Missin U <3 - lamentations for those felled by the SB

Morbs! his film challops ranged from the 'ooh, that's an interesting point' to the 'lol what a curmudgeon', and that's why we loved him.

wait, am I going to get banned for this?

no looking back

suggukbe ban

damn the torpedoes!

what is this

morbs could not have upset anyone that much

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mudlXF3MA8Q

sugg banned u for this, btw

morbs is nothing but challops, u need some sincerity to counter-point

et tu, cozwn?

morbs being virtually nothing but challops is WHY we need him to counter-point the sincerity.

what are the sound and reasoned opinions of slock1 and omar and matt dc without Morbs?

2nd sugg ban

did u dilute the HP, coz that's weak sauce bro

sugg banning myself to weigh 2nd one out

never sb'd morbs

never learn not to love

seriously though this suggest ban system is a nightmare

http://roddysrockinreviews.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/30-days-of-night-poster.jpg

Suggest bans should work like petitions where upon accumulating 51 of them, a poll asking whether or not the accumulatee should be banned is automatically generated and appears on a separate board where arguments for and against banning are heard, and fates are ultimately decided. Suggested names for the board include Purgatory, Civil Court, or I Love Bans.

Propose I Love Popcorn

These celebrity deaths just keep coming, each one more shocking than the last.

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/8/87/Spock_funeral.jpg

morbs could not have upset anyone that much

^^ I thought this about dom, cankles, ethan, et al

SBs come in threes

suggest props is actually a good idea, especially if it cancels out sb's 1 for 1, that way people who post things that are valued by the community receive some benefit. right now the system is solely about punishment and negativity and the only counter we have to someone getting sb'd that we like is gay meta threads like this.

but for serious, and i'm sure this would be way too much work, but a great idea imo would be "suggest ban this user from thread". if s/he gets 5 in one thread, he's banned from that thread for a week, and so on.

― there's a blapp for that (k3vin k.), Friday, June 26, 2009 11:00 PM (1 week ago)

i still think this is a good idea. imo the best way to deal w/ morbs is just to ban him from any politix thread and let him post to baseball and film threads where his opinions might actually be relevant/valuable

guys there is gonna be like an endless string of "suggest" links after everyone's posts

"suggest hotdog/taco"

suggest new type of suggestion

well i think we all agree that "suggest props" is retarded

suggest fries with that

suggest props is actually a good idea, especially if it cancels out sb's 1 for 1, that way people who post things that are valued by the community receive some benefit. right now the system is solely about punishment and negativity and the only counter we have to someone getting sb'd that we like is gay meta threads like this.

mega-ranted about this some time ago, although "suggest unban" was my name for it.

well i think we all agree that "suggest props" is retarded

sugbanned u for this btw fyi iirc sry.

I have no comment

http://imgur.com/Pr4vA.gif

^ That is awesome.

I love Flying Dawkins squirrel...

I think Viking Funerals are the way to go.

http://www.cp-tel.net/pasqualy/kingmole/242F.jpg

well i think we all agree that "suggest props" is retarded

― Nabisco™ (k3vin k.), Friday, July 3, 2009 9:03 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark'

not cool man

http://i41.tinypic.com/sw9r4n.gif

morbs could not have upset anyone that much

^^ I thought this about dom, cankles, ethan, et al

u thought people who went around stirring shit and insulting people wouldn't upset anyone? morbs was stubborn and trollish but never made a habit of attacking other posters personally

um you must never read US political threads...

not that I think he should have been banned.

um you must never read US political threads...

Exactly. Spending a significant amount of your time stalking one particular type of thread so that you can childishly insult everyone on it and then petulantly refuse any attempt to converse about the topic at hand or explain what your positions are goes beyond annoying to flat-out trolling, something you can get banned for. It is patently obvious that mods banning him flat-out for this would inspire a gigantic meta clusterfuck even though he deserves it, so we decided to let the posting community get sick of him. Now that you've spoken, he now has a month off to figure out how to express his hatred of American politicians and the people who vote for them without being an offensive asshole about it.

And "I was just blowing off steam," which he has trotted out in the past, doesn't cut it.

why i don't go on the political threads no. 7543, i guess.

ok i just read that morbs iraq thread--way to get baited you goofs.

It is patently obvious that mods banning him flat-out for this would inspire a gigantic meta clusterfuck even though he deserves it, so we decided to let the posting community get sick of him. Now that you've spoken,

I see your point here, but at the same time it's a little unfair to be like "hey this is what you want" when lots of people in this thread are saying that this isn't what we want and we think the current SB system is a bad thing.

completely otm. morbs would troll a bit, but i think he also added a lot of value in other areas to justify it. if we let everybody who was offended get their way, then k-punk wins! say NO to grey vampires!

Ny sb against morbs was for his pissing on ethan's grave.

It is patently obvious that mods banning him flat-out for this would inspire a gigantic meta clusterfuck even though he deserves it, so we decided to let the posting community get sick of him. Now that you've spoken, he now has a month off to figure out how to express his hatred of American politicians and the people who vote for them without being an offensive asshole about it.

^^awed by the Solomonic fairmindedness and total absence of personal animus here^^

"Now that you've spoken" is loltastic, though! Sounds like Ollie North's lawyer at the Iran-contra hearings -- "THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN!" All 52 of them.

As I posted in the hours before I was muzzled, i am done done done with the politics threads, as my Most Unpopular Opinion re The Slick "Centrist" clearly is not permitted there. Also, it's a waste of time. As far as "expressing hatred of American politicians and the people who vote for them without being an offensive asshole" goes, this has never been applied to folks who do that when it involves the Green Party, Nader, McKinney, Paul, etc.

Really, you can't chasten a man in his late 40s who's entering his fifth month of unemployment by anonymously telling him to go stand in the corner for a month on a messageboard. This largely unexplained policing procedure (nearly all I know about it comes from 77) is some bullshit, even for ILX, and I'm sadder and more pissed off about this place than ever.

I'm not going to use this cowardly Suggest Ban feature anymore, and I think someone more detached from the issue than I should start a thread demanding it be shitcanned.

Now I'm going to prepare for a job interview, and clean the crackers out of my bed.

So this is really how you want to come back?

"more detached than ME," shit.

xp

what can I say? I'm not fond of tribunals, even in sandboxes. Ever the maverick!

xpost HI DERE, you're an awful mod who exacerbates problems, that comment being one example of many, and i wish you'd follow up on your own offer to step down.

be fair, he addressed every one of my points!

I'm not going to use this cowardly Suggest Ban feature anymore, and I think someone more detached from the issue than I should start a thread demanding it be shitcanned.

yeah, I tried that. sterling results.

who are the mods? Who died and made them Mod?

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/quad4.jpg

Wb morbs

would blow morbs?

ive already spent way more time than i ever wanted to talking about the SB thing on other threads, and i have zero beef w/you morbs, but acting like getting SBed by 52 people is like some sort of miniscule every day occurance is kind of disingenuous considering that the list of people that have managed it is basically a whos who of controversial posters on ilx. it seems to me that youve taken the more constructive position of figuring out that the way you and ILX political threads get along prob isnt good for anyone - why not just leave it at that instead of concentrating on whatever personal affront youve taken to getting 51ed?

xpost HI DERE, you're an awful mod who exacerbates problems, that comment being one example of many, and i wish you'd follow up on your own offer to step down.

― bind music up, scratch my discs up (Matt P), Monday, August 3, 2009 8:44 PM (2 hours ago)

i love that this reaction with the names of TOMBOT or HI DERE or me used interchangably keeps getting trotted out like the boring dead horse that it is every time something happens on the board that somebody doesnt like.

As I posted in the hours before I was muzzled, i am done done done with the politics threads

I have much real love for you sir but you know damned well that this ^^^ is at best a statement of intention not worth the paper it won't get printed on & at worse a total lie :)

welcome back tho!

i dunno i hear cafepress prints pretty cheap

wouldja like to make a bet, J0hnny? You can already see that "GOP antics" is going to be the Dem Ostrich poli-thread of choice til it's time to knock on doors in December 2011. I'd sooner debate a herd of freshly castrated wild boars.

jjusten, I have zero beef w/ you as well-- the fact that I've been here so long and don't really know who you are likely speaks well of you -- but sorry, no shame is eating away at me for being "controversial," one of those convenient words that can cover everything from ethan's daily adolescent monkeyshit to me pointing out that a historic rockstar president has no ideals. Dang P saying I need "to figure out how to express my hatred" -- sorry, nobody would say that to my face. It's chickenshit lecturing.

And you're right, this is really boring to discuss, or do anything about, I guess. Power-tripping student council weenies forever...

haha i have had drinks w/you!

i am unmemorable ;_;

i will remember you

I can't remember ppl's real and phony names simultaneously unless they're in my phone book!

haha no prob we were on a patio in NYC somewhere the day of some free show. IT IS A MYSTERY

oh, you mean the one almost no one got into?

it was at BOXCAR!!!!! iirc

I've met ppl for almost half a century, they hafta throw up on me or be A+ kissers to stick in the mind now.

^ great line

ban k3vin k.

you'd think a former stand up comic might have a better sense of humor about these things :(

ok actually that line kind of rivals meeting morbs and subsequently meeting the pavement.

Morbs <3 <3 <3

Please don't stay away from the political threads though, that would really be a shame!

wouldja like to make a bet, J0hnny? You can already see that "GOP antics" is going to be the Dem Ostrich poli-thread of choice til it's time to knock on doors in December 2011. I'd sooner debate a herd of freshly castrated wild boars.

I would like to make a bet! I will bet you an original of the pic I have taken of myself holding up the Sun-Times on that blessed morning this coming October when the Cubs win the World Series

I'd sooner debate a herd of freshly castrated wild boars.

lol @ "debate"

but if you're ready to debate rather than smugly hurl invective without commitment, then let's do it. The GOP antics thread doesn't provoke debate, you're right about that.

Well, that's part of it: I'm gonna "commit" what? More time? Am I nabisco? My natural inclination on poltix threads was to post links to more astute people who are expert at marking the Death of Everything. I get it, you hate it; I've stopped.

No tza, I don't have a sense of humor about being punitively and anonymously held to a different standard of BSin' on a freakin' bb.

smugly hurl invective without commitment

Many ILXors have this line on their resume.

you've been held to the exact same standard as every other poster on ilx.

but my comment was that you couldn't even have a laugh about BOXCAR!!!!
what has the world come to? ;_;

we respectfully disagree.

I assumed you legitimately meant I met JJ at the Boxcar Bar.

Nah, Dr. Morbius, what I mean by "without commitment" is that your politics (celebrating the Death of Everything) don't seem to be something you live, but something you talk about in order to point out to others that you're superior for seeing what they don't. You say that you're unwilling to do anything about it save sign a petition or post links on the internet. Whereas if you really though that the world is in trouble, if you were committed to that, I'd hope you'd try to do something substantive about it, instead of complaining that you're too busy.

I am committed to the concept that the USA ended in November 1980, and we're in a very long postgame show. As Beckett said, "Nothing to be done." And yes, unemployment is keeping me busy and terrified.

(also I shouldn't be arguing about the reason my ban was "upheld" by the mods, cuz I was never given a reason.)

the answer to life, the universe & everything is 51

Well, Beckett was committed to exploring silence. You're not (and for that I'm grateful, as I've said before; I know 51 others don't agree). I don't believe you're really that fatalistic; otherwise why not just be silent? My interest in this is having interesting views to argue against; echo chambers are boring.

why do ppl keep saying 51 when it's 52?

Eul, "rage against the dying of the light," y'know?

think it was 51 to begin with. maybe not. the point stands that treating it as a mod ban is facetious.

isn't it subject to their review? if not, that's even worse.

It's 51 that triggers the autoban script or whatever. It runs once a day, I think at midnight UK, and Morbs wound up at 52 before that script ran for that day.

(also I shouldn't be arguing about the reason my ban was "upheld" by the mods, cuz I was never given a reason.)

What "reason" do you want? The "reason" is because at least 51 people SB'd you. Don't claim you don't know how that works, because you've SB'd other posters! What did you think you were doing then, inviting them over for ice cream?

xpost it is, but not in a tampering-by-default way, is my understanding. i'm open to correction on that.

