I'll have to ask the person who did it (yes, I know who it was), but I agree, sounds like he didn't use all features of it, probably only selecting user discouragement.
^^ That smiley needs to be a lot bigger for my reaction to this information at this stage of this completely fubared discussion.
Yeah, I was logged out when I came here an hour ago even though I select "remain logged in." Also had to reset my password as the old one suddenly didn't work.
Tachy Goes to Coventry is completely different. Tachy puts that user in a special group such that they are the only user who can see their own posts - effectively placing that user on everyone's ignore list, except everyone doesn't see "can't see this post because X is on your ignore list". You're thinking of the Miserable Users hack.
And of course this is here to stay. Notice how Anc took off. He's not interested in anyone's opinion. He's made his decision so all the rest of can waste time talking about something he's going to do in the future to other people. He just doesn't give a damn since he knows what's best for the board.
I suspect he had less stomach than John and I for arguing with a brick wall. And before people take offense, yes, that's what it is. We have a guy that we don't want posting here. The tech admin says there is a more effective approach than what we've done in the past. I take his word on that and we give it a try. This entire thread is an intentional effort to ignore that incredibly simple underlying point. Okay, I'm done, so somebody can post about how I've left the room.
You see, we piddle, twiddle, and resolve Not one damn thing do we solve Piddle, twiddle, and resolve Nothing's ever solved...
You mean like the times when you AND Anc would call out Cassandra and Listkeeper on their alienating bullshit and get told that you were nothing but shit-stirring trolls? Ya know, when I first came to this place I used to be agast at the way people talked to moderators. I thought mods were mods and had to be respected...until I came to realize what made this place what it was is being able to call anyone's cat a bastard, and that includes the staff. . It wasn't something I completely graqsped until I found myself being attacked and trolled by moderators for agreeing with Face during Ted's creepy phase and got accused of being an asskisser with no brain of my own but to go with what's popular. And you were actually one of the ones that would neg my ass and flame me when i would support stupid policies not unlike this just because the target happened to be someone I didn't care for that week. It was YOU specifically that got to me because you weren't nasty and weren't condesecnding, and I was glad to see you own the board and hoped you'd be able to balance out Anc's attempts to manipulate the board into liking shit we've never asked for. I won't call you pond scum like Cassandra did for sharing an opinion of someone I've long since lost respect for, but but of the three of you, you've proven to be the most willing to remember what this place was and why it is that some of us, including yourself once upon a time, are willing to voice our opinions and do so loudly. For crissakes, you've got Tamar and Chup on the same side of an argument, and he hasn't flung poo on her past one time. The last time he's ever had a civil word about her was.....fuck, when was Enterprise canceled?
And what you fail to grasp is that for some of us that "more effective" (and that is highly debatable) is not a good enough reason to embrace a method of punishment that many find unethical and odious. It's a contentious tool even in the Xenforo forums. Perhaps some of us don't want it here for any reason.
Excellent post. Gul needs to realise that he isn't hitting a brick wall. What he's hitting is a refusal to agree with him that discouragement is a good idea and he should stop behaviour like anyone who disagrees is either and idiot or someone with an agenda. I think Gul is under the impression that I am creating a fuss because I also did it with Lanzman and Tamar during their days in charge so I must, by default, be another Faceman who does it for effect. Even if he doesn't think that, it's clear he thinks it's a lot easier to throw around those labels than actually face up to the arguments people are making - and it's just as easy to throw similar mud at Tamar because not doubt the allegation would be that she has a vendetta since she is no longer on staff. Thing is that I try and argue what I think it fair and unfair. That's why I could quickly easier disagree with some of Tamar's mod actions, but similarly agree with her on other issues. On this particularly issue I think that this is a bad idea that Gul & co are trying to push through, bad in it's secretiveness, which has unacceptably "explained" to the membership with key facts missing and all resulting in a morally questionable method of punishment. As a result of this all different types of people on the board have come out and expressed reservations over it - and the reaction to it from the mods have been such that we may as well rename this room "The Unhelpful Desk". Now, of the two biggest people who demanded change under the old regime and had lots of criticism, one dismisses people as trolls and "brick walls", the other is conspicuous in his absence. After all the shit they dished out in the past, they really should know better. This is a shrinking board so I find it baffling that this sort of stonewalling by the mods can be remotely considered a good idea. They seem to be living under the impression that people always come back and the board will be here forever - but the reality is quite the opposite, so why completely ignore the feeling of the membership. I suppose it can only be that the powers that be must know what's best for the plebs. At least during the Lanzman/Tamar days issues that were key to the board were put to the membership for consideration, like the rep polls and so on. Now it's just "we're doing it, we're keeping it in secret and if you don't agree with it, go fuck yourself".
