Banned members

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Ah, nothing like a good wand.

Oh, thank you! I'm SO tired of those scary sockpuppets. They're worse than clowns.

I actually find the lack of discussion,
both of members who are banned, and
of possible infractions, fairly worrisome.
Indeed, I advocated a much more open
policy of warnings and announcements of
bans. But, 'tis Alex's experience that such
don't work, on an aspie site,

What I jokingly refer to as the "ignorance
and fear" approach. Might work better too,
as one doesn't expect any warning, so they
tend to be more careful.

Why not?

I thought we weren't allowed to talk about them anymore!

In fact, I think it's totally unfair that all the older moderators were banned from here! There are much worse things to do than wanting more power!

Its counterproductive. Aspies do not like being warned.

How can anyone tell if there are sockpuppets online?

Depends on your definition of being warned I suppose. "Being Warned" can be taken as an insult, a challenge, all sorts of things. Been there, modded that, bought the t-shirt, dealt with the grudge-bearing flood...(Mind you, that was IRC opping, a much faster, think-on-your-feet sort of beastie.)

However, having fair warning that someone with the ability to ban you is considering doing so is another thing entirely. In a place where there seems to be no hard and fast definition of what is "bad" exactly, having the sword of Ban-ocles hanging over your head is a little worrying.

Out of interest, whats the appeal process?

What?

I disagree with that. Its alot more constructive to send a PM hinting to a member that they may have crossed a line as opposed to outright banning them. Especially as some aspies dont realise they have crossed a line, for obvious reasons.

I was responding to themachine1's post previously, assuming thats the source of the confusion.

The style and semantics of said sockpuppets posts match up the user and the socks account. Plus people blab.

What are all your ways of thinking?

Its rare that a person would be banned on WP and not
understand well before that they were breaking the rules
enough to be banned. Its usually a long process with a lot of violations before a person is banned.

Not sure on offical appeal process. But e-mail Alex and
requesting and unbanned is the method. I have unbanned 3 members on my own. 2 of which I rebanned for using
sockpuppets a few days ago.

The problem I always found with banning people is not so much the persistent offence users, but the ones who have fallen foul of either a personal dislike from an op or mod, an obscure rule, a different interpretation of a rule, or an overenthusiastic op (or a nasty one.) That and accidental bans. (I once saw someone ban the whole of London from a server, because he didnt appreciate how large the place is, and thought a blanket ban would settle a couple of gits from a certain area, without a big drop in usage. Likewise he also tried to ban a complete ISP, not realising that it services across the whole UK. )

I notice that the WP TOS is actually quite unrestrictive, compared to some I have seen (including several that ban the use of certain characters in names, and even certain names) which I suspect is a double-edged sword. Some people will push matters right up to the semantic meaning of a rules phrasing in order to act up. (A user I knew spent a lot of time using the word Niger, claiming it in the sense of the legitimate country and river, when it was patently obvious he was just using it to get round the various N word restrictions.)

If there is one thing Aspies do well, its use semantics.

IMO, I've never been a fan of banning, whether I'm in the position to ban people or not. I much prefer to argue, using fact and reason to reach a conclusion .. though obviously I agree with banning for the more "ret*d" transgressions such as flooding and spamming repeatedly, that kind of thing. Generally I agree with Hadron that some form of heads up would be nice, especially in more obscure cases like arguments and matters of opinion getting out of hand.

Thank you!