What did you think you were doing then, inviting them over for ice cream?

Yes, because 1) for a long time, no one I knew of was banned, and 2) it's all undemocratic bullshit. (No wonder "state secrets" don't draw any any anger on ILE.)

Really, if it's automatic, i'm doomed. Do you really think I'm not gonna piss off ANY 51 ppl again?

I would not trust 51 random ILXors telling me I was on fire.

xpost HI DERE, you're an awful mod who exacerbates problems, that comment being one example of many, and i wish you'd follow up on your own offer to step down.

― bind music up, scratch my discs up (Matt P), Monday, August 3, 2009 8:44 PM (2 hours ago)

i love that this reaction with the names of TOMBOT or HI DERE or me used interchangably keeps getting trotted out like the boring dead horse that it is every time something happens on the board that somebody doesnt like.

― 7th joker card is rhe crul ringmaster (jjjusten), Monday, 3 August 2009 23:47 (2 days ago) Permalink

nothing to do with john justen/tombot/hi dere obv but I love how the site programmers ignore the fact that suggest ban is an obviously stupid and useless feature that needs to be removed immediately

considering how every time someone is suggest banned a clusterfuck happens and nobody feels good or satisfied about it

petition, plz.

considering how every time someone is suggest banned a clusterfuck happens and nobody feels good or satisfied about it

― 51 is the loneliest number (Curt1s Stephens), Wednesday, August 5, 2009 8:59 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

speak for yourself

i like sb

wtf I've never even considered using it

what i'm saying is, don't say "nobody feels good or satisfied about it" because you don't speak for everyone

sorry

bb lawyering, all of a sudden. from that guy.

52 / 4,821 = 1.08%

considering how every time someone is suggest banned a clusterfuck happens and 1.08% feels good or satisfied about it

Considering that this message board was started by someone from Britain and the second and third incarnations of the source code were written by people from Britain, complaining that it is unamerican is really fucking stupid.

Suggest ban is not getting turned off. You don't have to use it. You don't have to post here. Deal with it.

― Lots of praying with no breakfast! (HI DERE), Friday, February 27, 2009 1:05 AM

just WOW.

actually a better representation is 52/(your number of posts * 4,821) because each post has the sb button

"You don't have to post here. Deal with it."

lol mod bullying

it seems obvious to me that keeping suggest ban is not worth driving away long-time posters who helped make the ILX community what it is by saying things like "You don't have to post here. Deal with it."

of course we could just:

No. of users SB'd / 4821

Would that be a useful figure for anyone to ponder?

I just want deeznuts back guys

i can't believe keith/stet coded in the functionality for people to post opinions i may disagree with. whenever this happens, i will blame keith/stet.

boy i miss gabbneb

posting opinions that someone may disagree with is a basic function of a message board. ILX has always had people posting opinions someone may disagree with. Suggest ban is a recent and completely optional feature, which in fact IMPEDES the ability of people to post controversial opinions.

Morbs, you seem to be under misapprehension that the reason people get 51'ed round here is for expressing unpopular opinions. Having actually seen what people get SB'ed for, this is so not the case. People hardly ever get SB'ed for expressing unpopular opinions unless they're an outright racist or something. The main reason you got SB'ed repeatedly was for treating people who disagreed with you as an amorphous mass, unthinking craven Democrat cowards, or both.

It was the combination of strawman building and slathering that shit on with a trowel that got you SB'ed, not the fact that you dared to express the opinion that Obama may not be the revolutionary figure he's cracked up to be or whatever.

And I'm saying this as someone who genuinely has no beef with you at all. The beauty of the SB function, when it's worked, has been to separate the people who learn from it and understand why they annoy people from those who don't, or just don't care (lol Gabbneb etc).

No. of users SB'd / 4821

Would that be a useful figure for anyone to ponder?

what number does it have to be before we can discuss its fairness?

0

jeez curt1s, people do fuck all BUT post controversial opinions all day. they manage not to rack up 51 SB's while doing so. There's probably a little more to it than that (he typed while worrying about his SB count)

xposts.

It was the combination of strawman building and slathering that shit on with a trowel that got you SB'ed,

You state this as fact but if Morb's got 5 sb's because 5 people hate old gay dudes, then is the 52 valid?

I have like 10-15 suggest bans (most of which are probably from threads like these where I throw a hissy fit about suggest bans) but then again I'm nowhere near as entertaining or interesting as the people who racked up 52

I am positive that, of the people who SB'ed Morbius last time, none of them have a blind prejudice against old gay dudes, unless they're hiding it well. Given that I can see who they were and everything.

Matt: The system has done its job, because I can't reply honestly to that w/out setting myself up beautifully for getting bounced again.

(however, people on the Web one doesn't know personally and who express exactly the same views ARE an amorphous mass. nabisco is the King of Nuance, not me.)

Most times I tried to engage ppl in a detailed discussion on beliefs and policy, instant dismissal, "strawman building" or ridicule was the result. Hence, no more.

And in any case if someone did go on a racist/homophobic SB rampage we'd be able to remove all their SBs very simply anyway. (xpost)

votes for the BNP don't count, how very ILX!

(that was a reply to yr last post, not the second one) xxp

the sb debate has been done and all but i just feel like we never really needed the feature in the first place. this board seemed to chug along quite fine and was dysfunctional just enough before sb feature was in place. All i see that it has produced is more clusterfuck threads. Not that I don’t enjoy a good clusterfuck but this one is getting tired.

wtf I've never even considered using it

― 51 is the loneliest number (Curt1s Stephens), Wednesday, August 5, 2009 2:01 PM (31 minutes ago)

uh i realize that you are trying to shore up your indignant argument and all, but this isn't actually true, dude, because as a mod i can see how many times you've SBed people. you've used it rarely, but it doesn't help your point in my eyes when you bend the truth to act as if you have the high moral ground here.

nah, JJ- he's just pointing out that he's used it inconsiderately, which is the real problem.

i think everyone used it at first just for lolz

pwned. I honestly forgot that I used it!

old gay dudes

I'M YOUNGER THAN OBAMA.

he means old in the "old man yells at cloud" sense

I suggest banned myself for lying btw

also morbs re:mods overturning your ban - the mods collectively decided a while ago not to do this when someone got 51ed. the reason for this is that every 51ed person so far (i think) had at least one or more defenders among the mods, but the whole point of the system is that mod biases (pro or con) get outweighed by the posting public as a whole. we do review the bans for any sockpuppet voting etc, but thats it. just saying this because it isnt a case of mods deciding not to override your SB, its a case of mods deciding not to override any of them.

curt1s tbf part of my pointing that out is spending dire endless years of my life doing philosophy of logic, so im not really trying to strike you from the record as an unreliable witness or anything.

nah I do that job for myself well enough on these threads

was there any sort of mod discussion prior to the sb system being implemented or was it just kind of turned on by Keith?

http://flann4.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/strangelove.jpg

"Gentlemen, the time to implement Directive SB has arrived. Prepare yourselves for the worst."

suggest ban feature turned on 9/11/08 - never forget

the whole point of the system is that mod biases (pro or con) get outweighed by the posting public as a whole.

Not as a whole -- 51 members of "the posting public"!!!.. I'm lost for words. It's just ludicrous.

Is that a scene from 51 Angry Men?

and yet you're still talking!
xpost

I thought SB's were introduced to reduce the amount of controversy / fallout when a mod banned someone unilaterally?

tza let the man keep talking if he's talking sense

he can talk all he wants, cruts, that wasn't what i was saying.

I'm lost for MY USUAL VOLUME OF WORDS, mmmkay? xxxp

;)

there's still an argument that 51 SB votes is an insignificant amount?

i'm perfectly aware that i'm begging to be reposted in the likely event of my own future banning, but that's bullshit, and the complete lack of a nuclear banning wasteland even in the face of curt1s's own admission that people are sbanning for lols totally refutes this notion.

Elmo - I can think of two or three people at least who would have been very unlikely to have been outright banned by the mods themselves - Morbs is one of those, ditto Gabbneb and LJ.

What it has done to an extent is a) to allow the community to moderate itself AND MORE IMPORTANTLY b) to allow posters to moderate their own behaviour. I can think of several posters who have deliberately toned down the more excessive, rude, or annoying parts of their personality in order to avoid it. In the past, as long as posters weren't being outright banworthy in the mods eyes, they had no incentive note to be as annoying or as nasty as they wanted to anyone else.

This is why I approve of a feature that informs people when they hit, say, 40 SBs - an automatic "look, you're pissing people off now, seriously cut it out" function.

http://blogs.e-rockford.com/applesauce/files/2008/09/000strangelove.jpg

"Ladies and Gentlemen, the suggest ban feature is simple to understand. . . it is credible and convincing."

guys knowing what i now know about morbs i think we should all chill out with some 420 and watch lord of the rings all weekend and have a blast

I think this is a good idea mentioned on Keith's thread:

a kudos/props/Suggest Unban button, with the 51 resulting in an automatic permaban being an aggregate of the two. last time I mention this, I promise.

― N1ck (Upt0eleven), Saturday, August 1, 2009 3:39 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

btw i have used SB liberally and often, usually for humor purposes.

the kudos button has to be a tiny tynan delong head though

Glad to see you're calling me "Keith" now and not the "site programmers".

n1ck's idea has always been a good idea. the real arguments against SBans are the obscure length of time it takes votes to fade and the lack of a balance option for posters that piss lots of people off but whom others adore.

of course, that could just lead to a cliquefest clickfest. i'm sure if it's introduced a problem would come up within 0.2 seconds.

btw i have used SB liberally and often, usually for humor purposes.

as have many of us! or just against ppl who annoy us. And if we swear off it now, that just leaves it in the hands of the equivalent of Nascar fans.

keith I wasn't sure who was responsible for the suggest ban feature

I wrote it. I wrote all of the software except for the bit that checks your BBCode, which Libcrypt wrote. Stet wrote the Mac client app.

And if we swear off it now, that just leaves it in the hands of the equivalent of Nascar fans.

I don't get all the nuances of "Nascar fans", but that's seems pretty contemptuous of posters who aren't like you.

I can think of several posters who have deliberately toned down the more excessive, rude, or annoying parts of their personality in order to avoid it.

prithee what is this moron blabbering about

<3

posters changing their behavior because 1.08% of users want them too

SB phonies!

1.08% OTM tbh

and even then what the users of the sb "want" is an assumption

yes

what they 'want' is that user to be banned, failing a drop down list. when people start to usse the feature with this in mind, it might be a little more useful.

btw keith I know you are responsible for programming ILX & I have nothing but respect for your hard work and honest concern for the board, I just wasn't sure if the suggest ban specifically was your doing or not. You know that my opinion is that the SB feature has run its course, but that is not meant as an insult to the coding that went into it.

All I can tell from looking at recent SBs is what users want other users NOT to do, and that's very obvious when you look at it.

Thanks. That's definitely a better way of putting it than:

nothing to do with john justen/tombot/hi dere obv but I love how the site programmers ignore the fact that suggest ban is an obviously stupid and useless feature that needs to be removed immediately

― 51 is the loneliest number (Curt1s Stephens), Wednesday, August 5, 2009 2:58 PM (1 hour ago) [IP: 66.32.209.9: Atlanta, United States] Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what do users want me not to do, Matt?

I am actually very tempted to write a 'Lady, If You Have To Ask...' guide to the top five things that will get you SB'ed.

can you tell what specific post people are sb'ed on? xp

can we ban gabbneb?

can you tell what specific post people are sb'ed on?

