I think you are second guessing my objective here. It is not really about getting the information from you. It is mostly about making a point of principle and defending what it right and just - something I am passionate about in life, in whichever form I see it. It is about sticking up for this long standing community, without whom this board would have died a long time ago and without whom you would not have the privilege of your current position. This is fundamental wrong and unjust - and there is considerable opposition to it from a broad range of the board's members, made even more distinct be some of those objecting to be people who normally disagree with each other or people who rarely engage in objections or "drama". This is the Help Desk of WF, not the Red Room. As such, as long standing members of the board we should be entitled to raise our concerns here and seek answers (the clue being in the sub-forum name) on issues we perceive to be a threat to the community without being dismissed are trolls or drama queens. You can keep your secret punishments to yourself if you want to, but something tells me that the long term consequence of this will only be a further erosion of the board's community, and if that happens, you suffer just as much as we do.
Because even Discourage is limited. If they get through an IP ban, then Discourage is more to slow them down to a crawl. Suppose you lock someone out of the house, and they break through a window, Discourage is glue on the floor. It won't completely stop them, but it will slow them down significantly. I'll chalk that up to inadequate information on my part. When that all began, questions were flying from a thousand directions, and both Anc and Gul had the basics, but only I had all the intimate details. As I said above, not enough details had been filled in (by me) for both of them to know the full scope of what Discourage could actually do. I still say they're both correct, though it's clear they had different ideas about what those options represented overall. Yeah, productively is definitely too strong a word, though I get why Anc used it. In fact, posting will be very difficult, or "severely curtailed" as I mentioned before. Again, that's my fault. New tool, I was still trying to fill all of the blanks in, and while they're very much up to speed now, the past few days have been more than a little hectic in this thread.
Right. So if Discouragement can identify them, why not block all of their posts? Is it just that the software doesn't allow for that option? So the best of all worlds would be a new add-on that uses the ID process from Discouragement, but employs it to ban posters?
Clearly not; a banned member cannot post, a discouraged member can. If the IP ban works, Discourage wouldn't be necessary.
Dancing on the head of a pin. Guys, it's just a way to try to stop somebody from posting. This mountain from a mole hill, allegations about secret punishments, etc., it's not remotely relevant or accurate. And honestly, it's foolish to focus on such drivel. John knows the technical aspects, I understand the outcome. If you want to argue that Lesbian Shoes should be an active member, I'm interested in that debate. And I'm pretty open to convincing that he should be allowed back in either with some or even no restrictions. But if nobody wants to make that argument, then the outcome that he is gone is achieved by the tools we have available.
Just from this alone is all the proof we need to see that the Discouragement system can't catch him. It probably requires an admin to say, "I think this new account is Elim Garak so lets discourage him" That's your secret sauce El Chup that John doesn't want to tell you. And nothing John wrote squares with Anc saying it doesn't stop Garak from posting. If he posts better they dial back the discouragement or end it. How can one be banned and at the same time still, even discouraged, be posting? Oh and just a sidebar if discouragement is used the setting is the same for everyone suffering under it. It can not be set to different levels for different people. So says Xenforo: "It is not possible to have different settings for individual members or IP addresses; the values apply to all discouraged users equally."
The objections are:- 1) That this is not fully disclosed; 2) That it either doesn't achieve anything more than an IP ban or it may target innocents, therefore being unfair and unjust; and 3) That there is considerable opposition to this idea, which is being ignored. I don't believe that any of those objections constitutes an argument that Lesbian Shoes is a valuable member who should be posting. If you have a problem with him, just ban him. Since it seems apparent that an IP change can get around discouragement in any event, so to me it seems you, Anc and John are the ones making a case for him to remain way more than any of us are, supposedly by way of some sort of rehabilitation programme.
Sorry forgot the link: http://xenforo.com/help/discouraging-banning/ The link doesn't really explain in depth. I just wanted to point out that you can't customize discouragement to individuals. If it's on "11" for one person then all on it are at "11" as well.
uhhh nope..... not at that link. Nor have I found any posts in the forum for board owners where any describes how it does so. Everything I've read so far is based on the Discourage system matching the IP of the target. If you don't have that IP number the system won't target you. It seems most owners rely on the fact that most people don't know or don't bother to change IP just to get around a ban. In fact a lot of owners dislike it and say it's stupid/not ethical/not right to use to taunt a user while some other owners like it for the havoc it causes the target. Gee I wonder which side of the argument our Ginger falls on........... Personally I don't see how discourage does anything if you get around the IP part of it. John is trying to imply the system has a way of "sussing" out someone who gets around the IP but I just see that as him or someone else being the one to put someone on the system.
Hence why I use them in conjunction with one another. We HAVE to be talking past one another, because I've explained this many times already.
