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Topics of Concern- Banning

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12:04 / 16.09.07

Something that occurred to me the other day: if the Administrator class is extended to other board members who will then have automatic banning powers how should that affect their role as Moderators voting in potential bannings? It might be overthinking it for most situations, but hypothetically you could have an Administrator pressing for a ban but being outvoted, and then turning around and banning them anyway. Anyone considered for the role so far would probably be wise enough to see the consequent shitstorm coming, but I'm not sure how much we need to worry about their percieved impartiality. Are we going to expect those Administrators to stay out of banning votes/discussions?

13:37 / 16.09.07

Yeah I'm not sure I'm terribly comfortable with many people on the board having de facto ban powers. I'd rather it was just me (so I could ban for legal reasons).

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:09 / 16.09.07

OK, in that case the banning functionality is potentially severely damaged from the start, as a counterbalance to the opening of the board; we might be able to ban egregiously offensive people, but it will take time and effort. Ten people who decide collectively to join Barbelith and fill the forums with race-hate material, for example, will probably get banned not _too_ long after they start - maybe within a day or so - assuming that two moderators do not disagree with the resolution. If two moderators do disagree with the resolution, that pretty much breaks the system, and given that we have moderators who have in the past not agreed with banning and post-deletion of known trolls, holocaust deniers &c., it seems not unrealistic to suppose that this may not be an unlikely occurrence.

So, if we are going to do this, it might make sense to limit the number of people who can vote and the number of votes required. Might be too late at this point, though.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:11 / 16.09.07

It might be overthinking it for most situations, but hypothetically you could have an Administrator pressing for a ban but being outvoted, and then turning around and banning them anyway.

We've already said that any use of admin banning powers would be subject to immediate public review, haven't we? So, presumably using the power in any situation other than an immediate assault on the good order and function of the board would lead to censure and the loss of that power, yes?

15:02 / 16.09.07

I'd rather it was just me (so I could ban for legal reasons).
I don't quite understand that.
So, the way it looks now is, if there are a few more days to get the logistics worked out, the most important element is really this banning stuff? Policy and guidelines are going to be important, and how many moderate and who, but if it's a matter of the possibility of adding or removing functionality it had better get figured out soon (as much as a consensus can be reached and agreed with by Tom). Or am I misunderstanding the situation?
And, are there any other possibly simple but important additions to the functionality that would be very helpful (as in grant's mention of search) we could at least try and ask for (not expecting Cal to kill himself, but if he can add something with comparative ease...)?

Tryphena Absent

15:26 / 16.09.07

May I ask what those legal reasons are?

15:38 / 16.09.07

I'm not clear on whether that means "ban someone for doing something illegal" - such as posting links to illegal download, or "for legal purposes, having the power to ban" - meaning Tom not wanting to be held legally responsible for the result of somebody else's decision to ban.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:46 / 16.09.07

Quick summary:

XK's proposition: Votes by three-five Policy moderators.
Tom's implementation: Eight votes by any moderators, cancelled by two votes against by any moderators. Possibility of addition of a small number of admins able to ban immediately, which action will need to be justified immediately.
Subsequent suggestion of admins, discussing of voting levels.
Tom says he does not feel comfortable with anyone else having the power to ban, I assume immediately.

Which brings us back to doh, essentially. Eight moderators say yes, not more than one says no, ban. Which might be enough functionality, especially if nobody trolly or unpleasant joins, and anyone who is subject to potential banning behaves themselves during the run-in to them being banned.

08:11 / 17.09.07

Right, here's a blast from the not so distant past, what about the power to freeze suits? I'm wondering if that might not be a possible third way (between admins and airlocks)- a bit of functionality that would depend on the agreement of a small number of mods (maybe 3 or 4) and that could help shutdown problematic suits without banning them permanently. I imagine there would be very little disagreement amongst mods about whether it should be used in a given instance, as, even if there were radical differences of opinion on the question of bannination, I think most of us have a good handle on when things are getting out of hand and need to be defused and/or discussed calmly and at length.

Have no idea whether this could be done, of course, but I thought it was worth putting out there.

14:30 / 17.09.07

The advantages I see in Policy mods being singled out for special duties are allowing the community to have many mods for everyday tasks of various skill levels and a highly visible and accountable group for banning duties.

Watching the active mod role call and new mod request threads there's a huge range of posters wanting to help out. I think that's great but I can see how it makes for some tension filled conflict later on.

Tom originally tapped a few folks for the batphone direct banning line and I think those same folks would be solid to make the on the ground decisions. Is this no longer an option?

14:49 / 17.09.07

But what about suit freezing, eh?

Want others' opinions

15:05 / 17.09.07

You could do that with the ability to manually reset problem posters' passwords.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:11 / 17.09.07

Indeed - and alter their email in some way. Which wouldn't stop someone from registering a new suit with a new email address as the apparent IP blocking of a proper ban would, but would slow them down.