Yes, we can.

keith you have my express permission to suggest ban me for posting that shit, I would do it myself but I already suggest banned myself

i think that each time someone bites an SB there should be a list generated with each post that produced a vote, and possibly this should be a poll.

we could call it "gr8080"

oh, good to know. i'll keep my future sb's on the right posts then

Most times I tried to engage ppl in a detailed discussion on beliefs and policy

lol

has Tuomas been banned from this thread or something? how can we have this discussion without learning what Tuomas's opinion on suggest ban is? he is so inscrutable about it and we really need to know where he stands before moving forward

hope he SB's you for that

kudos/props/Suggest Unban button

Hm, I think the SB system is a bit flawed in its onesidedness and I like the idea of some way to counteract them, but a recent Keith post said that the success of SBs was clear from ILX now having less snark and personal attacks, and bitchy zingfests would probably be voted up for bringing the lolz, thus ensuring that slightly annoying but inoffensive posters would continue to rack up bans while being a juggernaut of hilarious spite and creepiness would be A-OK with ILX

but I guess put like that the only response is "well duh, way to be on the wrong messageboard if you disagree", so, yep, carry on

but a recent Keith post said that the success of SBs was clear from ILX now having less snark and personal attacks, and bitchy zingfests would probably be voted up for bringing the lolz, thus ensuring that slightly annoying but inoffensive posters would continue to rack up bans while being a juggernaut of hilarious spite and creepiness would be A-OK with ILX

^^^^

exactly why a kudos/props button doesn't work/exactly why I'm pro-SB

key word: hilarious!

snark can keep you prisoner, fear can set you free.

asc, a couple of things:

1. With the introduction of a time limit on a ban suggestion (which I can't remember the duration of at the moment), it is now very unlikely for an inoffensive poster to accumulate enough ban suggestions to trip the switch.

2. If "suggest props" were implemented, the suggest ban threshold would have to be dropped. Keith just implemented a menu that shows the number of current active users on the boards; we'll have to watch this number to see how it trends and I'd be curious if there are more detailed statistics behind the scenes (like unique users per day, for example) but right now it seems that the board is hovering around 70-80 active users at any given time. It's conceivable that we're actually looking at an active community that's in the low hundreds rather than the low thousands, in which case a 51 post threshold would be virtually impossible to reach.

3. Not all problems can or should be solved by coding a new feature. I would be more in favor of turning off the suggest ban link than adding a new one to counteract it. IMO, the best way to give positive feedback is to post positively.

no no no Dan I am sure you misspoke. the best way to give positive feedback, to any poster, is to SEND MONEY DIRECTLY TO J0HN D.

acting like ilx was a happy great awesome neato place before SB is pretty weird to me. curtis, you make it sound like ilx was innocent to the idea of clusterfuck threads about how this board works or something! i mean, i seem to remember a lot of clusterfuck threads about mod bannings, ppl demanding that bannings get more democratic, etc. the thing is, ppl complain that 51 is an insignicant # to get banned by, but i feel like i see the same handful of posters on these clusterfuck threads, saying the same thing every time.

if i was less lazy and had more time maybe i would go thru each of the SB clusterfuck threads and count names, but truth is: i just don't really give that much thought to SBs. it's not the end of the world if someone gets banned, either for us or for them. this is not the centre of the universe. they can even come back after a pretty short time! (most of the time).

obv, this site will never be perfect - not to YOU, or YOU or even YOU... precisely because there are like a million users. can't please everyone! and what's the total SB number at now? like 12 ppl maybe? so maybe try dividing 12 by whatever huge number of users there are. doesn't seem like SB is having that huge of an impact, when you look at it from that perspective.

pretty sure no one pays keith for his time or services to this site, maybe should cut the guy some slack and not pretend like he's some kind of idiot for ignoring 'everyone's' complaints to get rid of SB.

That was truncated; it was supposed to read "post positively obscene amounts of money to J0hn".

keith hasn't bothered fixing john d's paypal link to his username yet. more lazy coding, IMO.

wait did you mean perform obscene acts with money, for j0hn

2. If "suggest props" were implemented, the suggest ban threshold would have to be dropped.

if we keep only suggest ban I'd rather see the threshhold be way closer to 50% of the "active community." People who are real pests (like Dom) can still be banned without the suggest ban system.

acting like ilx was a happy great awesome neato place before SB is pretty weird to me. curtis, you make it sound like ilx was innocent to the idea of clusterfuck threads about how this board works or something!

^^^ never said this, never thought this. sorry if I came off this way, but I think you're jumping to hella conclusions justine.

it was precisely ILX's known propensity for clusterfucking which should have made suggest ban an obvious bad idea from the start

again, no offense to keith. but it was a bad idea.

OK, Curt1s, what's your solution for clusterfucking?

it's understandable if the same five people were taking shit on threads like this for it constantly (mea culpa, tbf), that keith might just have taken out the middleman. can't understand why mods are still taking the flack at this stage.

Curtis, I think what you're trying to say is that you think it is a bad idea. I don't think it was a bad idea, and I know I'm not alone here. Without doubt there are people on both sides, but saying "it was a bad idea" is to suggest that your own opinion is the only correct one, as you did upthread.

wait did you mean perform obscene acts with money, for j0hn

YES

I'm sorry, I thought saying it's my opinion would be redundant.

considering how every time someone is suggest banned a clusterfuck happens and nobody feels good or satisfied about it

it seemed to me like you were saying that without SB there would be no clusterfuck threads about bannings. how often does any clusterfuck thread end with ppl feeling good/satisfied. my point was: saying that SB is 'obviously stupid and useless' seems like a pretty weird thing to say, considering that plenty of ppl support it. i get that u think no one should be banned, and that lots of ppl you think are great for this board have been banned/driven away. but. not everyone else feels the same way. i think keith and the mods are genuinely trying to do what will keep the majority of users happy.

Srsly man, on ILX, nothing goes without saying. xpost

it seemed to me like you were saying that without SB there would be no clusterfuck threads about bannings.

how did you get that from what I said? I didn't say it was the only time a clusterfuck happens.

how long would Old Era Tombot have lasted with this standard? People mentioned that my posting "Fuck you assholes" at Demobams was a symptomatic of my needing to be banned, and that was just a clearing of the throat for Classic TB (God bless him).

Most times I tried to engage ppl in a detailed discussion on beliefs and policy

lol

― bodied peanuts (goole)

See above.

what's difference does a few more clusterfuck threads make, then? we don't have to read them if we don't want to.

Old Era Tombot is irrelevant to Right This Minute ILX.

TMI

yes but the concept is that suggest bans are suppose to reduce board drama. but they don't; they just deprive interesting people of the privilege to post because some people can't take their personalities for some weird reason.

I'm sorry if you disagree, but being able to tolerate & perhaps even embrace other people's personalities is one of the few things on which I maintain a firm ground ethically + morally.

lol

who did you SB curt1s?

The concept was never that.

hey look it's tuortis

never mind

who did you SB curt1s?

I don't even remember!

lols.

we need a big public information campaign to get users to use SB properly. that's the only solution, if it's going to stick around in its current form. posters, adverts, the lot.

we have a warning lol

Old Era Tombot is irrelevant to Right This Minute ILX.

The problem is many of us have stayed on the board for 6 years or more w/out paying thorough attention to all this micromanagement, and we didn't get the memo that a cadre of reformers was changing the ILX cultcha.

i remember it were all fields around here

Not sure about that. If the motivation among users hadn't been there, SB wouldn't have made a difference. It's not so much a gang of reformers as previously unheard posters getting a voice.

where was this outcry for SBs? I never saw it. I didn't even remember there were moderator election, apparently. Cuz really, I try to have a life.

Mods aren't elected. ILX has never been a democracy. This was often pointed out during controversial bannings. SBs are much more democratic than ones given by mod fiat, at least.

WHAT? EXPLAIN THAT TO ME. Really, how is 51 out of thousands anything but the tyranny of a sect?

it's always a different sect, morbius

ok, there were NOMINATIONS for moderators. Like petitioning Louis XIV.

This is futile too, huh? Bye.

you over-estimate the size of the active posting community. 50 has proved to be far too high a number for any ILX clique to manage to get someone banned, though some gave it a good try in the early days. xp

Louis LI probably no good as a display name

XXXXVVI

can someone with better memory state the full list of those who have been SB'd?

gabbneb
morbs
tuomas
LJ
deeznuts
burt stanton
capn lorax
ade

right?

ethan

plus ethan who opted to not return xp

and dom sort of

o rite

dom (controversial...)

xps

surely stanton has returned tho, under a new name?

3 suspected trolls, 1 occasional concern troll, 1 nudge nudge wink wink brit, 4 controversial yet beloved regs, 1 controversial and unloved reg

Bimble?

bimble was mod-banned iirc

yes but the concept is that suggest bans are suppose to reduce board drama. but they don't; they just deprive interesting people of the privilege to post because some people can't take their personalities for some weird reason.

I disagree with this - I think people are a lot less aggro with each other now than they were a year ago. You're kind of painting everything in a very favorable light - "people can't take their personalities" = "people don't like being called names and spoken to abusively & hounded from threads & trolled relentlessly" etc. I understand that your position is "if a person can't stand the heat, he should get out of the kitchen," but you have got to understand, don't you, that not everyone shares your survival-of-the-most-aggro view?

Not trying to be combative with you, I dig you & respect your position, it just seems like your vision of how ilx ought to work is distinctively yours - for me, it seems clear that things are less unwelcoming than they were, and I view this as a positive development

1 nudge nudge wink wink brit

why single out from contro-beloved regs?

Dom could have been banned without the suggest ban system.

if that's who you're talking about, j0hn

who are you talking about Crut among the SBd that you can only see "weird reasons" for not wanting them to behave the way they did?

I mean there are always exceptional cases, but:

gabbneb
morbs
tuomas
LJ
deeznuts
burt stanton
capn lorax
ade

these people were never really abusive

xpost!

The problem is many of us have stayed on the board for 6 years or more w/out paying thorough attention to all this micromanagement, and we didn't get the memo that a cadre of reformers was changing the ILX cultcha.

Dude how can you be a place SIX YEARS and not notice any changes?

Crut deeznuts was abusive and a pervy fuck to me on and off board.

half of them had it coming and the other half, well, i disagree but i can see why people might click SB

these people were never really abusive

ok lol get the fuck out

Crut deeznuts was abusive and a pervy fuck to me on and off board.

oh

lorax has done his share of pervertalizing posts that got deleted too

gabbneb
morbs
tuomas
LJ
deeznuts
burt stanton
capn lorax
ade

And Jesus how many people from this list are back right now!

Answer = ALMOST ALL OF THEM.

tuomas still probably the least abusive ilxor (along with ned i guess)

Abbott, did i say ANY changes?! i meant formal, decided-upon, here's-how-we're-running-things changes.

The bulk of the unbanned people didn't show up immediately banging pans with conspiratorial complaints of some six-year coup that has been boiling in the underbelly of ILX h8rdom behind everyone's backs.

Morbs all the threads about new mods, SB systems, whatevs were classic clusterfucks that wld be pretty damn hard not to notice!

why was ethan suggest banned exactly

Ask 52 people!

I just did.

went on an image-blast suicide-by-SB iirc.

why is that bannable behavior

ethan doesn't seem to mind it, from what i hear.

why does shooting yourself in the head cause you to be dead?

what about imagebombing is inherently "suicide by SB"

Are we just mad that SBs have taken away the name of a strawman to type in all caps?

btw is it possible to have all the sbs I did removed? I did not actually realise what it meant when I used it, except in the case of Vision (this is the only one I remember doing and possibly the only one I actually did but definitely the only one I would stick by, doubt he'll be back to troll again tho)

Guys how did any of you not know what wld happen if you used a suggest ban?

The message that comes up when you click Suggest Ban is:

Please be aware that by confirming this action, you are registering your wish to see this user removed from the site.

NOT

Lols!

Seriously, Crut? imagebombing pisses ppl off to high fuck. You suddenly go on an imagebombing (or a "I've got a hot chick waiting" posting) rampage even in the non-SB era and you're looking at some sort of ban.

Abbott, BECAUSE WE JUST SAW A THING THAT SAID "SUGGEST BAN," DIDN'T KNOW THERE WAS A NUMBER TO BE REACHED, ETC. Why do you assume everybody who is not jaymc knows everything about this place?

Morbs all the threads about new mods, SB systems, whatevs were classic clusterfucks that wld be pretty damn hard not to notice!

If you want no part of em, it's easy.

hey mods how many SBs do i have?

You said you knew about it anyway, through whatever Cassandra you were talking to at 77; you can't play ignernt here.

xp

Seriously, Crut?