Okay, one more post, because this is clearly a break down in communication. Chup, I simply don't understand the complaint. How is preventing somebody from posting unethical? I mentioned earlier that I'd like to have a conversation about whether Elim Dukat should be here. Nobody wants to engage in that, so I'm going with the assumption that people agree he shouldn't be at Wordforge. Once we make that decision, shouldn't we use all the tools we have to make that happen? Seriously, where is the ethical flaw? We aren't installing viruses or harming his ability to post elsewhere. We are making it difficult for him to post here. Maybe we should just unban him, I suppose that would fix things. To be clear. I am genuinely mystified by the reaction in this thread. I can't fathom how people would level the kind of charges I'm seeing about ethical mistreatment unless they are either purposefully shit stirring or have taken an incorrect understanding of what we are doing. My greatest interest is in result. Can our efforts to block a banned poster succeed? If yes, then that's a pretty strong argument in favor of using them.
Ok, once again. The complaints:- 1) Part of this is secret because there is a refusal to be fully open about it. For instance, John refuses to say whether or not this uses IPs to identify. 2) Because of (1) we cannot actually be fully versed in how this works. 3) Because of (1) an element of distrust is introduced as we now cannot have full confidence in the actions taken by the modship on this board. 4) Because of (1) we do no know whether or not this actually adds a further level of disbarment as is being alleged. 5) Because of (1) and (4) we cannot make an informed decision as to whether or not this more effective than a simple ban. 6) Because of (1) we cannot be sure that to circumvent this all one needs to do is change IP, in which case there is no added security than that which already exists. 7) Conversely, because of (1) we cannot be sure that if the idea doesn't rely on IP addresses then innocent people won't be caught up in it. 8) Again, because of (1) we cannot be sure that what Tamar suggests, namely that this is nothing more than board sponsored trolling to frustrate people into leaving, is true or untrue, therefore we must entertain the possibility that it is true because we are given nothing to dissuade us from the possibility. 9) Because of (1), specifically the failure to be transparent, we cannot trust that you won't use this against others when you decide fit because the dogged refusal to fully detail this has exhausted that trust. There you have it, 9 separate points I have made, and possibly there will be others who have additional complaints. I cannot believe you are still "mystified". Note how most of my points emanate from the lack of transparency and the distrust that it gives rise to. You ask why nobody has mentioned the merits of Garak being here. Simple, this isn't about Garak. Nobody cares a shit about him. It's about trusting the actions of the people in charge of this board. Perhaps you are genuinely obtuse and really can't grasp these arguments. I find that hard to believe. Maybe, in actual fact, you do get them but don't want to have to admit they maybe you guys are wrong on this. It's anybody's guess, but one thing we do know is that pride often comes before a fall and I think you guys should remember the lessons of how this board came to be in the first place and not take so much for granted - which is exactly what you are doing by treating the people here like children who have it decided for them what they do and don't need to know.
You were doing well Chup, until that last paragraph. Okay, the 9 points make it more clear, and it appears they all stem from the first. So here goes with an answer to that! Yes, it uses IP ban as part of how it works. But that is not why we have used it. In my opinion, there are two reasons to use it: It can activate several things (ie flood control, image control, etc.) with the flip of a single switch. This is useful in an emergency when some spamming needs to be shut down. Long term, it's less useful, because with time, an admin can look more thoroughly at the poster in question and think about other options. Clearly this is no longer why it would be used on Skrain; It allows another blocking method to be placed on the user. Now this is where it is both important, and also understandably frustrating to you as a user asking questions. John won't give you an explanation for what it is, and neither will I. The reason is that it is incredibly easy to circumvent if you know about it. All it can do is prevent an identified spammer from getting in. It doesn't rely on fake errors or anything else. When Zombie tested the discouragement feature, this particular piece wasn't active for him, and he therefore was able to get his results. I'm sorry if what I said in part 2 doesn't work for you. But I'm sure you recognize how little value something has if it has to be broken to be explained. My understanding is that the discouragement suite of tools makes this other thing possible. If it doesn't, then maybe we don't need discouragement aside from the emergency use I described in part 1 of my answer. Now, for your points 2-9, they all key off of whether or not you trust me and other admins. There are going to be aspects of how a board is run that can't be revealed. There are very few of these at Wordforge. We release shelter threads compulsively we allow kibitzing in the released threads if something's important, we bring it to the Helpdesk even before the Shelter thread is released we are open about disagreements within staff/owners (see above points, note also the discussions about ignore and thread splits) To the extent possible, I want leadership to be an open book. This place is a community, the value is created by the entire membership. But when it comes to the nitty gritty of things like blocking spammers or finding an effective way to prevent Ted or Skrain from returning, we might not be able to release a detailed guide. So again, comes down to trust. When Cass started this board, and through the various other owners, we have always trusted users to handle the open playground. It has worked well in that regard. The trust ought to go in both directions. And I don't think John or I or anybody else on staff has done anything to lose the trust. So while I understand that you want to know more, I am disappointed that you won't trust us when we say there are one or two things we can't explain.
