique circumstance) in which banning is appropriate counters Primary Shitstorm #1 to some degree. If we had the people, it would actually be better to have specially trained Ur-Troll recognition squads with ban power rather than moderators... call them, uh, Castigation Action Line Operators.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
06:08 / 26.11.03
Doomlord patrol?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
09:45 / 26.11.03
I'm not overplaying this issue

Never thought you were, actually I think it's everyone else that overplays this issue. I've noticed Tom that it's very rarely you that starts conversations about this whole big, fat situation and that's about 1 million five hundred thousand points to recommend you as our venerable leader (hehehe) as far as I'm concerned. If it's possible I would like to see Lurid and a few others gain the power to block an IP address. Perfect Tommy makes a really good point as to the strict rules that would underlie this role significant power to ban, but used only to ban the Ur-Troll in question. You could argue, I suppose, that we can't always be certain it is him. Frankly I think that's a non-argument, anyone emulating his behaviour can go to, though in order to do this thing super-moderators would really have to get their troll time in sync.

Raaaarrrr, crush them all!! You know, I feel quite cheery now I've read this bit of the thread.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
20:44 / 26.11.03
On Perfect Tommy's Number One point, all that needs to be done if there is a next time is that we don't start panicking about moderator powers unless those who complain about it can actually put some evidence to back their fears.

I'm in favour of a doomlord patrol just so long as we got those cool deaths head rings.
 
 
Tom Coates
21:44 / 26.11.03
Replying to people one by one:

Lurid said The only way to deal with a troll is to ban them. Instead, whenever we get a troll, you have to take time off work/life or whatever in order to deal with the problem. Well that's not strictly true. The big problem is that it's impossible to effectively ban someone unless you shut down new registrations. They can just get another free e-mail address and sign up again. You can block the IP address of their ISP, but they can go through proxy servers. You can get them banned from their ISP, but they just get another one. And while free e-mail accounts are as cheap as chips, they can still sign up. Our unwelcome visitor has had around thirty different accounts over the years - each one with a distinct e-mail address! We've banned him a number of times. It doesn't work! That's WHY we go to these draconian measures every so often. We have no other choice

Our Lady of the Two Towers You may think it's the voice of reason, but in this case it's not. Administrators have never been able to ban users themselves - and to be honest i'm not sure how comfortable people around the board would be with them having that power anyway.

Haus / Lady I'd love to be able to open up powers to block people (even for a short-term) to moderators. I'm again not sure that the community would like that very much, but the concept's rather let down by not being able to talk to Cal at the moment.

Radiator Unfortunately the main problem about people who use major ISPs and/or travel a lot is that blocking their IP ranges also blocks off dozens of other current users and many thousands of potential new ones. We've got some IP range tactics in the backend, but they're not really that useful in the long-term.

Grant Basically every time you dial-up with your ISP they allocate you an IP address from a range of IP addresses that they have available. Every time a page is requested from a server it gets the person's IP address so that it can send the page back to them. You can tell your server - and the software running on your server - to react in various ways to requests from IP addresses - like for example to ignore them, or to server up different content or something. But of course that's not linked to the human user themselves - only to the computer and the account they use to access the internet. If they go to another machine, or use a proxy server, it doesn't work. And - again - it has the effect of shutting off access to lots of other people on the same ISP.

Perfect Tommy There is always debate on Barbelith about whether it's the Ur-Troll or not, and there's always anxiety about banning people that we're not 100% sure of their identity. There are ways I can check up on someone's identity using their IP address (which is another reason why sometimes it's not in the best interests to force people into using alternative techniques to access the board). Mostly the UR-troll has used NTL in Swansea to access the board - but again, there are a lot of other people who use the same ISP in roughly the same area. The problem with all of this is that if people are suspicious of moderators with power, then they're going to be suspicious of having moderators with the power to delete a user outright - particularly when they only have other people's word for the fact that they are the UR-Troll. And of course the fundamental problem remains. They can just sign-up again under another name using a different e-mail address, unless you have the option of stopping new registrations.

With regard to the final point, I'm thinking maybe what we actually need - given that I end up having final authority (grudgingly) on these things anyway - is a way for people to ask me to check up on whether there's been any impropriety in moderator actions. If people believe that I'd act morally in those circumstances, then I can sort out these situations quickly and easily. If they don't - of course - it wouldn't really work...
 
 
Tom Coates
21:49 / 26.11.03
Oh and another thing. Basically the reason stuff around Ur-troll isn't up for debate is simply because I've had to think about all the options and there aren't very many. People like Ganesh, Haus, myself and a few others have experienced the full brunt of these attacks and don't have any interest in seeing them happen again. Any way the board is assembled must be able to deal with these things and we must have any number of options at our disposal to deal with them. One of those will be to shut down registrations if the need arises. I'm always open to different ways of thinking about the issue, but the fundamentals - that it's an issue that can't just be ignored, that can't just be considered something that people are over-reacting about, but that it's something that we have to be ready for and build systems around - that's just true and there's no point arguing about it.
 
 
cusm
22:16 / 26.11.03
So what if we charged for new registrations, but blithely bypassed this charge by bugging Tom to add people directly as has been the way of things for awhile now anyway? Results: If you've got a man on the inside, you get in. If not, you pay at the door. Kinda like a night club.
 
 
Tom Coates
22:18 / 26.11.03
If we charge, it's a business. I'm not prepared to handle the hassle of that. But you're right about a barrier to entry that has some actual value to people. I've considered that a lot.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:26 / 26.11.03
Hey ho
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
13:20 / 27.11.03
Tom Our Lady of the Two Towers You may think it's the voice of reason, but in this case it's not. Administrators have never been able to ban users themselves - and to be honest i'm not sure how comfortable people around the board would be with them having that power anyway.

Ummm, to be honest, the answer to that is 'fuck 'em'. This is not an issue of what the people on the board are comfortable with, it's how comfortable YOU are with giving people such a power. You pay the bills and are legally responsible for this place. If you think x, x and x would be okay to have the power to kill then that's okay. I'm fairly confident that practically no-one would mind, or at least be able to argue persuasively why they shouldn't do it. There's only one obvious person that I think people might complain about, but say four or five other people, and say a sixty percent agreement from them for someone to be kicked? To be fair I'd say that these uber-mods can't do the whole IP banning stuff, that would be your department still, but just having the power to delete a members ID. I'm seeing it as a way to keep sexless from making much of a nuisance until you've got the time free to work out what IP he's using this time.

Haus / Lady I'd love to be able to open up powers to block people (even for a short-term) to moderators. I'm again not sure that the community would like that very much, but the concept's rather let down by not being able to talk to Cal at the moment.

Obviously the point is therefore currently moot...
 
  

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