Seriously, Stet. I never knew imagebombing was on the same level as making pervy comments on and offboard.

I tend to be online at different times than most ppl and only really read threads about music so I wouldn't really know. And I thought we were just putting in a request for Mod approval you know?

what about imagebombing is inherently "suicide by SB"

oh come on man. "it's not inherently courting suggest-ban to be incredibly disruptive"? really?

Abb, that was in the last month! Before that I was happily ig'nant.

Crut he was SUGGEST BANNED a mod can't tell you the whys & wherefores! stet ≠ 52 ILXors who decided that was the straw

Morbs you know if you don't know something you can always ask.

exactly, so people like tuomas & LJ are suggest banned without any legitimate reason. xpost

They post here now, don't they?

they can be really irritating, how is that not legitimate?

the ire that tuomas invokes is pretty hard for me to comprehend

in re: suicide by image-bomb: think about it man. you & some friends are sitting at a table having a talk. I show up, I decide your talk has gone far enough, and start holding up pictures I think are funny in front of your face, one after another. you're still to free to talk! hey, don't let me stop you, you're not obliged to pay any attention - look around 'em! you'd give me a suggest-punch-in-the-face and I'd deserve it. most of the image-bombing was exactly like what I've described: "I don't like this thread any more, fuck any of you who do." suggest ban is a PERFECT solution for people who think their having become sick of a discussion is reason enough to fuck up others' right to have that discussion.

They're banned for at least 51 legitimate reasons!

you can fucking ignore their posts xxxpost

or you can suggest that they be escorted out since they are being assholes. it's what you'd reasonably do at a party, and it makes sense to do it here.

I'm talking about LJ or Tuomas here

legitimate by what measure, though? There's two sides to this, for sure, but I think it's one of the strengths of SB that you can't go all legitimacy-lawyer about it. I watch what posts ppl click SB on, and it's almost universally stuff that boils down to "acting like a bit of a dick". For some people that's being creepy, for other people it's banging on and on about a topic and not actually engaging anyone else on it, for other people it's imagebombing.

Instead of a whole FAQ-load of "things that will get you banned", the threat of SB comes down to "don't act like a dick". You can say that you don't like the defintion of dickishness that the SBing masses are imposing, but I genuinely don't think it's an unreasonable or minority one, at least judging by how it's been used so far.

I know I'm being way more irritating than anyone on ILX ever btw

As for LJ: given that he's mostly stopped doing the things that got him SBs, and has stopped garnering SBs as a result and still seems to be a happy poster, that reads more like a success story than an argument for "SB MUST GO"

And it's nice to see that you've received zero SBs for it.

x-post.

Not by my (legitimate) reasoning, b/c I haven't SB'd you.

I know I'm being way more irritating than anyone on ILX ever btw

I find it lovable and have given you several lovingly-meant SBs in response

hahaha Keith!

haha thanks keith that's a relief actually

And it might point out that arguing your point doesn't get you SBs. Generally being a dick to other posters does.

anyway I guess I've made my ill-thought-out point about 5000 times on this thread, so I'm out till the next SB thread, catch u later

the point of SBs is to forgo argument about what is 'legitimate' and what isn't. there are no legitimacy standards anyone is beholden to, aside from blatant racism or personal attacks or whatever else the mods feel like enforcing. you can post whatever you want. you can be just as irritating to other people as you feel you should be. you can also move to bounce people for whatever standard of irritation they have met in your eyes. if 51 (fifty-one fucking people! that is a lot of people on a not-big board like this) agree with you, or did, at any time, that's as close to any 'community standard' ilx is likely to have.

xps, stet covered this basically

I think John and Goole are pretty much spot on to where I was at with this thing.

anyway I guess I've made my ill-thought-out point about 5000 times on this thread, so I'm out till the next SB thread, catch u later

You know, you don't have to haul it all back out even on the next SB thread. Much of ILX's present-day clusterfuckery is 100% recycled.

I wasn't serious, my ranting days are over

you can also move to bounce people for whatever standard of irritation they have met in your eyes.

this is a thing i really like about it

btw Crutz I think yr new username is A++ hilarious

I'm actually content with suggest ban as long as it keeps providing 51 jokes

i heard when you're SB'ed you go off to ILX heaven where you hang out with 51 virgins

I heard it was 51 happy robots

Not location specific, No rules: Welcome to ILX heaven ??????

51 lunas

Not sure what point you're making with that link, Crutis...? (Serious question.)

Unless I'm mistaken, he's riffing with Que re: the ILX paradise you go to after you've been suggest-banned.

D'oh! Obliviousness overtook me.

oh hey sorry i dropped out of the discussion for a while, but i was like selling stuff and making money (go economy go!)

just a couple of clarifications:

1 - i actually tempbanned ethan when i saw how fast his SB's were skyrocketing, but the damage was done and he kept getting SB votes from new people that came onto the threads
2 - tuomas accumulated a ton of his SB's for making a "funny" link to st0rmfr0nt, for the people that keep holding him up as an unbannable paragon of good behaviour.
3 - for the 50 bagazillionth time, Dom was banned, not SBed. again, i think this confusion comes from the fact that i mentioned the fact that due to multi-usernames he had also earned a SB after the fact, but he was banned by mod action.
4 - Bimble, on the other hand, was SBed due to someone (Matt DC I think) doing the math and realizing that he had topped the 51 mark. i think in the future this is the policy re:multiusernames if we catch it.

not really trying to make any points here, just committed to making sure that all the information is available to people on all sides of the issue

u know the multi-username thing is doubly complicated -- any number of SB's on one could overlap with those on another. i suppose the mods could cross-ref all the SB-ers names. did you?

yep

oh. well done!

wrt bimble most of them were on the active account in use when the most recent blow up occurred, so it was pretty easy to do

1 - i actually tempbanned ethan when i saw how fast his SB's were skyrocketing, but the damage was done and he kept getting SB votes from new people that came onto the threads

Are you saying you tried to circumvent the SB system by intervening because you thought the result of leaving it to act would be incorrect? (Serious question.)

Did cankles actually get SB-ed? I thought he was temp-banned by a mod.

he was temp banned a couple of diff times iirc, sb'd only once

1. i tried to intervene because i thought ethan was emotionally caught up in the moment (dom banning btw) and as a good mod, i was trying to cut down on the collateral damage. and yeah, mods are still going to be mods - i would temp anybody that was going on an image blitz, or behaving in any sort of way that was (and i know this might sound parental, i dont mean it that way) going to negatively impact themselves or others. we have temp banned plenty of other posters for similar reasons - bimble was temped before hitting the SB point as well. not saying i know more than ethan about the way he chooses to post obv, but it would be pretty shitty of me not to try to stave off a ban if i thought it could be avoided. I think it bears noting that seriously, mods are trying to make shit better on ilx, not worse. i would prefer that nobody got SBed. I'd prefer that everyone could manage to post in a way where nobody would SB them. this doesnt mean that SB isnt helpful or necessary, it means that in a perfect world, people would all find a way to work out their differences or whatever. GOOD LUCK USA! ILX!

2. yeah cankles got sbed.

xpost

going to significantly negatively impact themselves or others.

to clarify above

OK thanks jjjusten. I have absolutely no problem with that kind of modding. I think that's all we need, tbh. To me SB is a feature that aims to solve a problem that was never that serious, with a huge amount of collateral damage.

To clarify that, I have nothing but thanks and respect for the huge amount of time Keith has put into ILX, but SB does not solve the problem it was designed to solve (which I didn't perceive in the first place, fwiw). It has instead made things worse: no less clusterfucky or dramatic, less interesting, and a real cultural change for the worse. The wisdom of crowds is an unnecessary compromise when we already have the resources to maintain and police this site well (which mods did before, afaic). A few smart mods is 10x better.

And for what? I'm not a mod, and they tell us things are better from their p.o.v., but then I see things like jjjusten admitting that he tried to intervene before a SBing and I can't help thinking, shit, things were at least not significantly worse for them before this feature. With the help of threads like these, discussion now has reached the point where they've understandably circled the wagons and there is nothing doing, but c'mon. This sucks. I know Tuomas is a bore, but he's right. Sociopathic behaviour should be policed by mods as before, everyone else should enjoy life's rich tapestry.

(p.s. I think adding an anti-SB button would make things even worse. fishing for good or bad attention is the result, and it leads to the kind of cretinous/banal discussion that you get on digg.)

The SB feature always reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons where they all shock each other. The fact that only a handful of posters have gotten SB-ed shows that that worst case scenario isn't happening.

"A few smart mods are 10x better than us retards", I meant.

u ppl u horrible ppl *shakes fist in impotent rage*

I'm not a mod, and they tell us things are better from their p.o.v., but then I see things like jjjusten admitting that he tried to intervene before a SBing and I can't help thinking, shit, things were at least not significantly worse for them before this feature.

That's a bad example to make that assumption off of, considering that the sequence of critical events that happened (Dom getting banned, Ethan going on a rampage, John or another mod temp-banning Ethan) all would have occurred without the suggest-ban feature turned on.

all would have occurred without the suggest-ban feature turned on.

_exactly_. the problem it solves is one we already had licked.

not licking ethan or dom btw

I agree that a "suggest ban" feature is not very useful when a poster is going on a highly-visible rampage across all of the boards that requires immediate moderator attention.

hey HI DERE can u email me my sb total?

(Where it is helpful is that it allows the posting community to define what "acceptable posting" is without the mods. You're clicking on that link presumably because someone has said or done something that makes you wish they weren't posting anymore; that may be as specific as making offensive and/or intensely annoying comments about you or something you find important or as trivial as someone liking a band you hate. From what we've seen, the vast majority people using the system are not doing so frivolously, and the people who have been banned by it were doing things that make it understandable that 51 people would want them to stop.)

_exactly_. the problem it solves is one we already had licked.
banning someone who's on a rampage in the middle of borad drama isn't the problem SB solves. (although that said there have been periods when virtually any ban for any thing would have resulted in a hail of mod-aimed invective, and SB does help with that, even in what you'd think are clear-cut cases like imagebombs). xp

ok, that ethan thing was kind of a red herring and i regret mentioning it since you're focussing on it rather than the rest of my post.

my point was: a few mods did a better job of dealing with the behaviour we don't want, without getting rid of the stuff we do. as people (rightly imo) say, this is not a democracy. the posting community's idea of what is acceptable, at least in the average, is going to lead to an uninteresting site, almost by definition. if you do not already know what your idea of "acceptable behaviour" and you need the help of SB clicks to guide your hand then you should not become a benevolent dictator.

That a few mods were doing a better job sure wasn't the feeling I got from modreq in the pre-SB days. There were always threads like "BAN X", so some people were falling through the cracks unbanned, and there were often complaints about the justifications for banning people who were banned. SB helps with both of those problems.

As for uninteresting: people aren't SBing based on what people *say*, only *how* they say it -- ppl are getting SBd for acting like dicks. If that leads to a site where people don't act like dicks, then I don't have a problem with it. I know some ppl do, and that they want ILX to be almost a grown-up 4chan home for dicks and the thick-skinned only, but nobody who is responsible for this site shares that view, so it's going to be fought against.

but then I see things like jjjusten admitting that he tried to intervene before a SBing and I can't help thinking, shit, things were at least not significantly worse for them before this feature.

kind of bending my words here, im being pretty clear that i did what i would have done with or without SB in place - instead of an SB, we would have had a mod request clusterfuck with people demanding that e get temp-banned or whatever. also, your use of the word "admitting" connotes that i am getting my actions dragged out into the light somehow or fessing up to something, which im not. i just havent bothered to mention the specific related on board before. again, im just making all of the facts available because if people want to talk about this, its helpful if there arent any gray areas that can be misinterpreted.

xposts

As for uninteresting: people aren't SBing based on what people *say*, only *how* they say it

How do you know this?