More patronisng mockery, as if I am a child. If I said the same paragraph to someone like Dayton you agree with it, but because it's you, how dare anyone suggest that your pride might be getting in the way of your ability to see where people are coming from. Still not answering the question though. I never asked if an IP ban is part of how it works. What I asked is if it is IP reliant. In other words, if someone comes back under a different IP, will discourage still be able to spot them? That is what you won't answer as you admit yourself, and that is where the distrust arises. What you don't seem to grasp is all these paragraphs that you are labouring away are a waste of time it if doesn't answer the very first question on my list. You aren't convincing people with partial explanations not matter how many times you keep repeating them. This is where it falls down even before we get to the questions of the merits of the function itself. It's not just me though is it? It's a great deal of people. I see little value in secret, unjust punishments - which we can only judge this by based on insuffient information. Nobody here would swallow that in real life, I don't see why we have to accept it here. Well, how are we to decide if "emergency use" is fine. See, we have no idea if a person who is the subject of this can just re-register using a VPN and a new IP to get around discouragement. If that were to be the case then the whole thing would be utterly pointless - if foe no other reason that, discouragement or not, such a person would try to register the new IP account if they properly wanted back in. You seem to forget that I used to be a mod. I know exactly how this board is, or at least was, run and there were no hidden punishments back then. Penalties for breaches of the rules were set out explicitly in the FAQs and Rules themselves. Stop pretending that you are privy to some great secrets that we plebs aren't, because some of us know better. Yet you have put in practice the exact opposite. Seems you want to have your cake and eat it too. Which is the point where the trust breaks down. As I said to John the other day, it really isn't so much as wanting to know more, it's about the defending the principles of why this board existed in the first place - as a reaction to over moderating - and for respecting the views of it's members. It is about defending against the notion of secret punishments. You say trust is a two way street, and I agree with you. However, the different is that you are no longer just regular members. You are also the owners and administrators. As such you control the environment we visit. Therefore the level of trust is on a higher standard for you now because we have to rely on you not to fuck this place up. Therefore trust and respect must be earned and not given away, and just because you may have agreed with or gotten along with certain people on here in the past, it is not a given that they will afford you trust by default once you take charge. Me personally, I look at each new owner or mod like a blank slate and judge only by actions. So far this action has caused considerable unrest in the membership and the refusal to care or acknowledge that is why the trust is being chipped away, to say nothing of the deceptive nature of this proposal. I guess it's up to you whether or not you care about that trust. But one thing we both know is that you can't force someone to trust you simply by telling them they should.
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My problem with your first paragraph is that you decided to go personal. Remember how I suggested you were trolling? Did you notice that I said that about no one else? That's why. Um, okay. It does not rely only on IP bans. Was that not clear when I said that there was an additional mechanism? Have I now answered the question by saying it does not rely on IP bans? I was responding to you specifically, but also, you in English is the same word whether plural or singular. But there is no secret punishment. The punishment in question is banning. That is as straight forward as anybody can get, and there is no secret about this. Agreed, wwhich is why I have explicitly stated that it is not just IP banning. I've said this a few times, John has said it many times. But let me ask you this: if IP banning were all that it was, would you have a problem? I would, because that is an ineffective tool as you well know. What are the secret punishments? He was banned, but oh wait, yeah, you're right, I forgot that John installed a virus on his machine. What the fuck, you have gone off the deep end with this shit and I'm not going to respond to made up accusations. For probaly the 20th time, there is no secret punishment, he is banned. Prove it, use links, describe how we have not been transparent, I'm really curious. I do care. Why do you think this thread exists, is still open, and I've posted so many times in it? But you are making unfounded accusations, then demanding unwarranted actions to prove against your accusations. It's a bit like the "have you stopped beating your wife" question -- you start with a premise that isn't true, then ask me to prove otherwise. It's rather frustrating, and has nothing to do with whether or not I like you as a person. The behavior is not helpful in any fashion to achieving anything. I wonder whether you even have a particular goal with all this.
