Member Suspension Appreciation/Depreciation Thread

[42x16ss]

Re: Re:

ChewbaccaD got away with murder for a long time. I expect he was well warned before his last incident.

....I'm quite surprised that a proper upstanding citizen such as yourself would not realize that it is very bad form to dance on someone's grave....

Cheers

He was begging for it, for years.

Pushing the envelope maybe. There's at least one recently returned member who is considerably more disruptful than Chewie ever thought of being.

I'm with B on this one.

Agreed. Chewie was good entertainment, a bit dry for some but I liked his panache. When he was posting as Thought For Food, he'd frequently push the boundaries - ChewbaccaD was relatively tame in comparison and posted a lot less.

 

[frenchfry]

When I look through the banned members thread, something I rarely do, I think what's next - banned for simply expressing an opinion?

I don't even know if I tended to agree or disagree with Chewy, but it is members like him who are the reason for returning to these forums.

 

[JRTinMA]

A 12 month ban is a failure of moderation. If you were made moderators to ruin this forum you have been successful, this forum blows now.

 

[BigMac]

For the record, bans are issued as a team - they aren't the sole initiative of the mod who announces them, so they (mod) shouldn't receive individual criticism nor be personally attacked. Letting you know in advance, as a post here has been deleted for insults aimed at a mod. We don't like giving warnings nor banning people. So, by all means, appreciate and depreciate, but in a respectful way.

Cheers.

 

[blutto]

Re:

AFAIK, Amster went crazy about a post that had been edited by mods, had not much to do with Foxxy tbh. He complained in several treads and kept pushing it although mods repeatedly told him to stop. I won't make any judgement to what extent the ban was justified, but I can understand that the mods got crazy about it, and he did not listen at all to their responses.

....when I saw this post the bolded bit really caught my attention....for various reasons I didn't comment on it at the time but this may be a good time to speak my mind....

....thru my longish life ( yeah I'm approaching old-fart-hood ) I've had job experiences that taught me some very valuable life lessons....at one point I was concurrently a basketball referee and a bouncer ( both activities require one to handle situations where high levels of stress and adrenaline are present....and of course alcohol and testosterone in the case of my bouncing duties...)....

....those two experiences had this very important commonality.....when the situation in front of you is going crazy, which it often did, the minute you go crazy you become part of the problem ( read, at the very least your ability to control the situation has been greatly diminished )....and this is the most important bit....because you have been given the job to control the situation and once you join the frenzy everything that happens beyond that point is on you....

....and here is a little trick that got me thru several really tough times....never stop smiling, which means never drop the hammer or be heavy handed ( figuratively and especially literally ), be firm, be accommodating, always give the other party a reasonable way out, but never ever stop smiling....because once you stop smiling it is now officially a confrontation and all hell can break loose, and it will, guaranteed...and you don't want to end the night bragging about how you won the fight, but rather how you prevented one ( the former is usually a major fail, because you don't ever "win" fights clean, rather you survive them better than the other guy, and latter is the big win, no blood to clean up, no beer got spilled, and no interruption of sales... )...

...now I realize that being a mod is different from being a bouncer but there are similarities....and from the peanut gallery where I'm sitting it seems that what we have here is a budding confrontation, like youse guys vs us guys....and the worse thing is, nobody is smiling....yeah youse guys have won some fights, but, nobody is smiling.....

....so in trying to summarize my thoughts here I'll use a bar analogy....the bouncers have won some big fights with some kinda sorta unruly clients, which seems ok on the face of it....but unfortunately these clients were sorta kinda the life of the party guys who helped bring life to the place and helped draw repeat customers, who are really the life-blood of any bar....so where does that leave us, well, a nicely policed place, that is, uhhh, nicely policed ( read, potentially diving headlong into boring ).....this forum, errr, bar has been a huge success not because it was very tightly moderated but because it had a vibrant crazy vibe to it....it has often gone against the accepted grain, heck, it helped bring down DopeStrong ( and that wasn't done by being mamby pamby and sweet ....it took some confrontation and screaming and raising hell... )...it was a great bar now it seems McD's is moving in...