(And I don't mean interesting in the "may you live in interesting times" sense.)

xp, yeah, sorry, that sentence got editted then pasted back in an old version which made it seem more like i had tricked you into admitting something terribly revealing.

but in that case surely there would not have been a mod request clusterfuck?

also, to reiterate, i can wholesale guarantee (speaking for myself) that there would be more perma-bans in effect right now than there are, and that is largely due to the SB system. maybe part of the problem is that i dont want to see mods as "benevolent dictators" - this vision of mods is what led to most of the "mods are nazis!" screamfests in the past, not terribly interested in going back to that.

xpost: we know that because we can see what posts people get sbanned for, and as incredulous as people seem to be about this, it is abundantly clear, particularly when a few choice posts lead to the majority of the ban votes.

xxpost

Because I see the posts people click SB on, and there's hardly ever anything innocuous or even controversial-but-said-genuinely. It's nearly always either being creepy, or abusive, or just blanket hollering and not engaging, or any of the other things that when you see people doing you think "they're being a dick, there". Challops or just honestly pushing your case doesn't get SBd (see Crut upthread)

jjjusten, you would have permabanned people who have been SBed, but you didn't because they got SBed?

xp I SB-ed someone for challops ... only one of two people I've pushed the button on.

but in that case surely there would not have been a mod request clusterfuck?

oh come on, pretty sure you've been posting to ilx long enough to remember the good old days!

and it isnt just to avoid clusterfucks either - although i would venture to say that the tone of ILX is generally better when opposing groups of posters aren't engaged in rageful back and forths about who should or shouldn't be banned. also, i think most posters would prefer not to have to watch people make the case for what a scumbag they are in a public forum.

xpost: no, i would have made the judgement call to permaban some people who arent currently permabanned.

it didn't take, or it didn't last. xp

xpost: no, i would have made the judgement call to permaban some people who arent currently permabanned.

Probably missing something, but i don't understand what difference SB made in those cases then? Morbs notwithstanding (he is presumably not who you're talking about here) none of the SBed posters who've returned have moderated their behaviour as a result of the SBing (LJ has grown up, troo, but that would hopefully have happened anyway) and claiming that the sociopaths have become nicer because of the new moderation technique seems like wishful thinking a la "war in Iraq made Libya disarm".

i dunno gabbneb's been a lot improved since his suggest bannings--it's almost like the dude isn't even here

what is gabbneb's current status? i have lost track?

upper upper middle class, i think

yeah i love gabbneb now

^______^

not speaking for jj here, but if someone's pissing you off as a mod, and you think "would drop the hammer here" but they've only got 3 SBs, it definitely gives you pause. Dom lasted for a good while because his account didn't accrue SBs due to a bug, so he just got temped again and again. When we found the bug and discovered he was already well past 50, that changed.

I don't think sociopaths will all necessarily change because of SB, but they'll have to try if they want to stay in an SB world. and I think of those that have, SB has played a part in it. It's much harder to justify continuing to act shit when a chunk of posters have voted for you to go than it is when you can just shrug off a ban as the result of a nazi mod you disagree with and nothing you need to take into consideration.

yeah but then you can blame it on a secret clique acting on a policy/tool that you're ignorant of...

In fairness, only one person has done that.

That makes a lot of sence, thanks stet.

I guess my disagreement then is not whether SB makes moderation better target a certain kind of asshole (you and jj have convinced me that it does), but whether you should be targetting those low level assholes in the first place. But that's not something I can argue with. You want the site you want, and you have the server.

xp: on the other hand, one could feel oppressed by the whims of what one feels is a thin-skinned minority of anonymous lurkers. I'd be interested to know whether most of the SBs are from active posters or from people who rarely post/lurkers. ... Not to revisit a subject I know has been discussed at length in previous threads like this. I'm just curious to know the numbers.

i think we should be able to ban people who annoy us and thus SB is a good feature, and i say that as someone who is nearing the big 4-0

and as a few others have pointed out, the idea that there are thousands of regular posters on ilx is insane. i'd be shocked if we were even above like 120

i don't have those numbers, but I usually recognise the majority of names of people giving out SBs. It's not being done by a silent choir, I'm sure of that.

I don't think it's whims, either. But as for thin-skinned -- you can either have a board that only the thick skinned can bear to be on, or you can have one with both thin and thick-skinned posters, at the cost of the aggressive having to rein in their more extreme impulses. I don't see that as a huge cost. The things that have been implicitly asked of those already SBd aren't totally onerous.

ILX has veered about on a spectrum from cuddlestein to prison yard in its time, but the advantage of SB is the equilibrium it is finding now comes directly from the posters themselves and not via mod opinion, for the first time. xp

It's way more than 120 dude - I'd say we were probably knocking around the 250-350 mark at least. (xpost)

anyway, the difference that SB has made is that it allows me to let the community set its own standards and become somewhat self-policing. if i hit a post that strikes me as totally out of line, i dont have to be the judge/jury/executioner. everyone has certain flashpoints, even mods. im not going to get into any specifics for obvious reasons, but there have been things said on ILX that i consider totally without mercy bannable that havent resulted in bans. sometimes further review of the situation makes me reverse how i feel about them, but often it doesn't. so what im doing here is making a statement of fact: there are permabans that have not occurred because SB puts a different system into place.

the reason im clarifying this is that one of the complaints about SB is that it has driven posters away from the site etc - my argument is that there are more people posting here than there would be without it.

holy shit like 20 xposts or something.

sarahel: almost every SB vote has been from posters whose names i recognized immediately

thanks jj.

i feel like i've said my piece and you guys have responded fairly. hand jobs all round.

see now that's why I became a mod in the first place

One thing that confuses me is that a couple of posters - at least according to the admin log - have been permabanned for making what seemed like somewhat joking posts of a racist nature, while other posters have done the same and not suffered that treatment.

now i feel weird that you guys can tell where we sb and i'll be more judicious with my sbs in the future

maybe harbl and I balance each other out.

What confuses you? That they're not all perfectly consistent? The whole thing is done by a biggish group of people (apart from ILX System RIP), and there's no giant Book Of Rules that says what is and isn't acceptable, and with some posters context and history matters a lot, so whether a ban's by SB or by mod, to expect them all to be uber-consistent seems irrational.

obviously the SBs are not going to be consistent. These were mod actions that seemed to indicate some sort of zero tolerance policy.

There are plenty of disagreements even between mods about what should be done in any given case (another reason SBs help massively), so no, mod actions aren't ever going to be consistent, either. (And calls for absolute consistency just lead to board lawyering "but I didn't X!" in my experience.)

That said, mods here are virtually never capricious, (which would be much worse), and do very much aim at consistency.

gotta be a bracket record for me

thanks for the explanation.

One thing that confuses me is that a couple of posters - at least according to the admin log - have been permabanned for making what seemed like somewhat joking posts of a racist nature, while other posters have done the same and not suffered that treatment.

― free jazz and mumia (sarahel), Wednesday, August 5, 2009 9:47 PM (47 minutes ago)

can you give me any examples? if you are talking about pipecock a)he is tempbanned b)at this point any hotlinks to st00rmfro0nt are not going to be tolerated, and will result in post deletion and temp ban as far as i am concerned. hotlinking to a wh1te p0w3r site that is notorious for checking their referral logs is just never acceptable. if you are talking about inconsistencies re: the fact that i mentioned tuomas doing the same thing and not getting mod temped, i can guarantee that he (or anyone) will not get cut any slack if it were to happen in the future - this is not inconsistency, it is a permanent change in (my) modding policy.

he was one, and there was another one a couple months ago/last month - british poster - I think it was some sort of cankles backlash.

oh yeah, i remember that now. i think he was trying to make a point, but did it by using um TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE racial slurs. that shouldn't be a permaban though, even if the approach was pretty thickheaded and rong. let me go find out more and work on it.

btw, these sorts of concerns are what IMP is supposed to be all about, and mods are not infallible (oh hey look im one case in point), so in the future if something like this is bothering you plz bring it to our attention.

it only bothered me a little ... I thought there might have been some sort of zero-tolerance policy for stuff like that, or that it was a combination of the slurs and attacking another poster, though it was in response to that poster using misogynist language and attacking another poster, and that poster's modban was quickly reversed. I thought that was a bit unfair, but then there was some engrossing thread full of lols and I forget about the incident.

the sb system consists of too many arbitrary numbers made more problematic by its cumulative nature (a time limit is an improvement but still just a best guess). the fact that it was implemented by a single person without any input is more reason to question it. the "but it worked!" justification falls flat with me because the same actions/bans could have been made by moderators but for specific reasons without the guesswork of "well some people clicked the message here on this thread and some here on this other thread four days ago, etc." I also cannot think of a case where sb's as notifications for mods wouldn't have worked and allowed for a subjective review of the user's behavior including "history and context".

arguing against the sb system is arguing in favor of moderator judgment.

the fact that it was implemented by a single person without any input is more reason to question it.

are you missing the fact that this "single person" is also the one that implemented um nearly every other aspect of the current ilx code? this is basically a red herring of the highest degree.

i am going after the blue text next

oh also:

the "but it worked!" justification falls flat with me because the same actions/bans could have been made by moderators but for specific reasons without the guesswork of "well some people clicked the message here on this thread and some here on this other thread four days ago, etc." I also cannot think of a case where sb's as notifications for mods wouldn't have worked and allowed for a subjective review of the user's behavior including "history and context".

the difference is that, like i keep saying, there is an added level of input from the non-mods that post on the site. the only other difference between this and the current situation is the fact that the system is automated. every SB is vetted by mods.

arguing against the sb system is arguing in favor of moderator judgment.

yeah except several of the same people arguing against SB were the ones arguing for more democratic control of sitewide bans.

we can put all the layers of interpretation we want on this issue, but the truth is that nearly every way that users can be policed/banned/chided/whatever is going to be met with opposition by people that like that user, or people that only interact with that user on threads in which their behaviour is totally innocuous. SB or mod edict or random daily ban culls aren't going to change this fact.

xpost

btw nobody is ever fucking happy, these threads make me feel like a cranky mod who does not keep having to explain why they are kicking out somebody for offboard flaming or something as though it were part of their "quirky personality." Just so you know, all of you are filthy animals who do thinks like link to santorum gifs and white supremacist websites and you need someone to tempban you and maybe you should just like it. If you were civilized you wouldn't need to make all your friends on the internet.

the sb system consists of too many arbitrary numbers

are you proposing that we commission multiple studies to determine what the right # of sb's would be, or put it to a f**king vote, in either case what class of mentalism is this

the fact that it was implemented by a single person without any input
This isn't really how it happened. The idea came up during a long chat Keith and I were having about the situation where a vocal minority can claim their view is the dominant one just because they're the loudest, and how sometimes quieter posters just get drowned out. We were also talking about the "BAN X" problem, and also how mods could find it difficult to act because of the shitstorms that would result. I'd mentioned the idea earlier of favouriting posts, like an auto-excelsior, and then one of us -- I can't remember which, i think it might have been Keith -- came up with the idea of voting for bans.

A few code bumps later, Keith had put it in, and there was a lot of mod discussion about it, with both pro and anti views, some quite strong. After it had been running a while -- and it has evolved with poster input too, it hasn't just been left exactly as it was -- there was a much more positive view of it, because it had helped in a number of areas.

the "but it worked!" justification falls flat with me because the same actions/bans could have been made by moderators
I don't think the same bans could have been made by mods, a) because SB gives the bans a legitimacy that a single mod action doesn't necessarily have, and b) SB handles the BAN X case where a lot of posters are getting a bit pissed off but the poster hasn't done a single thing bad enough to earn a clear ban.

but for specific reasons without the guesswork
Who is doing the guessing? If it's that other posters don't know why a person was banned, I think this problem is the same however the ban was dished out and the way we deal with it is the same.

