Darkmatter

17:16 / 30.09.07

Not sure how many mods voted from Comics.

Me=1

I did. So: 2

Our Lady Has Left the Building

19:01 / 30.09.07

Is it just me, or is this actually taking LONGER than it did when we just had to petition Tom?

19:48 / 30.09.07

4 here. And I think you are mistaken, though it's certainly as annoying.

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:41 / 30.09.07

It's difficult to establish precedence. Short version- it's taking longer than Claris Dancers did, longer, I think, than ePop, less time than ShadowSax. If it were urgent - if Darkmatter started flaming out - it would be expedited, I suppose, using the Me/Randy method or by direct appeal. As it is, there's not much urgency, and it's useful to see how this process works, or doesn't work.

Tom knows, by the way - he has confirmed that it's a bug, and planned that all moderators should be able to vote. I guess the next bit involves working out how easy it is to fix.

21:18 / 30.09.07

Well, I meant "longer after the decision was made"... the decision was made remarkably quickly this time.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

22:39 / 30.09.07

5 for the Comics vote, by the way.

One bit of future functionality would be some kind small admin screen available to monitor such votes once you'd placed your vote.

gridley

01:46 / 01.10.07

6 for comics.

06:43 / 01.10.07

Pretty sure Benny did, so maybe 7.

Benny?

The Falcon

10:19 / 02.10.07

I did 7; it's mentioned when I say "I'm 7/8 for comicsban".

10:46 / 02.10.07

Benny voted for sure, so it looks like we're 8 of 8

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

20:14 / 03.10.07

And we're still none the wiser?

Fucking marvellous.

08:06 / 04.10.07

So there's no way of knowing if it worked or if the person in question is just taking a break?

And what will said person see when ze attempts to log in?

Papess

09:38 / 04.10.07

We are going to have to send someone out the airlock and have them report back.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

10:03 / 04.10.07

The problem with that is that potentially their IP address might also be banned, quite possibly irreversibly so, so it might not be a great idea even with those posters who've voluntarily left on good terms - I mean we don't want say for instance Ganesh to be IP banned and unable to ever return should he choose to do so.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

10:17 / 04.10.07

Hmm. If it would help, I could just apply for a suit from my work computer, test using that suit, and then see what happens after. I shouldn't be surfing Barbelith at work anyway.

Phex: Dorset Doom

10:50 / 04.10.07

Since I'm moving house tomorrow and I use a static IP address (which I will change when I'm on a different network with a different router) it would be easy for me to be your airlock bunny, though having seen the films Event Horizon and Total Recall I am somewhat apprehensive about the whole thing.

Alternatively, would we be able to get Darkmatter's login details and use them to try to get back in?

11:55 / 04.10.07

I don't understand- can an IP address not be unbanned?

11:56 / 04.10.07

Let's ban Phex!

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

12:00 / 04.10.07

I don't understand- can an IP address not be unbanned?

Can an account be unbanned? I'd guess the answer is probably in both instances - but we'd probably need Tom to do it and I'd be happier if we had some confirmation he was capable of doing so before we did anything drastic. Seems safer to proceed on the assumption we can't unban an IP address unless and until Tom tells us that we can.

23:34 / 05.10.07

...Tom?

Alex's Grandma

00:08 / 06.10.07

It may not matter, but wouldn't anyone who fell on their own Barbe-sword, as it were, risk losing access to their personal messages?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:14 / 07.10.07

Having finally got caught up with this discussion (I was in a tent while it was going on so my internet access was a bit limited), I would like to apologise for telling everyone I'd hate them if they voted against banning Quimper/Darkmatter. It was completely unecessary, inflammatory and generally out of line with the way I'd like to conduct myself as a moderator. In my defence I would plead that a) Darkmatter, Morph, and Goth Prototype (and BiaS, though that's a seperate issue) had all re-emerged within a very short space of time and were doing me 'ead in, and b) I hadn't had dinner yet and low blood sugar makes me cranky.

Yes, it's a crap defence. Sorry.

13:59 / 08.10.07

Interesting that our banning is now so effective we may not be able to boot someone who volunteers, helps out and throws themselves at the airlock. Nice. Let's just give up and not ban anyone, it's easier to delete their posts by hand.
In fact it's easier to write copperplate post-it notes saying 'this user is banned' and sticking them to the relevant places on the monitor than it is to get an actual ban going. Sheesh.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

08:54 / 09.10.07

Hey, I just noticed the Headshop only has seven moderators, and one of them is GGMeme who left the board aeons ago. So it's impossible to ban anyone from the HS, w00t! It's actually *harder* to ban people now! Hurrah!

Tom Coates

17:19 / 21.10.07

Why don't I look into dropping the number of votes to ban someone?

Tsuga

17:29 / 21.10.07

I believe that fewer moderator votes was the consensus thought on the matter. Have you been able to keep up at all with the discussions in this thread and the other threads that have been active lately about board functionality?

18:16 / 21.10.07

Seeing as we think we've achieved the number of votes several times, can you confirm whether the 'ban user' process actually works or not Tom?

09:14 / 22.10.07

Why don't I look into dropping the number of votes to ban someone?

I suggest a maximum of five, I'd prefer four or three. If there are concerns about hasty or unilateral banning, perhaps an un-banning function might be useful.
For example, worst case scenario a bunch of mods go rogue and ban me (heavens to betsy!), someone emails you, Tom, and requests that I be reinstated, you have a look and re-enable me. That way we err on the side of being able to ban.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:22 / 22.10.07

I wouldn't trust three moderators with banning power, without at least a firm rinse of the moderator lists. Five is probably about right, if we can't fix the bug where moderators are restricted to voting in their own fora. I don't much like the idea of moderators in Conversation, say, being rallied to ban somebody for actions in a forum where five votes can't be reached, or indeed the moderators of Games and Gameplay having a finger on the bancannon, and I'm not wild about the multiple bites of the cherry this provides. But, as long as we have a decent pre-banning discussion protocol in place in case, that could be managed. Not loving the idea of making banning much easier and suggesting emailing Tom as the standard form of appeal.

11:10 / 22.10.07

Not loving the idea of making banning much easier and suggesting emailing Tom as the standard form of appeal.

Much easier than nigh-on-impossible? How many appeals are we expecting, assuming we do adopt a fairly thorough pre-ban discussion?

My blue sky thinking is that we tighten up the mod lists (inc. discussing what we expect of mods and how to assess that), allow voting on other fora than the one(s) you mod (after the mod tightening), reduce the vote threshold to 5, with 1 to veto.

However, given the likely scenario that we can't work around the own-fora problem, and we don't get a consensus on mod rinsing, even a minimum of five votes to ban could be a real problem in mod-light fora like Creation or Gathering. That was my motive to reduce to four or three, to prevent a troll simply sticking to fora with few active moderators.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:11 / 22.10.07

Not three or four, no. Five is okay, provided we stick with the pre-ban discussions.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:23 / 22.10.07

Sorry, cross-post.