Cheers

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Now Hugh has taken a bannination. So he attacked a Mod in a post. I was not around to view the confrontation within this thread. Was he given a warning or was the offense so far over the top that it warranted the bannination?

I know from experience that I have received a warning with respect to calling a moderator a name. I apologized via PM but will make a public apology to IronDan here in this thread. Maybe if Hugh was given a chance to apologize / cool off he would not have the banniination not sure but this post of Blutto's makes a good point or
two .

Foxxy being permabanned also did not and does not feel right in my opinion. I saw some of what was going down and Foxxy felt cornered by some other members. Other ways to settle that I thought. He came back with another account yes, maybe something other than a permabannination would have settled things and yes I do realize some of us would be on here still complaining about that.

I'm for no banninations at all. Let the members and threads sort it out. I realize that will not work here due to many factors with respect to some of the issues discussed. Just my opinion.

 

[Eshnar]

Re:

Now Hugh has taken a bannination. So he attacked a Mod in a post. I was not around to view the confrontation within this thread. Was he given a warning or was the offense so far over the top that it warranted the bannination?

I know from experience that I have received a warning with respect to calling a moderator a name. I apologized via PM but will make a public apology to IronDan here in this thread. Maybe if Hugh was given a chance to apologize / cool off he would not have the banniination not sure but this post of Blutto's makes a good point or two .

The post of Blutto makes indeed an excellent point. However, when somebody insults in an obscene way a mod, we can't really let it slip. That kind of language is not acceptable, not here nor in any kind of decent public place - not even in all those forums that, unlike this one surely, don't blow.

 

[Scott SoCal]

Re:

For the record, bans are issued as a team - they aren't the sole initiative of the mod who announces them, so they (mod) shouldn't receive individual criticism nor be personally attacked. Letting you know in advance, as a post here has been deleted for insults aimed at a mod. We don't like giving warnings nor banning people. So, by all means, appreciate and depreciate, but in a respectful way.

Cheers.

Apparently there are active mods that aren't part of the "team." Alpe says he wasn't consulted on the Chewie ban nonsense. Chewie was fairly prolific in the Cafe so I'd imagine - if the mod team was trying to get all sides - you all might have considered what Alpe had to say.

But you didn't.

Again, banning folks like Chewie and HJ is the forums loss.

 

[Scott SoCal]

Re: Re:

AFAIK, Amster went crazy about a post that had been edited by mods, had not much to do with Foxxy tbh. He complained in several treads and kept pushing it although mods repeatedly told him to stop. I won't make any judgement to what extent the ban was justified, but I can understand that the mods got crazy about it, and he did not listen at all to their responses.

....when I saw this post the bolded bit really caught my attention....for various reasons I didn't comment on it at the time but this may be a good time to speak my mind....

....thru my longish life ( yeah I'm approaching old-fart-hood ) I've had job experiences that taught me some very valuable life lessons....at one point I was concurrently a basketball referee and a bouncer ( both activities require one to handle situations where high levels of stress and adrenaline are present....and of course alcohol and testosterone in the case of my bouncing duties...)....

....those two experiences had this very important commonality.....when the situation in front of you is going crazy, which it often did, the minute you go crazy you become part of the problem ( read, at the very least your ability to control the situation has been greatly diminished )....and this is the most important bit....because you have been given the job to control the situation and once you join the frenzy everything that happens beyond that point is on you....

....and here is a little trick that got me thru several really tough times....never stop smiling, which means never drop the hammer or be heavy handed ( figuratively and especially literally ), be firm, be accommodating, always give the other party a reasonable way out, but never ever stop smiling....because once you stop smiling it is now officially a confrontation and all hell can break loose, and it will, guaranteed...and you don't want to end the night bragging about how you won the fight, but rather how you prevented one ( the former is usually a major fail, because you don't ever "win" fights clean, rather you survive them better than the other guy, and latter is the big win )...