For clarity's sake, I for one don't care whether it's IP reliant. I also basically accept it if you're going to implement a means for banning banned members effectively that needs to be secret in its technical details. The only reason I tried to figure out the technical details was because it was claimed that the logical contradictions in your descriptions of the software would go away if the technical secret was known, and that that secret had in fact been explained. Since that time, we have found out that most parts of those contradictions actually stem from gul and Anc being misinformed about what the software actually does, and you've gone back to admitting that the software hasn't been explained and deliberately won't be explained, so that's settled. What I still can't figure out is why banned posters banned by Discouragement are still allowed to post a little bit, when the ban actually means that they shouldn't be able to post at all, and any hopes for rehabilitation are contrary to the features and designed intent of this software. Perhaps clearing up that mystery actually would require revealing the secret, who knows. One thing I know for sure is that John's original claim: is simply bullshit, even though I am ready to believe that he believed it at the time. But the next time you design a policy around a secret, it might save all of us some time if you don't pretend, either to the rest of us or yourselves, that you aren't keeping secrets.
Incidentally, both the software in question and this thread have clearly earned their names, and then some.
@Packard: Discouragement can be used to discourage, as in making things tough. The idea is that a poster who has trouble using the board will wander away. I think this is the element that got Tamar and Tafkats concerned, for example. So yes, technically, a discouraged poster can still post unless s/he is also banned. Skrain is also banned. If he gets around the ban and is recognized by the software, then he will face discouragement until we get his ban locked down again. We will not use this tool on somebody who is not banned or as an emergency quick method of flood control, etc. And cut John some slack. He is trying to tell people as much as he can. If his goal were to be secretive, he never would have said anything about the tools available to admins.
Right, so finally we may be getting somewhere. So, it can identify someone even if they are on a different IP? If there is a punishment and the mechanism by which it is implemented is unknown to us and deliberately kept from us it is, by default, secret. What constitutes emergency use though? What does it do that an outright ban doesn't? Right, so have we gotten to the stage now that we have established that this thing is not solely IP reliant, in which case how do you know the software won't target innocent people. No deep end. You are basically now saying that this thing targets people using algorithms, and it does so when you guys pick and choose when to implement it. Not only might that harm others innocently but there will be no warning over who will fall foul of this in the future or what it takes to fall under it's spell. Oh please, spare me then "prove it with links" crap. Just go back and read the two threads on this and seem how many times you've told people there are things they don't need to know. Rubbish, I don't run this board and so don't have that extra layer of trust, and John password is just about the poorest comparison you can make because it has absolutely nothing to to with the running and operating of the board and the penalty system that comes from rule breaches. See, you say you don't like things being made personal. But how else can one believe a man who says he cares, but does nothing but mocks, ridicules and dismisses anything the membership has to say in query or objection. What else is someone supposed to put that down to but personal pride over a desire to appear for to and work with the membership? Frankly I don't think you care at all. I think you guys have a vision of what you think it best for this place and are interest to plow ahead with it irrespective of what others think. You have given zero leeway over this issue, so how are we to believe you care enough to show interest and flexibility in the future. As an excuse to pretend you are concerned about what we think. But that in of itself is not enugh when your actual content offers nothing more than dismissal, inflexibility and ridicule. Haven't done anything of the sort, sorry. I'm sticking up for the community here against secret actions and deceptions. You make me sick. You are no example. You want trust offered to you? Why don't you fucking tell them that I even went to the trouble of contacting you via PM to tell you that I wasn't trolling and didn't have an agenda because I had been sick of the accusations? Why don't you roll back a few posts above when I said it wasn't about agenda, but principle? Why do you talk of making things person what all you can do is treat me with constant disrespect with routine accusations of agenda, trolling and flaming? And all done in the Help Desk - as a mod and an owner. What sort of example is that setting - and then you have the absolute audacity to say you are entitled to trust. Unbelievable. Absolutely, unquestionably unbelievable.[/quote]
Wow, lots of anger there Chup. Maybe you should step back and take a few deep breaths. I don't think anybody here can help you right now. I'll continue to discuss this with Packard and others who can avoid the rage. But I think you and I will have to just agree to disagree.
http://wordforge.net/index.php?posts/2627924/ http://wordforge.net/index.php?posts/2627915/ Also, regarding the super secret defense, it's not an heuristic algorithm or anything else complicated like that. It's also not something that can ever confuse two people. But seriously, to say anything further than that would reveal what it is. I was just as skeptical that such a thing could exist until John explained it to me. And believe, if I explained it, everybody would do a face palm and say 'duh, and then we would no longer have the tool. If somebody wants to run a legitimate test, with the whole system in effect, feel free to ask, and John can set that up.