Many moons ago, I suggested an emergency power (at that point to deal with one of our recurrent trolls) where the then-admins could freeze a suit by precisely this measure, on the understanding that they would have to go to Policy and start a thread called "I just froze suit (name)" to explain their reasons. Pressing the buton to scramble a user's password would also automatically send an email to Tom telling him that it had happened, so he would be ready to unfreeze or ban if necessary. If no resolution reached, the freeze would unfreeze and the password be emailed a set period later.

This could be used with trolls if Tom is getting cold feet about admins with actualy banning powers. I wouldn't want to see it being used as a "naughty step" without the ability to change it back, manually or automnatically.

jentacular dreams

15:21 / 17.09.07

I still think the ability to lock someone into the policy would be worthwhile. It would prevent any collateral trolling whilst behaviour was being discussed, but leave the member in question able to respond to the discussion about their actions. Naughty steps and are all well and good, but I'm a little hesitant about gagging the member at the same time.

Tryphena Absent

15:40 / 17.09.07

I'm not sure if that would be sensible or not, in some cases it would be fine but if you lock a troll into policy, rather than someone who's having a bad day that gives them the ability to lock a lot of discussion up when people are trying to have a reasoned debate rather than a constant argument.

jentacular dreams

16:53 / 17.09.07

Well I'd argue that in such cases such behaviour would quickly help settle whether said individual was a troll or not fairly quickly, but I see your point.

Though is a troll any more likely to behave themselves board-wide if they find out they might be banned? At least if they did go postal, there's much less opportunity to disrupt conversations in policy than in switchboard f'r'xample. Plus I feel policy threads tend to be harder to derail than discussions in the rest of the 'lith, as they usually have a 'real' issue driving them (if that makes sense?).

17:45 / 17.09.07

Sounds like a great idea to me, Haus.

Regrettable Juvenilia

20:21 / 17.09.07

What concerns do you have? What are the causes?

Well, you, Life Critic, formerly toksik, and ---, formerly Te, formerly the Cosmic Fireman. You both took the view that banning the Fetch for his anti-semitism was a mistake, as seen in a thread recently linked to elsewhere in the policy. You also thought I wanted to shoot you for being a dissident.

Since then, I have not been convinced that either you or --- (who has now said he wants to stop being a moderator and in fact take some time off) have really demonstrated that you are responsible enough to be involved in banning moderations. For some time now, you have only seemed to rear your head to "ask questions" in a way that turns threads into teeth-grindingly wrong-end-of-sticktastic wrangles between yourself and other moderators. Most recently, your claims (that the biggest problem Barbelith has is established posters being too mean when people want to discuss The Invisibles) do not suggest a level head or clarity of perception.

13:41 / 19.09.07

A couple of things:

* I like the idea of a provisional step before banning being to restrict them to the policy to answer charges (so to speak) although it seems strange to let new members post to the policy.
* I'm not very comfortable about the idea of us banning people quickly if they sign up and don't seem to be right for the place. I think that's going to result in people getting angry and trying to hurt the place, rather than them just not being bothered to go through the process of joining.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:00 / 19.09.07

Well, absolutely - did anyone suggest that, though? The advantage of having a banning thread, even a truncated one, is that it can be used to point up when even having the moderators vote seems like a bad idea. Take as an example the Mathlete banning thread, where until Mathlete himself got involved in a way that made people look more kindly on the idea of a board without Mathlete the idea that he should be up for banning was minced pretty quickly. If that had lasted three days, I think at the end of the three no moderator would have advanced a move to ban, and if they did it would probably have been vetoed pretty quickly.

The questions, as far as I can tell, are

Should people under consideration for banning be allowed to post in the Policy but nowhere else, say during the three-day banning discussion, which would need to be coded in?
Should banning be voted by eight votes from all moderators, or by a smaller number of votes from Policy moderators only?
Should a small number of users have extraordinary powers to deal with committed and egregious attacks on Barbelith?
If so, what should these extraordinary powers be, and how would they be balanced?

15:28 / 19.09.07

On the first one (and I hesitate to bring this up because I *know* how it'll look on the board's main page) it *might* be easier to make a forum just for banning threads rather than locking people into Policy, where other discussions happen.

On the other points, I think I'd like to see how regular banning works socially before moving onto the special extreme powers thing. They might be unnecessary in practice.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:57 / 19.09.07

Or they might be de facto irrelevant, because the place has become a sinkhole of such awfulness that everybody who might be competent to wield such powers has left in disgust long before our programmer is able to muster the time to code it in, leaving a ravaged wasteland occupied only by Holocaust deniers, trolls, a completely oblivious Late Shift and a bunch of people who want to ask GEK to get them sex. At the very least, I'd like such a function to be easily activated, if not present at the point of opening the board.

17:13 / 19.09.07

so as I can't see behind the magic mod curtain, what changes have been made to the banning process? Any? None?

Tom, I would really be appreciative if you could unpack your concerns about giving the three previously named proxies a ban or ban-like option.

Worse case version from my limited ground level viewpoint with a Ban Squad is someone gets chucked out for being very much like a troll. the Ban Squad is AFAIK fully versed in the difference between heated intelligent debate and harrassment.