I also cannot think of a case where sb's as notifications for mods wouldn't have worked
SBs do still act as notifications for mods. If you're arguing against the auto-51, I don't think that's a huge deal -- even if it wasn't auto, I imagine the mods would set a similar cut-off and take action against a poster who hit that cut-off. The auto-ban is just a convenience thing to my mind, it doesn't mean that this is a hands-off process: mods scrutinise SBs pretty closely, especially as a user gets closer to the limit. It's totally not an unexamined process.

arguing against the sb system is arguing in favor of moderator judgment.
That's a bit catch-22, because a whole host of people used to argue very strongly against moderator judgement, some even against the whole idea of mods on ILX having any power at all, except maybe to fix broken HTML, regardless of who the mods at the time were. SB is one answer to that. But if you can't have ban by mod or by popular vote the argument just becomes "ILX should never have bans", and that's not realistic.

zillions of xp

are you proposing that we commission multiple studies to determine what the right # of sb's would be, or put it to a f**king vote, in either case what class of mentalism is this

― the evil genius of Zaiger Genetics (J0hn D.), Wednesday, August 5, 2009 6:20 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

all of those ideas pale in comparison to one guy picking the number out of nowhere

just curious where we are now in terms of SB count statistics. How many posters are close to the magic number?

The number isn't hard-coded, it's a variable in the site setup. Keith guessed at the initial value, but he was pretty clear that he expected a bit of trial and error to find the best place for it. That 50 worked out to be a pretty good guess of too-high-for-a-clique-to-hit but not so high as to be unrealistic was good luck.
xp

sarahel: not really sure why this is all that germane to the discussion at hand, but factoring in both the speed at which the sbs have been coming and the totals um basically none?

which is really how its supposed to work, so im not actually surprised.

I don't think the same bans could have been made by mods, a) because SB gives the bans a legitimacy that a single mod action doesn't necessarily have, and b) SB handles the BAN X case where a lot of posters are getting a bit pissed off but the poster hasn't done a single thing bad enough to earn a clear ban.

Notfications could be used in the same way in both of these instances. And in this case "the poster hasn't done a single thing bad enough to earn a clear ban" you've got to wonder if gabbnebb the poster deserved the banning then? honestly I don't know how you deal with that ... it is the genius of the undercover troll.

SBs do still act as notifications for mods. If you're arguing against the auto-51, I don't think that's a huge deal -- even if it wasn't auto, I imagine the mods would set a similar cut-off and take action against a poster who hit that cut-off.

to me, that would be more fair and allow mods to dish out admin actions that fit the situation. (I know, they do this anyway, but it aint the same.)

xp JJ: It's germane in the sense that there seems to be this recurring theory/feeling that the SB system would result in lower tolerance for dickery: that there would be a constant rate of SB-ing with posters that were relatively less offensive becoming more offensive in the community's eyes once the worst offenders were gone. This is as opposed to the theory/feeling that the standards of dickery would remain the same, and that lesser offenders would not be SB-ed any more than when the worst offenders were still posting.

wouldn't that happen more with just mod bans? mod bans are supposed to be based on community standards, suggest bans are based on the standards of 51 individuals, whose levels of tolerance probably stay the same on average

which would happen more with just mod bans?

(I know, they do this anyway, but it aint the same.)
How is it different, though? (Genuine Q) Nobody gets *near* an auto-ban with a mod knowing about it, and if there are other actions that could be taken to head it off, they are (like JJ's timeout of Ethan, or ppl getting banned from one thread). The automatic-ness of it is in practice little more than a safety -- I suppose it could catch some sheepfuxor going nuts while Jim's in the pub and the rest of us are sleeping.

progressively lowering tolerance, if mods are supposed to just ban outliers rather than people who are annoying to a large number of individuals. i dunno. xp

sarahel: i think there's the same tolerance for dickishness. There's definitely not a consistent rate of SBing, and the trigger level isn't getting any lower. ILX by and large lets a whole lot of stuff slide that other wetter forums would be all metatalkin' about, which is how it should be, and that doesn't seem to be changing.

what's the highest number of SB's one individual has given out, if it's easily available?

xp harbl - I agree.
xp stet - that's what jjusten's stats seem to imply

huh i thought i disagreed with you!? oh well! good enough.

No, I'm pretty much ok with SB over mod ban, as long as people are given proper warning and made aware of what triggered the SB's and that the number required is a reasonably large percentage of active ilxors, which sounds like more or less how it's being handled.

Also the "b" key on my laptop has been sticky today.

sb

alot of sb clearing up by jj has made it clear that the sb method is pretty good imo.

extra effort to not keep typing suggest an

SB arms race ITT

How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy?
There is no monopoly in common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the SugBanners love their children too

what does ITT stand for?

"in this thread"

I thought it was this for a long time:

http://www.ripoffreport.com/images/reports/81337.jpg

I was confused why there were so many threads devoted to International Telephone & Telegraph, personally.

How is it different, though? (Genuine Q) Nobody gets *near* an auto-ban with a mod knowing about it, and if there are other actions that could be taken to head it off, they are (like JJ's timeout of Ethan, or ppl getting banned from one thread). The automatic-ness of it is in practice little more than a safety -- I suppose it could catch some sheepfuxor going nuts while Jim's in the pub and the rest of us are sleeping.

If its so secondary then why is it necessary? as much as we're told that auto-bans are vetted, it appears that these are judgments made after the system acts. a mod shouldn't be temp banning ethan in an effort to save him from an sb, the mod should decide the ban. the auto-ban is too under-developed to play a part in the admin role of the board. if its meant to work as a hive-mind representative, then it needs to be adapting to a host of different features that make up the hive.

It's not necessary, though --without it the whole SB system would work exactly the way it does now, except occasionally someone would sit past 50 longer than they otherwise would.

a mod shouldn't be temp banning ethan in an effort to save him from an sb, the mod should decide the ban.
i don't think he was taking action to "save" him, but rather do what you wanted -- take appropriate action.

In the other case, where someone hits 50 and just now the autoban kicks in but you'd prefer a mod took action, there's not really a lot of room for manoeuvre, by mod or ILX System. There's only a limited amount of tools in the mod arsenal. It really is just automation of what would happen anyway.

i think once someone hits 51 there should be a poll... mostly lol but kinda serious!

I can't help but think people opposed to the SB system are just opposed to board moderation in general, don't want anyone to tell anyone else to civilize their discourse, and would rather have one person to yell at than 51 people in the case of any one particular banning.

actually I strongly oppose the SB system but appreciate the effect it's had on my own posting and general awareness of others, if that makes any sense

stockholm syndrome

xp in other words, you're a masochist.

I would like to understand that Louis having obviously seen the effect.

you love the sb's, you dirty bastard. beg for one. beg.

uh, xpost?

51 Active Users

I think I mean, having seen the effect it's has on you in an obvious way. I think it's been really positive.

# 51 on the world heritage site list is a place called ban chiang.

give it its props, when 51 people express their disapproval of one's presence, and then 40+ of them restate this expression even after an absence, it is somewhat akin to having a rather knobbly baseball bat vigorously applied to one's temple every time one logs on. sooner or later, even the stargazing lunkheads among us had to notice

aw cheers K! and loooool d-mac. and lol crut, attention to detail makes the world go round. and lol d-mac again. if there were a suggest props system everybody's favourite Irish Spurs fan would be clocking tonight

it is somewhat akin to having a rather knobbly baseball bat vigorously applied to one's temple every time one logs on.

<3 and all man, but i had originally lobbied for this.

My favourite Irish Spurs fan is my neighbour Áine btw

lol

Louis, I think this stuff does you the world of good. You are still here and people want you to still be here.

(am i the only one not to have noticed any real change in messr jaggr? maybe it's cos i don't read ILM?)

Or this?

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/18/article-1162554-03F75F34000005DC-698_468x328.jpg

Also Darraghmac, as far as I can see, you also get what I was meaning by this system... Sorry for not crediting you with that earlier.

cheeky fucker- he finally clicks that making every clusterfuck thread about him was drawing the SB action, so now he's trying to make it about me. sets a dangerous precedent imo.

Not a change in kind, but in degree.

I never change for you, D-mac. I'm always the same gambolling jackanapes you know and love. Whether I vote for you in the forthcoming D-mac vs Áine poll is a different matter.

xpost to keith- that i understand the system? or that i'm much more pleasant all of a sudden?

BAN DARRAGHMAC

Maybe it's both, I'm not sure. I was kind of vaguely aware that you might've changed your approach, but not consciously sure... I think I meant the former, that you understand what I was trying to achieve with the system.

Áine is totes awesome btw and I can make a really long list of great things about her (that are 100% true) that will guarantee her victory

keep up, IKR. the SB function has rendered those calls obselete

lol

I'll think about it harder when I'm less completely drunk.

fwiw D-mac became an A+ poster a few months back. the change was barely perceptible but i think it involved channeling his energies slightly away from antagonism and slightly more towards lolz.

i was gonna say, i'm not sure either is true in any case, keith.

i think SB is a neat enough function, though rather than cheerleading for it i'm just bemused by the fact that mods/yourself get stick when a ban occurs as a result of people using it.

I wouldn't presume to second guess where your head's at, darraghmac, but in my opinion, right now, I'd be where Louis's take is...

tbh, i've merely acknowledged and welcomed our new mod overlords. life's better now.

soon crut will join and the circle will be complete

this is like the end of that novel

george orwell's 51

I think that one was banned at my school.

oooh explain the process of how in depth, please

ray bradbury's (searching) far and high for 51

that deserves banning tbh

You worked hard at that!

ends, means, justification

must try to catch this and report back, if possible. feel it might enlighten us as to what mod discussions are like once the 51 hammer drops on someone.

http://www.jeffreyweissman.com/images/current_events/51-flyer-front-300.jpg

The Crying of Lot 51

51 Angry Men

so, is the point of ilx so that ppl can make pynchon jks and everyone gets it?

The Taking Of Pelham 51-2-3

KNOW51NG

Congratulations, User: [Tiern@n]. You have now reached ILX: Level 2

Curtis' view is his view. It's entirely valid and I have plenty of respect for his view, I think I ideologically differ in that I don't think that 'freedom' means that anyone should always be able to do whatever they want, but that society rightly wants to put restraints on what people are and are not allowed to do. J0hn D describes it brilliantly upthread re: imagebombing. My view is that there needs to be a check on this sort of thing - that you should think before you post - that your rights don't eclipse the rights of others, which is quite different from your opinion, which you are entitled to. This is particularly difficult on the internet when you can pretty much get away with whatever you like, because it's so anonymous. However, this is not everyone's view. Some people's view is that freedom means that you ought to be able to do whatever you want, which is fine; that's their view, I just can't say I agree.

what gives me a kick is that this thread will be back to being a cluster when i wake up tomorrow, with this brief interval of crappy jokes based on an extremely thin premise hiding out somewhere in the skipping 13498 messages link

lol was just thinking that

51 Little Uncool Racist Epithets

can't remember who posted this above (maybe stet), but this is OTM-

I think it's one of the strengths of SB that you can't go all legitimacy-lawyer about it.

2051

although clearly the cluster rolls on. are these threads just inevitable around any form of enforcement (automatic or otherwise) on ILX ? they seem to have been a feature for as long as i can remember anyway, so perhaps any line of argument that says things ought to be changed to avoid them is missing the point.

ooh that's a good one IKR

I don't think SB has made anything better or worse re: clusterf***s. I didn't expect it to. But I think there is a bunch of better stuff as a result of it, nonetheless.

never mind that- fahrenheit 4 51

(5)1, robot

simpsons did it xp

I don't know who is and isn't American, but this thread is as good as a proof as anything of why there will never be a liberal party in the US.

"major" party of cawse

because of the gross displays of fundamentalist Christianity?

<3 u jesus!

i am american and i love the suggest ban

I am an American woman and I eat corn using the lathe method.

"To-morr-ow be-longs to meeeee...."

xp

Morbs reminding me that it's been too long since I listened to Siouxsie & the Banshees "The Lord's Prayer"

51 active users!

When I noticed the starting page now shows how many messages you've posted, that gave me an idea: the value of a suggest ban should be weighed according to how many posts the suggest banner has made. So, for example, a SB from a poster who's made 20000 posts should count for more than a SB from a poster with 20 posts. This would effectively cancel the possibility of sock puppets or lurkers getting someone banned, and the opinions of regular posters (who suffer more from trolling and dickery than some occasional poster who only reads, say, the techno bobbins threads on ILM) would be taken more seriously. For example, if Ned decides to click SB on someone, that person should be immediately banned.

would effectively cancel the possibility of sock puppets or lurkers getting someone banned

I think it was pretty clear in yesterdays discussion that this isn't happening anyway.

if that happens i'll just post 15,000 nonsense posts on the church or something so my sb's will be worth as much as tuomas's

I think it could be something like this:

100-500 posts = your suggest ban weighs 0,1 "objective" suggest bans

500-1000 posts = your suggest ban weighs 0,25 "objective" suggest bans

1000-2500 posts = 0,5 "objective" suggest bans

2500-10000 posts = 1 "objective" suggest ban

10000-20000 posts = 2 "objective" suggest bans

20000-30000 posts = 3 "objective" suggest bans

30000-40000 posts = 4 "objective" suggest bans

...and so on.