So have I. Look: A poster is banned. He's not supposed to post. So you ban him through his IP (set). But he circumvents that. Discouragement can still somehow identify him. At this point, the logical thing to do would be to block him from posting, completely, since that is what the ban was supposed to do (ignoring for a minute that Anc says the opposite and working just from your version). But instead, he's still allowed to post, only with many annoyances and limits. So why doesn't Discouragement set the number of posts he can do to 0/10 minutes rather tahn 1/ten minutes? Is it just that the software doesn't allow for that option? (Ignoring that gul said this is exactly what it does, because we're just working from your version right now.)
I've already explained it, over these 16 pages, and over a number of pages from the Elim Garak thread. After all of those pages of repeating myself, trying to be open and engaging regarding a piece of software that affects no one other than permabanned members of the board, a part of our security software, I just can't explain anymore. That's all I have.
You haven't explained shit. If a person is banned and they get around the ban by getting a new IP how does the Discourage System have the ability to tell that the person with the new IP (which includes a new member name) is the same person banned under the old IP? I mean I guess if Elim Garak was stupid he would use the same email address in which case you could catch him that way but somehow I doubt he would use the same email not when it's so easy to get an email account for free.
One page back, you said you hadn't previously explained it correctly either in these threads, or to Anc and gul. Well that's a shame. The rest of us have also gone through those many pages trying to make sense of what you're saying. But at least you're no longer pretending you're giving explanations.
It can't. Discouragement uses the same methods as IP banning does...there is no magic potion here. It's supposed to depend on no one knowing that Discouragement is being used and so will think all the errors and slowdowns are organic so when it becomes super aggravating the troll will simply remove themselves thus saving you the headaches. Any troll who gets a new ISP or a proxy IP will circumvent this the same way they circumvent bans. With it being known, there is little to no added benefit to this over simply banning the fools over and over. In fact, NOT banning them and instituting flood control, removing image privleges ect. would be the above-board method to not ban a person, protect the board and give the person a chance to rehabilitate, if that is really an aim Anc truly wants to explore...and I think most of us could get behind something like that. It's not that hard to find out about this thing...a little research is all and it's pretty clear the whole thing depends on the target thinking it's real malfunctions and going away rather than any special knowledge or cutting edge tools.
I remember being against the "Tachy goes to Coventry", version when I had briefing room access. Course, back in those days, the only one who was hot and horny for it was Borgs, so he could use it on Baba. Man, did he hate Baba.
Yes, this is a "tool" that has come up multiple times since Wordforge began and I have fought against it every time because it just seems to go against everything Wordforge was about when it was born...fair treatment, transparency and a place that is mostly community based and driven. It is more about vengeance than justice. I mean...we've all had a taste of what these people will go through just because of bad servers and actual board problems in the past. You all know how aggravating and frustrating that is...now times that by 25 and you have the main thrust of Discouragement.
No wonder John refused to tell me whether or not it was IP reliant. He keeps insisting that you don't know how it works btw.
I was on Discouragement for a few hours. It was done on purpose. The person asked me if I would test it out. It wasn't John or Ancalagon but I don't want to name the staff member yet unless they want to admit to it. Every time I tried to bring up the page, one of two things happened: #1 About five minutes, it loaded John's member page. #2 About five minutes, it just stopped and was blank. This worked under any browser where I logged in with the name Zombie. If I was not logged in I could see the board as normal. In Chrome there is a private browsing tab called Incognito Mode. In that mode I could not log in as Zombie. It wouldn't work. But I did make a new account: Blueshot73. It registered and I was on the board posting. I did not change anything to do with my IP number because I didn't want to waste time looking up how to do it. Now in non-Incognito Mode I could not log in with the Blueshot73 handle as it was blocked and got the same results as my Zombie handle. #1 Zombie account blocked in regular browsing mode. #2 Zombie account blocked in Incognito mode. #3 Blueshot73 account blocked in regular browsing mode. #4 Blueshot73 account NOT blocked in Incognito mode. So I'm still not seeing how Discourage would stop a determined person. I didn't even mess with my IP and I got through and was posting.
Well, he would hardly want to admit it, now would he? The tiny chance he has of this working now is convincing people it's magic and can't be circumvented. No one here is really that stupid though. Anyone can do the research and find out the facts. It's not as much of a big secret as I am sure most Admins who use this all over the internet would wish it was. Please, don't feel like you need to accept my understanding of it...look it up yourselves and read up on it.
Oh, I don't now. @John was quite happy to remind me the other day how I was a fool who was not worthy of the information.
Sounds like cookies, which the regular ban tools account for, of course. It doesn't sound like your IP address was on the discourage list, or else this feature doesn't work at all.
I haven't had any of those problems. But, just for the record, I had to log in twice when coming here today, even though I have my cookies set to automatic login, and yesterday there seemed to be some sort of minute long flood control on my posting. I don't think it's discouragement though.
