My question didn't have anything to do with permabanning. What is accomplished by having the software fake board malfunctions that couldn't be accomplished with flood control?
^ Yep. A lot of boards will limit the number of posts from new members until they've reached a certain count to make sure they aren't some troll or other troublemake. We've also locked folks out of the Blue Room and White Room when they became problem children and that worked fine. I don't like the Enterpriser Rule method, not ten years ago, and not now.
It's built into the software, flip a switch and it is all taken care of. Yeah, we could probably cobble together other work arounds but why bother, when there is an easy option built into the software? B/c other boards abuse discourage? Well, other boards abuse banning and warning, and host of other things.
Polarslam was the epitome of dumb fuckery and even he took the hint after his ninth ( ) ban. If the idea is to encourage better board behavior rather than keep them from posting entirely, there are better ways that AutoMod....which, seeing that ever third poster has some level of admin privledges, there shoukldn't be any problem with someone on staff taking care of him. Cut PMs, cut RR access.....anyone will get the hint.
Another question: Is "making it clear that we don't approve" really a valid administrative function at Wordforge? Isn't that the entire membership's job to do, or not do, as they see fit?
Sure, as I said I'm sure we could up with all sorts of work arounds that if we pay attention and try to have someone watching could work just as well as Discourage, but again, why go to the trouble when there is a ready made board feature?
Of course it is a valid admin function when the behavior in question is a violation of the VERY SIMPLE rules of the board.
If having the whole board, Sokar and Castle included, rally around Garamet in his idiotic book burning troll against him isn't a very clear message that we don't support him, I don't know what is.
Found this on a Xenforo forum ... looks like you can implement flood check by going to Options -> Messages -> Minimum Time, then use "can bypass flood check" to make the limit only apply to people who aren't trusted with rapid posting capability. That assumes that the Discourage settings can't be adjusted so that flood check is the only thing they do.
I'm sorry, this still isn't making sense to me. Let me ask again: If we can identify the poster by IP, how can they "get through"? If we can't, how can we target them for discouragement? Also, if discouragement does try (?!) to block registrations from banned members, how does this serve Anc's described function of allowing posters to prove their good behaviour?
Can a poster's possibility to post images (including an avatar) be removed? If so, then let him come back under whatever dual he wants, don't let him post pics, and we can get plenty of amusement value from having him around.
Add to that removing his capability to post images at all and the problem is solved. You can remove all kinds of privileges by checking and unchecking boxes. Not hard nor is constant babysitting required. But it isn't funny. And no one can point and laugh and get off on knowing someone is miserable and frustrated.
You guys have just described what we did. But instead of checking multiple boxes and adjusting a couple of settings for just one user, we checked one box that has all of the functions built in. I think people are getting caught up in labels, but the function of "discourage" is flood check + image control + a general slow down of board features. It's not anything more than that.
From Xenforo's website: "The user discouragement feature subjects users to random errors, delays, and pages, simulating failures in the system behavior, with the ultimate aim of making them eventually leave the site." There's a big difference between flood control -- which is predictable in its behavior -- and inflicting random fake errors on a person. One is a reasonable step to protect the board, the other is a way to fuck with someone for amusement.
vB had a similar feature called "Tachy goes to Coventry." I only seriously entertained the notion once, But Tamar and Nick talked me out of it.
As long as I'm admin, I'll keep an eye out for any inappropriate use of this feature. Thankfully, I doubt it will be used as such, and none of the current membership has me thinking it would be. *gets Discouraged *
Number one, not true as tafkats so ably demonstrated. It's a lot more than that. But perhaps you didn't know that yourself? Number two...really? This staff is so lazy they can't take the time to manually check off some boxes to control a problem poster? You have to use a nasty bit of software to frustrate and infuriate the person so you can laugh at them?
There is a certain appeal to that concept, but no, Tamar is purposefully stirring things up, as is her usual MO. Nobody is trying to troll Mr. Lesbian Shoes by this, as the easiest way to troll him would be allowing him to have full posting privileges. Basically, previous efforts with him didn't work, so we're trying this one, which contrary to Tamar's claims, is a simple matter of flipping a switch, then forgetting about the guy. How that is trolling is hard to see, but when she wants to stir things up, she'll say whatever she needs to say. It's very revealing that she is here to post on this, after a few months of total absence.
Calling me a troll and trying to make out I am trolling in order to try and make people ignore what I am saying is nothing more than a desperate tactic hoping I will shut up and go away. Well, for the umpteenth time, I am not trolling. It's funny how my fighting the terrible decision to implement this program you see is trolling but you don't understand how that program is essentially trolling a member as punishment. Just because you are not personally hounding him doesn't mean you haven't caused him to be trolled. There is no need of it. Checking a few boxes will solve the problems he causes without inflicting frustrating slowdowns, random misdirects, random logouts, ect, ect, ect...all those other things which are nothing more than petty tricks to punish him and provide cheap amusement...that is if he can log in at all most of the time. Why are we "punishing" anyway? Why does the staff need to "approve"? The point of warnings and bans is to stop a problem that is affecting the board, not make a moral judgement about it or make people "pay" for breaking rules. It's supposed to be about keeping the board running smoothly and nothing else. That this is latched on to like a pitbull on a victim's neck is strange to me. With other less contentious options that would work why the desire to stick to this no matter what anyone says? And it isn't to protect the board as those other methods do that fine. It isn't to give him a chance to do better as he won't even be able to log in properly or post very much if at all. The only thing that remains is petty revenge and a twisted notion of amusement.
Ah, dramatic irony. But I do agree on the concerns about the dicouragement function in the various versions in which it has been described. Perhaps one of its supporters can address tafkat's point above, and explain again how an IP address can identify a dual for discouragement, but not for a ban?
I don't think it works that way: http://xenforo.com/help/discouraging-banning/ Nothing there implies Discouragement has some kind of magic ability to know if a new IP registering an New account is a dual. It seems to me all he needs is a proxy and a new account to bypass this the same way a ban can be bypassed. It looks like every new IP he uses will have to be added to a "Discouraged IP Addresses" list by an Admin. Not exactly the set it and forget it option that was implied. So the option isn't any "easier", can be bypassed the exact way bans can be and may, in fact, end up being more work in the end. So why should we use this nasty option over the "stripped down account" option again?
Tamar, I'm enjoying thinking about the morality of using this software functionality. You make a few good points. I think the main rub is that Discourage is some sort of double-secret probation. With a ban or limited posting permissions, that target and everyone else knows what's going on. With Discourage, by definition you can't tell the rest of the members what's going on or it defeats the purpose of helping the target decide to go away. I see this as a disservice to the rest of the membership.
So...nothing more here? Skrain remains "discouraged" and now we have this nasty option as "punishment" here? Dispicable. Even TrekBBS never resorted to this kind of thing.
Will the board be informed of future discouragements? If not, how is this behavior different from the slimy secrecy of the NSA? And how can mods partaking in the RR bitch about overreach with a straight face?