...now I realize that being a mod is different from being a bouncer but there are similarities....and from the peanut gallery where I'm sitting it seems that what we have here is a budding confrontation, like youse guys vs us guys....and the worse thing is, nobody is smiling....yeah youse guys have won some fights, but, nobody is smiling.....

....so in trying to summarize my thoughts here I'll use a bar analogy....the bouncers have won some big fights with some kinda sorta unruly clients, which seems ok on the face of it....but unfortunately these clients were sorta kinda the life of the party guys who helped bring life to the place and helped draw repeat customers, who are really the life-blood of any bar....so where does that leave us, well, a nicely policed place, that is, uhhh, nicely policed ( read, potentially diving headlong into boring ).....this forum, errr, bar has been a huge success not because it was very tightly moderated but because it had a vibrant crazy vibe to it....it has often gone against the accepted grain, heck, it helped bring down DopeStrong ( and that wasn't done by being mamby pamby and sweet ....it took some confrontation and screaming and raising hell... )...it was a great bar now it seems McD's is moving in...

Cheers

This probably should be stickied and be made mandatory reading for all present and future mods.

Nice take B.

 

[l.Harm]

Re:

Foxxy being permabanned also did not and does not feel right in my opinion. I saw some of what was going down and Foxxy felt cornered by some other members. Other ways to settle that I thought. He came back with another account yes, maybe something other than a permabannination would have settled things and yes I do realize some of us would be on here still complaining about that.

I agree with this. Just receiving a permaban because of creating a second account is way over the top imo, regardless of the user.

 

[Benotti69]

Re:

.....awww.....come....on !!!!.....12 months !!!!!.....for an offence that frankly reads like gobbledygook...

...Chewie and I have had some wicked spats and some good times too and thru it all I ended up really admiring his wit, gusto, brains, tenacity, ability to turn a phrase.....and I can say without reservation that this forum will be a much poorer place for the next 12 months, much much poorer...

Most Definitely No Cheers Today

+1 Chewie a great contributor here.

 

[Irondan]

You guys.

Foxxy was banned for an ugly racist comment for 2 weeks, and came back as a sockpuppet.

Coming back as a sockpuppet is an instant permaban, and has been for a very long time.

 

[frenchfry]

Now Hugh Jannus? I was never one to jump on the "this place sucks" bandwagon - but this place is starting to suck big time.

 

[l.Harm]

Re:

You guys.

Foxxy was banned for an ugly racist comment for 2 weeks, and came back as a sockpuppet.

Coming back as a sockpuppet is an instant permaban, and has been for a very long time.

Slavery has been allowed for a very long time.

Smoking in public spaces has been allowed for a long time.

It's not an argument.

 

[gregod]

Re:

I'm for no banninations at all. Let the members and threads sort it out. I realize that will not work here due to many factors with respect to some of the issues discussed. Just my opinion.

Hear, hear and seconded.

There is no need for a moderator to respond. I know this will never happen.

Give someone a whistle and they will find reasons to use it.

 

[Eshnar]

Re: Re:

You guys.

Foxxy was banned for an ugly racist comment for 2 weeks, and came back as a sockpuppet.

Coming back as a sockpuppet is an instant permaban, and has been for a very long time.

Slavery has been allowed for a very long time.

Smoking in public spaces has been allowed for a long time.

It's not an argument.

do you know any forum where coming back as a sockpuppet while banned is not considered an offence? I'm curious.

 

[l.Harm]

Re: Re:

You guys.

Foxxy was banned for an ugly racist comment for 2 weeks, and came back as a sockpuppet.

Coming back as a sockpuppet is an instant permaban, and has been for a very long time.

Slavery has been allowed for a very long time.

Smoking in public spaces has been allowed for a long time.

It's not an argument.

do you know any forum where coming back as a sockpuppet while banned is not considered an offence? I'm curious.