17:16 / 19.09.07

leaving a ravaged wasteland occupied only by Holocaust deniers, trolls, a completely oblivious Late Shift and a bunch of people who want to ask GEK to get them sex.

I'm far more nervous about that taking place with a different user making each post, rather than a handful of bannable users. (Well, except the oblivious Late Shift.)

ONLY NICE THINGS

17:18 / 19.09.07

Well, generally such a decision - whether someone was a troll - would be discussed in a three-day banning thread after which moderators would vote, by my suggested model. The executive-decision ban would be an action of last resort taken on something like the night of a thousand Elois or a similar trollgasm, and subsequently accounted for in front of Tom and the board.

At the moment, moderators - all moderators - see "edit user" alongisde each post to Barbelith. Clicking this takes them to a screen where they can give a reason for proposing a ban, and propose it. Presumably this is running on the first-to-eight-or-two model - we haven't banned anyone yet, but I see no reason to doubt it.

ONLY NICE THINGS

17:57 / 19.09.07

I'm far more nervous about that taking place with a different user making each post, rather than a handful of bannable users

Ah, well, in that case we should change the name of the board, take it off Google and possibly shut down the Temple. That's quite a number of steps to take at once, though. Do you feel that limiting access to new users would do this better? If so, we can carry on the discussion in that thread, maybe.

18:24 / 19.09.07

Ok so have the mods given the new system a test drive on an abandoned suit? If it goes through is the suit unable to post?
Or is the backend not hooked up?

19:05 / 19.09.07

The executive-decision ban would be an action of last resort taken on something like the night of a thousand Elois or a similar trollgasm,

But why wouldn't the 8/2 system take care of that? I mean, maybe it wouldn't, but we don't have any proof of that either way. Any banning system is better than what we have currently, and better than what we had last time the board was open and Google-able.

I wonder if we could do a test with some other 8-vote system, just to see how fast or slow it *might* be.

(Historical note: Night of 1,000 Elois wasn't actually a night of 1,000 trolls - it was 1,000 regular users-in-good-standing changing their names to confuse one particular troll and his buddies, and everyone else. Actually, it was probably more like five people changing their names, but still.)

19:14 / 19.09.07

Just to make sure I'm clear, I think the freezing/pword scramble thing is probably a good idea - I'm just thinking it's probably more of a priority to have an outright banning mechanism.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

19:41 / 19.09.07

On the first one (and I hesitate to bring this up because I *know* how it'll look on the board's main page) it *might* be easier to make a forum just for banning threads rather than locking people into Policy, where other discussions happen.

Could this be the proposed Airlock, perhaps? There's a vacant slot at forum 3, just under the Policy.

For what it's worth, I'd be in support of the proposed freezing option - it could give bothersome and/or hot and bothered posters a chance to cool down, whether they want to or not.

Could a freeze be implemented that doesn't lock the problem poster completely out from accessing the board, so they could check their PMs (and maybe send them?) in order that a limited dialogue could continue? Or would that be left to an Admin with access to their email address to conduct, assuming such dialogue was considered necessary?

Otherwise, a freeze acts as a very effective global ignore, to the point that there is no non-public communication possible between mods and/or Admins and the frozen suit. Which might be a good thing, I suppose, and the frozen suit will still be able to read public posts about their behaviour in any case.

(Obviously this issue wouldn't arise if there was an Airlock forum or confinement to Policy in place.)

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:33 / 19.09.07

Ok so have the mods given the new system a test drive on an abandoned suit? If it goes through is the suit unable to post?

I would advise against doing this, as any such "abandoned suit" would presumanbly be somebody's spare suit and, tempting though it might be whack out Alphonse Commands You or similar, it might also take out that person's main suit; see Tom, above, on how banning works.

But why wouldn't the 8/2 system take care of that? I mean, maybe it wouldn't, but we don't have any proof of that either way. Any banning system is better than what we have currently, and better than what we had last time the board was open and Google-able.

No other 8/2 system would be likely to have votes against on the same principles, so it isn't really possible to test in the wild. We could see how long it would take something to accumulate eight votes for, but that wouldn't be an exact test. Any bannign system is better than what we have now, but a banning system that does not work effectively both against the Shadowsax kind of bannee and the aggressive, board-assaulting troll, trolls or multiple-suit troll.

So, if Tom does not want to provide a single-person suit freeze or ban option to a small number of people, that's fine. I would like it to be a function that is switched off, however, and which could be switched on at any time, rather than a function that does not exist. It will then be available as a resort if it turns out that the 8/2 banning system is inadequate to certain specific and unusual circumstances.

Tryphena Absent

08:40 / 20.09.07

Rather than talk about this incessantly can we not test a banning system with open registration for two weeks? We aren't going to know if it works if we don't try it.

jentacular dreams

09:27 / 20.09.07

Seconded. Lets have the acid test.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:53 / 20.09.07

Yeah, I heartily agree.

Janean Patience

13:08 / 20.09.07

Me too.

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