Maybe we can set up a market for sb power.

if that happens i'll just post 15,000 nonsense posts on the church or something so my sb's will be worth as much as tuomas's

If you actually bother to do that, then I think you deserve a rise in your SB total. It takes helluva lot more effort than registering a sock puppet anyway.

But registering a sock puppet wouldn't make your SBs worth anything!

the church would suddenly become compulsive reading if that happened to be fair

But registering a sock puppet wouldn't make your SBs worth anything!

Yes, my point was that with my system abusing SBs would be much more difficult. Now all it takes to get one full SB is to register a sock puppet, whereas in my system you would have to register one, and then make 2500 pointless posts, which takes much more effort.

what he's saying is it's already hard to abuse....

like, a sock puppet's sb is already worth 0

Also, this would put a stop to the argument about whether 51 SBs is a significant number compared to the number of active ILXors, because regular ILXors vote would count for more than that of occasional posters.

It's pretty obvious the mods are completely on top of this SB thing and that the SBs are not coming from socks!

like, a sock puppet's sb is already worth 0

What gives you this impression? Everyone with a registered account has the right to SB, and I'm sure even the mods can't tell all the sock puppets among thousands of registered users.

Yes they can.

Anway, the sock puppet thing is a side issue, the most important thing is that it would make the SB system more fair, as regular posters are the one who are most likely to be negatively affected by trolls and assholes.

if you don't recognize a name you can click the username and find other usernames with the same ip. if you are a mod. i never need to do this though, because sockpuppets are welcome on ask dr. freud.

i think more weight should be given to posters who are easily annoyed tbh

so, tuomas:

mods shouldn't have full ban power, as it's undemocratic.

users shouldn't have ban power, as it's mob rule.

some users should have more ban power than others, to reflect their worth to ILX.

is there any part of this that i've maybe misunderstood?

This would effectively cancel the possibility of sock puppets or lurkers getting someone banned

There are problems with SB, and this seems like it would be one in principle, but it turns out not to be in practice (see this thread and others).

For example, if Ned decides to click SB on someone, that person should be immediately banned.

Uh, no.

There are valuable posters who have just recently joined ilx, such as for example sarahel who might have a couple hundred posts. Whereas there have been cases of good ilx posters of long standing who have turned into real jerks.

There are lots of problems with Tuomas's suggestion that can perhaps be worked around by changing exactly how weights are assigned to each SB in some very clever way that better reflects his goal, but the fact is, it solves a problem with the SB system that simply doesn't exist.

such as for example sarahel who might have a couple hundred posts

PER HOUR you mean ;-)

so, tuomas:

mods shouldn't have full ban power, as it's undemocratic.

users shouldn't have ban power, as it's mob rule.

some users should have more ban power than others, to reflect their worth to ILX.

is there any part of this that i've maybe misunderstood?

Well, I think the whole SB system sucks, so the best thing to do would be to get rid of it. But apparently that's not happening. The second best option would be to make an estimate of the number of active posters, and make the number needed for a suggest ban to be 50% of those posters, because the number 51 seems to be pulled out of a hat, and is definitely too small. This change would make it truly a democratic ban. But it doesn't look like this is happening either, so I tried to make a suggestion how the SB system could reflect the number of regular posters instead of working arbitrarily.

Posting more doesn't necessarily make you more valuable to ILX. I have been known to post far, far too much in my time. Surely all the extra posts should count as demerits? Quality not quantity, as KKVG says.

such as for example sarahel who might have a couple hundred posts

PER HOUR you mean ;-)

Okay, here's another solution: the number of "objective" SBs you have is calculated according to how many posts per day you make in average. This would mean newbies aren't discriminated, if they've become active posters.

i think you should be the only mod tuomas, with full sb power worth 51 every time.

To be honest, yesterdays posting between caek, stet, keith, jjjusten, hidere, et al. finally fully convinced me that the SB system is a right and good way of doing things. I just want to say that right out. If there was a "Suggest Rad" button, I would click it for all of you who spelled your arguments out so well yesterday. It's worth a read, for anyone who hasn't.

boy it took this thread a long time to troll Tuomas into his permanent-response-loop but once that goal was met he really delivered the goods

What do you mean "permanent response lopp"? I haven't really rehashed my old arguments rather than offered a bold, innovative new solution to this whole problem! And yet I'm being treated like the Church treated Galilei.

Tuomas, your solution would not solve the problem you claim it would solve without serious work, and that problem does not exist. Do you see?

jjjusten has always been pretty good value in explaining this all on his own, tbh.

tuomas, at what stage does stating your opinion clearly begin to be enough? and don't bring the church into this, or i'm gonna fall out with the mods again and i've made such progress that'd be a disaster on a personal level.

So you think an SB from a poster who's posted once should weigh the same as an SB from someone who's regularly posted here for 9 years?

(x-post)

i think so. certainly, you've not made any case otherwise, other than believing it yourself.

for some reason i am lolling really hard

because you are watching a master at work. it's like an old wrinkly samurai getting you to fight him to prove he can kick your ass, even though you know perfectly well he's a samurai

Did you know that the Church actually sb'd Galileo, using an elaborate system involving wooden pegs, down pillows, and bread crumbs? It's all spelled out in this recent biography.

he was the only guy ever to be sb'd for expressing unpopular opinions

So you think an SB from a poster who's posted once should weigh the same as an SB from someone who's regularly posted here for 9 years?

What problem would it solve if it didn't?

i think so. certainly, you've not made any case otherwise, other than believing it yourself.

Okay, think of ILX as a little village. Now, one of the villagers has been causing trouble, making other villagers irritated, so a village council has been called in to decide whether this person should be banished from the village. Would you say that a tourist who just happens to be staying overnight at the local B&B should have a vote in the issue of throwing this villager out?

Please restrict your answer to problems that exist in the real world.

What makes you say 51 is definitely too small, Tuomas?

It depends on what's for breakfast. xxp

Keith has already given me a souped-up Suggest Ban function with lasers, a flamethrower and neon pink go-faster stripes, so ner.

What makes you say 51 is definitely too small, Tuomas?

Because no way is it 50% of regular posters, hence it's not really democratic at all. (Plus non-regular posters can click SB too.)

It's got a bottle opener on it as well, that's useful.

The "tourists" in your metaphor are not clicking the SB button, Tuomas, as the mods have said and as we've reminded you.

Look, I don't think the SB system is a net gain for the site, and it definitely has its downsides for me, as I made clear last night, but you're talking about altering it (both from a design and implementation p.o.v.) to solve a problem that literally does not exist.

Many people who read the boards are lurkers. They're not lurkers, they just don't post very much. It's a little harsh to call them 'tourists' if they've been reading for six years.

And the thing about these people, who don't post much - they don't post much because they don't have the rock hard skin required to be a regular ilx poster. I'd imagine if you were in that position, SB would be a godsend, and you'd be pretty unhappy about having your contribution to it marginalized.

The "tourists" in your metaphor are not clicking the SB button, Tuomas, as the mods have said and as we've reminded you.

Has there ever been a case where a mod has removed SBs from someone's total because they were made by unfamiliar posters? I'm asking this seriously.

Would you say that a tourist who just happens to be staying overnight at the local B&B should have a vote in the issue of throwing this villager out?

'tourists' don't get SB powers, but people that have just moved into town the week before do, if we want to make this even worth going with (good grief what am i saying)

I have removed several Suggest Bans from, for example, known sockpuppets and users registered the previous day and with 0 posts to their name, yes. On one occasion it actually prevented a poster from falling over the 52 mark. It's usually incredibly obvious when there's a sockpuppet at work and yes, those SBs are removed.

Because no way is it 50% of regular posters, hence it's not really democratic at all.
Even if it were 50%, I don't think that'd change its democraticness very much. But I don't think the level it's at is very far from representative: the turnout's a lot higher than many polls here get.

(Plus non-regular posters can click SB too.)
As I said upthread, SBs get a lot of scrutiny, but it's done by mods not by algorithm. If someone with no posts who only signed up last month SBs someone for something innocuous, that's not going to carry a lot of weight. It'll most likely get deleted. Whereas if, I dunno, estela SBs someone, I'm going to take notice. Also: it's not just posting history we look at -- if someone's been reading this site every day for 2 years, I think there SBs should count just as much as some hyper-poster's.

jjusten, upthread: "almost every SB vote has been from posters whose names i recognized immediately"

like ten clusterfuck threads back another mod said that when they looked at SB totals they did disregard ones that were from sockpuppets &c, which i'm guessing as a class includes people who are suspicious cos they appear never to have posted here.

'tourists' don't get SB powers, but people that have just moved into town the week before do, if we want to make this even worth going with (good grief what am i saying)

Okay, let's say the villager who's fate is being decided has a Tourette's Syndrome. The people who've lived in the village for long know this and have gotten used to it, that's just the way he is, and he means no harm. But the new villager doesn't know about the Tourette's, so he thinks this person should be kicked out because he's saying all those awful things all the time. Is that fair?

I have removed several Suggest Bans from, for example, known sockpuppets and users registered the previous day and with 0 posts to their name, yes. On one occasion it actually prevented a poster from falling over the 52 mark. It's usually incredibly obvious when there's a sockpuppet at work and yes, those SBs are removed.

Okay, thanks for this info.

OK, you just need to stick to ILX and not traipse off to The Sound of Music of the Damned.

xxp, No. The mods would act appropriately. You do not need to come up with an algorithm to ensure this.

Because no way is it 50% of regular posters, hence it's not really democratic at all.
Even if it were 50%, I don't think that'd change its democraticness very much.

You don't think a majority vote is democratic?

Okay, let's say the villager who's fate is being decided has a Tourette's Syndrome. The people who've lived in the village for long know this and have gotten used to it, that's just the way he is, and he means no harm. But the new villager doesn't know about the Tourette's, so he thinks this person should be kicked out because he's saying all those awful things all the time. Is that fair?

Yes. Everyone in the village has the same rights.

so he thinks this person should be kicked out because he's saying all those awful things all the time. Is that fair?

This thing isn't run by automatons. It wouldn't be fair if the villagers actually kicked the guy out, but that's not going to happen either here or in the village.

You don't think a majority vote is democratic?
I think that an election can have a 27% turnout and still *be* democratic.

it takes a village to suggest a ban

loool

Basically Tuomas you're just saying that people who don't post as much are less worthy than people who post a lot, which is not true.

if we needed 50% of regular posters to sb someone, it would never happen. but i guess that's what you want.

We'd never agree on a definition of "regular," for one thing. (no poop jokes plz)

You don't think a majority vote is democratic?
I think that an election can have a 27% turnout and still *be* democratic.

Okay, once someone gets 51 SBs, there should be an automatic poll to decide whether or not he really gets banned. That way it would be like a democratic election, because now it isn't.

oh man, beliefs

The people who've lived in the village for long know this and have gotten used to it, that's just the way he is, and he means no harm. But the new villager doesn't know about the Tourette's, so he thinks this person should be kicked out because he's saying all those awful things all the time. Is that fair?

so, there's one vote to kick him out. what's the problem?

But what if it's the decisive vote? What if there's a family of new villagers with 10 kids, and they all get to vote?

what turnout would be necessary to declare such a poll valid?
should everyone be allowed to vote?
should the condemned be allowed to vote? should each vote count as one vote regardless of user?

tuomas veering dangerously close to the kind of rhetoric i hear not very nice people using in local politics all the time.

Last time the whole thing hinged on one vote, Mr Fuckshitcocksucker got thrown out of the village for no apparent reason.