I'm not active on many fora. But one I'm active on it can be a reason to extend the ban. Not to permaban someone. Definitely not.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

I can give a very quick example how something could get out of hand.

A few minutes ago I posted in another thread. It was a reply to a couple of members who were sort of discussing the Chewi bannination. My post was deleted - no explanation no reroute nothing. I'm not going to say I'm surprised because that particular thread was not the place for it. But you get the wrong member and they will get heated and agitated about it. They might even come onto multiple threads demanding things from moderators which is similar to what happened with Amsterhammer. That is a perfect example in my opinion on how things have been evolving around here.

 

[King Boonen]

The easiest way to avoid a ban is to not break the rules, it really isn't hard. If you do break the rules, Rule #5 and take your ban, like The Hog always does.

 

[Eshnar]

Re: Re:

You guys.

Foxxy was banned for an ugly racist comment for 2 weeks, and came back as a sockpuppet.

Coming back as a sockpuppet is an instant permaban, and has been for a very long time.

Slavery has been allowed for a very long time.

Smoking in public spaces has been allowed for a long time.

It's not an argument.

do you know any forum where coming back as a sockpuppet while banned is not considered an offence? I'm curious.

I'm not active on many fora. But one I'm active on it can be a reason to extend the ban. Not to permaban someone. Definitely not.

Well, it is here, since various years (if not since the start... I wasn't there yet). That's a very clear policy, coming directly from CN, and surely it's the issue that has the most clear-cut rule of all. I'm sure Foxxy knew it, as well as all the others.
Sockpuppeting defeats the purpose of a ban. Hence cannot be done, otherwise bans are totally pointless. And again, bans are part of the policy CN kept from the start. Yes I'm aware there are forums out there where bans are not contemplated. In this one they are. And for a very good reason imo, considering some very famous past episodes.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Re:

The easiest way to avoid a ban is to not break the rules, it really isn't hard. If you do break the rules, Rule #5 and take your ban, like The Hog always does.

Very true. Just like in life rules get broken.

Your post reads like the Fight Club rules.

 

[l.Harm]

Re: Re:

You guys.

Foxxy was banned for an ugly racist comment for 2 weeks, and came back as a sockpuppet.

Coming back as a sockpuppet is an instant permaban, and has been for a very long time.

Slavery has been allowed for a very long time.

Smoking in public spaces has been allowed for a long time.

It's not an argument.

do you know any forum where coming back as a sockpuppet while banned is not considered an offence? I'm curious.

I'm not active on many fora. But one I'm active on it can be a reason to extend the ban. Not to permaban someone. Definitely not.

Well, it is here, since various years (if not since the start... I wasn't there yet). That's a very clear policy, coming directly from CN, and surely it's the issue that has the most clear-cut rule of all. I'm sure Foxxy knew it, as well as all the others.
Sockpuppeting defeats the purpose of a ban. Hence cannot be done, otherwise bans are totally pointless. And again, bans are part of the policy CN kept from the start. Yes I'm aware there are forums out there where bans are not contemplated. In this one they are. And for a very good reason imo, considering some very famous past episodes.

It has zero to do with bans not being contemplated, it is a different policy. But hey, this is yours apparently. I do not see the point of a racist comment resulting in a two week ban and create a second account to get permabanned. Imo the former is worse by a mile. It does not make a ban pointless, after two posts you recognize the user, either by posting style or ip-address.

 

[BigMac]

It also serves as deterrence, otherwise everyone serving a ban would just create a sock and keep posting, even if caught meanwhile, knowing their ban lenght would stand, while never actually serving it.

 

[hrotha]

He didn't just create a new account to go about his merry business though. He used it to spam complaints and legal threats all over the forum.

 

[l.Harm]

Extending a ban is also a deterrence. I'm not saying it should not be punished at all, which Eshnar and you have both been implying. Look at the American prisons and you see how effective extreme deterrence is.

@hrotha, I'm not questioning Foxxy's ban specifically, I'm questioning the general policy that everyone who creates a second account always gets permabanned.