I think Tuomas needs an enforced break so he can devote all his energies to coming up with the perfect shit metaphor for a problem that doesn't exist.

But what if it's the decisive vote? What if there's a family of new villagers with 10 kids, and they all get to vote?

Then the dude with Tourette's has to go off to a remote clinic for a month where he may or may not get treatment while the rest of the village yells for at most a couple of days about how unfair the situation is, then everyone goes back to their lives.

People would take this argument more seriously if it had ever been in danger of happening ever, by the way.

what turnout would be necessary to declare such a poll valid?
should everyone be allowed to vote?
should the condemned be allowed to vote? should each vote count as one vote regardless of user?

There would be no lower limit to turnout, just like in real democratic elections. If few people care about the banning, and the condemned wins the vote by, say, 3 votes to 2 votes, then the banning probably wasn't necessary since so few people cared about it. And if mods can indeed weed out sock puppets, then every user should have just one vote.

Thank you for your suggestion.

I don't think it would impossible to implement, would it? An automatic "Should user X be banned?" poll generated when user X gets 51 SBs. That way it would truly be democratic.

Tuomas, you're talking about two things now:

i) changing the threshold for SBs.
ii) refurendum re: temp-banning when enough SBs have been collected
iii) this retarded weighting system which wouldn't solve an imaginary problem

Re: these:

i) i can get behind in principle, although the mods have way, way, way, more information and experience about what is the right level than we do, and, if we have to have an SB system then i am happy to trust them to set it correctly.
ii) shasta suggested this upthread. my instinct is against it because i trust the mods to exercise discretion (and wish they did more) but I don't think it's a trivially bad idea.
iii) your retarded weighting system wouldn't solve an imaginary problem

If few people care about the banning, and the condemned wins the vote by, say, 3 votes to 2 votes, then the banning probably wasn't necessary since so few people cared about it

presumably you'd be as blasé about the reverse outcome?

The poll wouldn't be impossible to implement, just daft. They've already got 51 as-genuine-as-we-can-reasonably-tell neg votes against them, and that's a lot! It's more than enough to earn you a month off. A lot of users already cared a lot about it.

Also I hate to say this because it sounds like I/we don't care what users think when the truth's completely the opposite, but ILX: not a democracy.

tuomas, a question-

if 51 individual, genuine posters posted to a thread entitled 'BAN (X)' stating that they wanted this to be done, how would you feel about a mod banning (X)?

The poll wouldn't be impossible to implement, just daft. They've already got 51 as-genuine-as-we-can-reasonably-tell neg votes against them, and that's a lot!

But with the poll system you would get no more complaints about someone being banned because a minority opinion, since everyone has the chance to vote. To me, it would be the fairest system of deciding whether or not to SB someone that would actually work in practice.

if 51 individual, genuine posters posted to a thread entitled 'BAN (X)' stating that they wanted this to be done, how would you feel about a mod banning (X)?

How is this different from the SB system? I wouldn't think such a ban is fair, but I don't think the current SB system is fair either.

It's not, really.

But I think it might help for people to think of the SB button in exactly this way, I just wanted to see if it would maybe blow your mind. It didn't, and I'm a little deflated tbh.

("it's not, really" referring to the difference to the SB system, not to the fairness- that may not be clear)

But with the poll system you would get no more complaints about someone being banned because a minority opinion, since everyone has the chance to vote

finn please

its a message board not a village and its not a fucking democracy so I don't see why we're arguing about it's democratic merits

I think I have a solution that will satisfy everybody but especially Tuomas. If a poster gets 51 SBs, it immediately triggers a poll. Once the poll's results are in, we have a thread discussing what to make of them. If someone on the thread suggests that a second poll is in order, that automatically triggers a re-poll. The re-poll's end-date, when it arrives, automatically triggers seven new polls on the same subject. The names of the seven polls are Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Greed, Avarice, Pride, and Lust. The Lust poll is on the ILTMI board but the other six polls are granted their own boards, whose continued survival is assured, or not, only by daily polls on whether they should be allowed to continue. If the daily-survival poll participation threshold drops below 50% of those ILX registered posters with ten or more posts to their names over the past month, this triggers a poll. The poll triggered by this concerns whether Physical Graffiti is a better album than Judy Garland's Judy at Carnegie Hall. The results of this final poll are binding.

I have never heard either of those albums in full

We don't really get many complaints about someone being banned because a minority opinion, except from ppl who were banned by a lot of people voting.

Okay, maybe someone might complain about it. Nevertheless, it wouldn't be terribly complicated, and it would definitely be more democratic than the current system. And I though being more democratic was the reason SBs were introduced in the first place.

(xxx-post)

I support J0hn D's proposal provided that he means binding depending on a poll.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8a/JudyatCarnegieHall.jpg

Grammy - Best Album Cover 1961

john d's idea sucks, but if we poll it i'd be willing to agree to let the majority of able bodied white male posters who average > 51 posts a day decide in a straight vote.

We don't really get many complaints about someone being banned because a minority opinion, except from ppl who were banned by a lot of people voting.

Really? Because there were lengthy threads at least when Ethan, Morbius, and myself were banned, and many folks criticized the bannings in them.

there were lengthy threads at least when Ethan, Morbius, and myself were banned, and many folks criticized the bannings in them.

in fairness all the people who complained on those threads about the bannings of Ethan, Morbius, and yourself were sockpuppets of mine

no lengthier than there would have been in the event of a mod ban.

maybe morbs and yourself wouldn't have been banned without the SB system, if it were left down to a straight mod decision. your argument that this would be somehow a more democratic state of affairs is questionable, and very likely biased.

(i never sb'd you, tuomas, btw)

Okay, forget everything I've said then. It's all good.

(x-post to John)

But what if it's the decisive vote? What if there's a family of new villagers with 10 kids, and they all get to vote?

― Tuomas, Thursday, August 6, 2009 9:33 AM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i am dying at this extension of the metaphor

keeps making me think of the town meetings in th gilmore girls

if i had to choose between ilx and stars hollow it would not be hard

who would beeps, ava, ophelia &co SB? xp

Hey, you guys are having clusterfuck theories!

i never thought i'd be able to use that phrase in a sentence. amazing. it took like 10 years.

At some point, their parents, one must assume.\\xpost

Tuomas, you are totally Taylor in this town meeting btw

I think we should all get black balls.

Is that like a week's worth of blue balls?

Mine aren't!

LOL

suggest ball

I distrust the SB and would never, ever use it, really, but it occurs to me, if I'm understanding Ed correctly (or even if not) that limiting the number of SBs a poster could make would be a good limitation on their potential abuse.

I think of SB as an abbrev for "sweaty balls" cuz you could eat dinner off mine.

Is that like a week's worth of blue balls?

Mine aren't!

Funny! One in a row.

swingin' bat

soggy biscuit

Really? Because there were lengthy threads at least when Ethan, Morbius, and myself were banned, and many folks criticized the bannings in them.

― Tuomas

by 'many', do you mean the 'majority' of ilx regular users? because if not, then whatever they had to say about your banning isn't worth taking notice of because being less than the majority it's not actually democratic, right??

there would have to be, say, 125 unique posters on a thread complaining about your banning in order for those complaints to have any weight

but if any of those complaints were found to come from posters who had been on ILX for less than a year, they wouldn't count

exactly

but if they have tourettes and live in a village then there opinion will count for 10

their, even

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/9/12010358_aee707bba7.jpg

Like this village?

I have to admit, I don't really use SB that much, and the few times I have used it was just more in a "blowing off steam" way, like I was just annoyed at the moment with a particular poster, so I clicked SB, and it gave me a small amount of satisfaction. In retrospect, this is a stupid thing to do if I don't really want the poster banned from the site forevermore, but it sort of makes me wonder how many other posters are using it this way. I guess the mods have said they can see what posts prompt SBs, so I would hope that SBs like mine have been in the vast minority.

so, on Momus' blog, he claims that several of Bimble's friends are saying that Bimble shot himself (partly) because of his SBing, but that no-one on ILX has the sense or decency to propose removing the SB feature. time for a new thread yet?

link?

http://imomus.livejournal.com/478681.html

Thanks dood

Is it just me, or is that -- Momus's blog -- a fantastically unhelpful, ham-fisted take on things by a former poster who really might have been better off shutting the FUCK up for a little while?

To think I used to have some respect for that man. Jesus wept. What a cunt.

Someone dying seems to be quite anedoctial for him compared to the serious issue of some board policies.

(I'd post something on his site, but why bother? I assume he'll be directed to this. Yo, Momus. Shut up. You prick.)

xpost Exactly.

Actually, nah, fuck it: posted something there too.

I have to admit, I don't really use SB that much, and the few times I have used it was just more in a "blowing off steam" way, like I was just annoyed at the moment with a particular poster, so I clicked SB, and it gave me a small amount of satisfaction. In retrospect, this is a stupid thing to do if I don't really want the poster banned from the site forevermore, but it sort of makes me wonder how many other posters are using it this way. I guess the mods have said they can see what posts prompt SBs, so I would hope that SBs like mine have been in the vast minority.

I think I have SBed four people: Jesse once for lolz because I did not know exactly what this "suggest ban" button was about, Jesse once by accident,* and two other people with the knowledge that my click could be the fifty-first and fully understanding the ramifications of that and being totally okay with it. Both of those people ended up SB'ed from the board either before I even clicked or shortly thereafter, so, yeah. If there are more than four, chalk it up to Blackout Drunk SB Sprees.

*So, um, mods, if you want to remove any bans I have suggested for Jesse, that would be okay with me.

I'm still all for deleting the SB, but you are right that Momus's reasoning doesn't make much sense. Of course you shouldn't treat a person with obvious psychological problems the same way you treat a mentally balanced person, but conforming to such a person's every whim isn't ultimately gonna make things better for him either. As far I know Bimble was treated with respect here. When was banned, the reasoning behind the ban was explained rationally, and it was made perfectly clear that he can return to the board once he's cooled off for a month. There was no nasty comments made about him, no one said that ILX is kicking him out for good. Also, apparently many of his friends from here still kept in contact with him during his ban. I think Bimble got much more support from here than he would've gotten from 99% of other Internet message boards, and blaming what happened on ILX is simply cheap and pointless speculation.

Also, as far as I know Momus isn't banned from ILX, so he should at least have the guts to make his accusations here and not in his blog.

I would hate for Momus to think that he actually "got" to me enough to make me respond like this, because he'd probably get off on it. HOWEVER... although I'm in the throes of grieving right now, and not making very good emotional decisions right now - I am TOTALLY fucking offended by that blog post on a massively personal level right now.

How fucking DARE he. How fucking dare he use the suicide of someone that many of us were actually close to as a fucking political football for his weird socio-political-aesthetic ideas.

How the fuck would HE feel if, I, for instance, took the SUICIDE OF HIS EX GIRLFRIEND and started kicking that around as polkitical football regarding how "artistes" like Momus use their fanbase sexually and economically for their own advancement and amusement?

Huh? How does it feel to have YOUR emotions and experiences taken out of context on someone's blog, Nick?

FUCK. YOU.

Convenient how you fucking EDIT OUT the fact that the people who actually spoke to him on a regular basis post-ban (myself, Kerr, Roxy) noted that he actually seemed a bit better, a bit less easily provoked, a bit more engaged with his friends... naaaaah. The observations of people who actually knew him are far less important than Momus's fucking blog.

FUCK YOU MOMUS.

I've spent a lot of time defending your particular schtick to various people, but I'm done now. This is one exercise in tastelessness too far.

(don't bother hitting suggest ban on this post to tell me to cool off, I'm going off to listen to some mixes and do some work this afternoon until I calm down myself.)

for a guy whos pretty smart momus is pretty dumb

I was going to hit "suggest OTM"
xp

YOUR emotions...Nick?

false premise here Kate

I have no words to describe the sheer insensitivity of that blog post. Wow, what a cunt.

And actually, as the person who pushed the button on that ban I am absolutely fucking furious with that representation of events.

"Is it me who's insensitive...or is it your cruel suggest-ban system, that stifles dissent" etc

"ILX, a bulletin board I used to frequent"